Good Morning.  I’d like to thank Don Means for that wonderful introduction.  Don and I have worked on several initiatives over the years – from open access efforts to community broadband and I thank him for his assistance and friendship.Welcome to Boston, I hope all of you from out of town are enjoying your stay.  We had hoped to have an American League pennant race for you when you were here, but you’ll have to let it suffice that we have a governor’s race instead…..

    It is appropriate for VON to come here to Boston because IP-based technologies are revolutionary technologies and Massachusetts is steeped in revolutionary history.

    For example, on the evening of April 18, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren sent for Paul Revere  and instructed him to ride to Lexington, Massachusetts, to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were marching to arrest them.  He had to cross from the North End here in Boston across the Charles River and then over through my Congressional District to Medford, Arlington, and Lexington.

    Imagine, however, that instead of hanging 2 lanterns in the Old North Church and delivering the message on horseback, Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty subscribed to VOIP!  They simply could have pre-recorded two messages – one if the British were arriving by land, and two if by sea – and when the time came they could have forwarded the appropriate one to all the surrounding towns with the message that “the British are coming!”

    In addition to leading the American Revolution, Boston and eastern Massachusetts also have a important role in the history of communications.  Alexander Graham Bell, for instance, invented the telephone here in 1876.  The world's first two way long distance telephone conversation over an outdoor wire – which was evidently a borrowed telegraph line -- took place between Bell and Watson between Cambridgeport and Boston.

    And for those of you who have spent time working on “e-numbering” issues and the North American Numbering Plan for VOIP purposes, you may be interested to know that the first use of telephone numbers occurred in 1879 in Lowell, Massachusetts.  The story is that during a flu epidemic there was concern that the 4 operators might all call in sick and the phone service up there would shut down.  That’s because prior to dialing numbers in those days one had to ask the operator to connect you to someone by name.

    And finally, the 1st contract for building what is now the Internet was given to BBN here in Massachusetts and Bob Kahn’s team at BBN built the Internet after AT&T turned down the contract.

    So it is fitting and proper that the VON conference happen here this week where the revolution really all began…..
 
Broadband Competition and Deployment

    I’d like to start by briefly talking about broadband competition and deployment.  Where does the U.S. currently stand on broadband deployment and adoption?  Well, we hear reports that the United States ranks 16th in the world – and that we’re falling fast.  Now, some of the countries that are purportedly ahead of us – such as Iceland, Hong Kong, or Singapore, have a relatively easy time wiring up their citizens because of the compact, “city-state” nature of their geography or demographics.  In Iceland for instance, half the country lives in one city and the phone book reportedly lists people by their first names.  

    Yet, even discounting these countries from the rankings, the tally shows that the U.S. is still behind countries like Japan, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Israel, Norway, Sweden, Finland.

    The bottom line is that these countries have a plan for universal broadband, and we don’t.  We shouldn’t be 16th – we should endeavor to be #1 and the way to get there is to have a plan to assure every American of access to affordable broadband choices.  

    The Bush Administration has paid little but lip service to universal broadband and articulated no concrete plan for how to achieve it.    For its part, the Federal Communications Commission trumpets the fact that broadband penetration in the U.S. is increasing – and it is.  That’s the good news.  For instance, according to the FCC, high speed lines increased 18% during the second half of 2005, from 42.4 to 50.2 million lines in services.  

    What the FCC obviously doesn’t highlight is the bad news.  First, the FCC doesn’t advertise that the threshold speed it qualifies as broadband is so low that some of the other countries in the rankings don’t even consider it to be high speed.  So, not only do other countries have greater broadband penetration, they also have much higher speeds as well.  

    The second piece of bad news is that broadband service to residential consumers in the United States is dominated by a “digital duopoly” of two technologies – cable modem and telephone company DSL service.    

    If one looks at the FCC data, what one finds is that even simply counting services that provide just 200 kilobits per second in ONE direction, alternative technologies such as wireless services or broadband-over-powerlines make up just over 1% of the market.  When you count those services to residential consumers offering 200 kilobits per second in TWO directions, the FCC data shows that the share of wireless and powerline-based technologies is under 1% of the residential market.  

