In the past few months alone, South Milwaukee Rep. Mark Honadel has been out front in the debate over nuclear power, Milwaukee school choice and child care fraud. Now you can add telecom regulation to that list.
The Republican is one of the co-sponsors of a controversial bill that would deregulate the traditional landline telephone industry.
Check out the full Journal Sentinel story here. From it:
Legislation that would drop many regulations on traditional landline telephones has resurfaced, with supporters saying it would stimulate investments in new technologies and detractors saying it would harm consumers.
The proposed legislation from Rep. Mark Honadel (R-South Milwaukee) and Sen. Rich Zipperer (R-Pewaukee) would be the first major revision of the state’s telecommunications laws since 1994. It would, they say, remove outdated regulations that require AT&T Inc. to invest in copper-line technologies used for landline telephones.
It would free up money that AT&T and other telecom companies could use for technologies such as wireless and Voice over Internet Protocol phone services, according to the legislation’s backers, including AT&T. …
But critics counter the bill would create loopholes that would allow the largest phone companies to avoid most state regulation.
The legislation would strip away 50 years of consumer protection for landline telephone subscribers, said Barry Orton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications professor.
“The lion would be put in charge of the gazelle cage,” Orton said.
This legislation sounds very similar to that championed by former State Sen. Jeff Plale, and that version was heavily criticized for the role that telephone lobbyists played in shaping the bill.
My take? I understand and support the “investment in new technologies” argument, and I am hopeful that this will indeed help close the so-called “digital divide” that absolutely exists in the state. (In fact, it exists in South Milwaukee. Crazily, at last check I could not get DSL internet at my home because my neighborhood, or at least my house, is out of range. This is incredibly frustrating.)
That said, as a landline subscriber (in addition to cell phones for me and my wife) I am always fearful of giving more power to huge phone companies, given my uneven, at best, dealings with them throughout my adult life. Unfortunately, I have seen first-hand that they do not always put the consumer first, and that’s with our current regulations. I worry what that landscape will look like in a deregulated industry.
What do you think of the proposal? Post your comments below!
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