Tuesday, October 21, 2003

By Bill Toland, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG -- The related issues of how to deploy high-speed Internet service to Pennsylvania's most rural corners and the creation of a new agency to monitor the state's telecom industry figure to command the attention of members of the state Legislature once they get this pesky budget thing out of the way.

When they do, one of several bills to be considered will be the 112-page proposal introduced by state Sen. Jake Corman, R-Centre, who yesterday presided over the first Senate hearing on his bill.

Corman's legislation would create a salaried, five-member Pennsylvania Telecommunications Commission to supervise the state's Internet and residential telephone industries.

One commissioner would be appointed to represent rural areas, another would be a consumer advocate, and no more than three could come from one political party.

Supporters say the bill would create an agency that's nimbler than the Pennsylvania Utility Commission and better able to deal with the Internet's rapid technology changes, while opponents say it creates an unnecessary, and costly, layer of regulatory burden for the companies that lay the cables and wires delivering high-speed Internet.

Corman's proposal is one of four making rounds in the General Assembly. One, introduced last month by state Rep. Mike Veon, D-Beaver Falls, would force telecom firms to offer high-speed Internet service to all of Pennsylvania by 2010 at the latest, five years earlier than required under existing law.

Two other bills were introduced earlier in the year. House Bill 1669 would create a broadband infrastructure development fund, which would be financed through a levy on the operating revenues of the state's largest phone companies. The other, House Bill 30, is backed by the local phone industry because it relaxes the timetable by which telecom firms must expand their high-speed services.

Each proposal is bucking to replace a decade-old package of telecom deregulation laws, known collectively as Chapter 30 and set to expire at the end of this year because of a built-in sunset clause.

"Chapter 30 is broken, and it needs to be fixed," said Kevin Dellicker, executive director of a group called Project e-Quality, which is dedicated to bridging the so-called digital divide, or the gap between those schools served by high-speed Internet and those out of its reach.

"It doesn't make sense that many students in Pennsylvania enjoy better broadband connections in their homes than in their schools," Dellicker said.

High-speed Internet service -- as opposed to service offered through dial-up modems that have already become antiques -- is viewed as a necessity for modern business, education and communication. Most residents in the state's urban areas already have access, but many rural areas don't.

The new incarnation of Chapter 30, whatever form it takes, will be the group of laws that enforces the expansion of high-speed Internet into the next decade. Corman said he'd prefer one body that could supervise telephone and cable television companies, both of which offer Internet services.

For now, the PUC regulates Internet by telephone, while cable Internet is unregulated by the state.

"The telecommunications industry has outgrown the PUC," Corman said at yesterday's communications and technology committee hearing. His board would be the first of its kind in the United States.

Dave Rolka, a former PUC commissioner, said the new telecom commission wouldn't translate into a onerous bureaucracy. "You're just focusing the bureaucracy a little more carefully," he said. "Telecommunications is important enough, in my opinion, to deserve that specific attention."

Consumer and citizens groups are at odds over which of the four proposals presents the best deal for customers. One group, Citizens Against Higher Taxes, is howling that Corman's bill would create a $50 million rural broadband expansion fund, and takes issue with the conception of a new state agency that would have an annual budget of up to $200 million.

"This bill is just bad news for Pennsylvania," said Jim Broussard, the group's chairman. "We don't need a new state bureaucracy that will hit everyone with another phone tax."

Other groups, especially those representing rural interests, say the Legislature must take whatever steps necessary to compel slow-moving phone giants to install high-speed Internet across the state.

Meanwhile, Verizon's director of regulatory affairs, John Baran, says Chapter 30 has been working just fine, and broadband expansion ought to progress as the market and customer base dictates, not according to an artificial timeline.

Corman's bill, like others in the House, contains a provision requiring automatic enrollment for anyone who qualifies for the federal "lifeline" program, which provides discounted basic phone service to low-income residents.

About 120,000 Pennsylvania customers are enrolled in the lifeline program, while 1 million customers who qualify for the program aren't enrolled, often because they don't know about the discount.

Verizon said automatic enrollment would allow more people to reap the discount benefits, but would also come at a cost to remaining customers, who will foot the bill by way of increased federal surcharges. But state Consumer Advocate Irwin "Sonny" Popowsky says it's a no-brainer.

"Automatic enrollment makes so much sense," he said.

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