    So, again, the cable industry’s cable modem and the telephone companies’ DSL technologies are going to be a digital duopoly into residential homes for the foreseeable future.  This has implications for affordability, for innovation, and for the need for sensible rules for network neutrality to safeguard the Internet.

    The lack of technology alternatives and marketplace choices in the residential broadband market also affects the “digital divide” that exists in this market.  A new report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Center for Educational Statistics reveals a significant “digital divide” among minorities and ethnic groups.  
    This is something that I was concerned about as far back as 1993, when I wrote the top 10 phone and cable companies and asked their CEOs what they would do to hook up schools for educational purposes. This inquiry led to the E-rate provision, which I successfully battled to get enacted into law as part of the Telecommunications Act and which dispenses $2.25 Billion a year to ensure that the Internet is accessible in K-12 classrooms and public libraries.
    Yet even with the E-rate program, the Department of Education’s recent study indicates the digital divide is a communications chasm at home.  The study found that while 54 percent of white students reported using the Internet at home, only 27 percent of black students and 26 percent of Latino students do.
    This divide among minorities for the 21st skill set they’ll need to compete for jobs in the future comes even as census data indicate such minorities will be the majority of Americans by the year 2020.  We cannot afford NOT to have a plan – for our own economic security – to ensure that every American receives what will be the indispensable infrastructure of the 21st century: truly high-speed, affordable broadband service.  
    I want to embrace the efforts of many communities which are pursuing community wi-fi, WiMax, and other community broadband initiatives.  I have long supported such efforts.  My hometown of Malden just a couple of miles away recently won a grant award for its wi-fi system.  And the City of Boston is poised to also begin an ambitious project through a non-profit, municipal network operator to ensure that everyone citizen has access to affordable, open, broadband services.
    The current Bush Administration approach, however, to broadband policy reminds me of a one-liner from comedienne Lily Tomlin, who said, “remember: We are all in this alone.”

Video Franchising & Net Neutrality

    Instead of holding hearings to develop proposals for an overarching broadband plan for America, this year in Congress the Republicans chose to focus on relatively narrow issue of revamping cable franchising rules and tilting such rules in favor of telephone companies.  Indeed, even when the Republicans pushed through their cable franchising bill through the House earlier this year, they opposed Democratic efforts to ensure that the new fiber-based broadband service that the phone companies were deploying to offer cable TV had to eventually reach everyone in the community.  

    We are not going to bridge the digital divide when one of the two major residential competitors announces it does not intend to build-out to everyone in a franchise area, and when the Republicans in Congress actively shield them from having to fulfill this historic obligation.

    While policymakers have waited years for telephone companies to enter the video market that we legislatively opened for them in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, only recently have they begun serious deployment of the infrastructure for such services.  From a consumer perspective, cable rates remain too high.  I welcome the Bell companies’ entry into the cable marketplace and am pleased that they are making investments to deploy advanced broadband services.  

    The cable industry and others drove broadband deployment in consumer markets after the Telecommunications Act passed and have made inroads into the local telephone marketplace as well.  It is natural that in response to this competition unleashed by the Telecommunications Act, the local telephone utilities would begin to respond by investing in other markets.  This competition is healthy and beneficial to consumers.  A recent study by J.D. Power notes that the average cable telephone customer pays $11.19 a month less than traditional telephone consumers.  That’s close to $140 a year for a family and this type of telephone service from cable is one that is expected to reach over 100 million households in the next 5 years.

    And the implications for consumer adoption and savings from VOIP competitors across the country – indeed, from across the globe --  hold the promise of a new revolution in innovation and price competition for value-added services.

    But in order for such services to be successful and for the VOIP industry to continue to grow, Congress and the FCC must reject efforts underway in Washington and elsewhere by the Bell companies to evade their legal obligation to permit competitors to interconnect directly or indirectly to the public switched telephone network and reject, as well, arguments that Internet Protocol-based technology eliminates their legal obligation to interconnect.

    These rules are important because without them, monopoly power could crush entrepreneurial investment and innovation.

Network Neutrality

    These legislative and regulatory efforts however were dwarfed by a larger battle this summer -- the legislative fight for Network Neutrality.

    As many of you know, I led the fight for Network Neutrality in the House of Representatives.
 
    In my view, network neutrality is indispensable to the future of the Internet, which is another way of saying it is indispensable to the future of innovation.  Something as fundamental as ensuring unfettered access to Internet content, services, and applications needs something more than a pledge by broadband executives to adhere to an electronic code of ethics.   

    As a Red Sox fan, I may not mind it if for the rest of this year we let the Red Sox pitchers call their own balls and strikes.  

    But this would be terrible for the game.  We need an honest umpire to ensure every player is playing by the rules and those rules need to be well understood and enforceable.  The phone and cable companies want the broadband equivalent of calling their own game – they want no umpire to ensure fairness and non-discriminatory treatment on their broadband networks.  What would be the point of developing a plan for universal broadband if it is simply a proprietary, high tech toll-road replete with new bottleneck fees and cyber-shakedowns by network operators?

    The Internet is an unparalleled medium for innovation, commerce, entrepreneurial activity, and civic conversation.  Other than the need for greater speed in the network, is there something wrong with the Internet that needs to be fixed?  It is the indispensable medium of the 21st Century - a medium that I fought in the Telecommunications Act successfully with the E-rate program to get into classrooms.  We urge so-called “e-government” efforts to put more services online.  Policymakers encourage telecommuting to enhance the economy, mitigate against traffic congestion and resulting pollution.  We celebrate the cacophony of voices, discordant or otherwise, that the 1st Amendment enshrines for Americans, and which has found a new flowing on the Internet.  And we herald all of the new whiz-bang services and applications that the next generation Internet pioneers has in store for us.

    Some of the corporate owners of the new advanced broadband networks seem to have a problem with the current Internet model based upon comments they have made in the last several months.  It is important to remember that these networks are not being built as electronic eleemosynary endeavors for the general public.  They are being built in order to make money for the network owner.  As a result, policymakers must remain cognizant that the threat of discrimination and the urge to discriminate on such networks will be ever present.  And acting upon such urges will inevitably occur and become part-and-parcel of new business practices unless there are rules against doing so.  

    There are some out there who will inevitably ask the question, “But why shouldn’t Google pay?”  Google certainly has a very large market cap and presumably could afford to pay.  

    But that is precisely the wrong question to ask.  

    The question to ask is whether Larry Page and Sergey Brin could have afforded to pay circa 1998, whether Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang could have afforded to pay a broadband behemoth circa 1995, whether Marc Andreesen could have afforded to pay anyone, anything, circa 1994 when he was inventing the Mosaic browser, which later became Netscape.  

    If there is an entrepreneur in some proverbial garage somewhere today, whose idea is new, whose product is still in “beta,” her dreams is just as real and valid as Larry’s, Sergey’s, Jerry’s and Marc’s were an Internet-generation ago.  We should be doing everything we can in public policy to ensure that this successful Internet model continues to drive innovation and economic growth.

    What would America’s economic prospects be if we allow such discrimination to become part of our broadband rules and experience?  Much, much dimmer – it is the antithesis of the free and open Internet of which we are so proud.

    Finally, I want to applaud all of you in this room who assisted me in my legislative battles on Net Neutrality.  My Network Neutrality amendment built support at every stage of the battle and it was the help I received from many of you in this room who helped build that momentum.  So, I thank you and rest assured that I will continue to battle and advocate for legally-enforceable, sensible network neutrality rules.  Simply too much is at stake to “wait-and-see” what might happen if policymakers abandon the open Internet architecture and entrust it to the phone and cable industries.  

    Teddy Roosevelt once said that the “best prize in life is the chance to work hard on work worth doing.”  Your work in the VOIP area and for Network Neutrality and the promotion of broadband technologies and services are certainly “work worth doing” and again, I thank you for your efforts and for the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon.