Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 15, 1992 TAG: 9203130241
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
He began hearing the complaints nearly a decade ago: Satellite dish owners in rural Southwest Virginia kept showing up at town meetings decrying the rates they were being forced to pay for programming. Cable subscribers in nearby towns, constituents said, were being charged less for the same product - and that smacked of discrimination.
Generally, the dish owners couldn't just pull the programming off the air and into their homes, the Abingdon Democrat explained. Instead, viewers would have to call the closest cable provider and arrange to receive a package of programs also available to cable subscribers.
Trouble was, the dish owners paid a premium, and that didn't seem fair.
Boucher was interested. Then, a few years after the 1984 cable deregulation act, he began to hear complaints from other constituents about steady rate increases and shoddy customer service from their local cable system.
"That got me involved in looking at the cable industry generally," he said during several interviews in his Capitol Hill office. "I became persuaded that there was a fundamental imbalance in the system, that it's an unregulated monopoly."
Came then a golden opportunity: Boucher, first elected to Congress in 1982, had been angling for a seat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee since 1984. Two years later, he got a seat - and with it the platform to correct the apparent television inequity roiling the folks back home.
But this was no fight just for the folks back home.
First, he needed ammunition. So Boucher, an intense and driven 46-year-old lawyer known for pushing his staff hard, immersed himself in cable television and emerging telecommunications technology. A command of the details now dovetails with the big picture, making a carefully-crafted argument for a communications vision he sees clearly.
It seems a perfect fit: a precise, orderly lawmaker turned master of intricate, high-tech policy. Industry lobbyists, technical specialists and House colleagues marvel at his grasp of the complex subject, with Rep. Frank McCloskey of Indiana calling him "unsurpassed in the House . . . maybe even in all of Congress."
"All of the problems that were brought to me by my constituents are solved if you introduce competition," concluded Boucher, himself no fan of government regulation. Cable rates would plummet, he contends; service would improve; programming choices would expand; and rural residents long denied cable service would get it.
The way Boucher sees it, the nation's telephone companies are the logical engine to drive the United States into an age increasingly dependent on ready access to high-speed data and video services. He promotes a future where one fiber-optic wire would provide businesses and homeowners with telephone, cable TV and other data services - each chosen from competing suppliers.
But mention "phone companies" and media moguls - from newspaper publishers to cable operators to TV station owners - get nervous. They foresee further erosion in their revenues, increased competition for limited advertising dollars and a dangerous concentration of information - that is, power - in the hands of a single $100 billion industry.
To be sure, the congressman's "Communications Competitiveness and Infrastructure Modernization Act of 1991" is generally considered ahead of its time. And that may be part of the problem.
The political crosscurrents are vicious: Lawmakers aren't keen to make a choice between their regional phone company and their local cable operators. Cable could, for example, donate a 30-second public service announcement to a challenger, lobbyists and House staffers say.
Nor is Congress particularly warm to the idea of giving the telephone companies free rein in new businesses, given their own monopolistic history and charges of rate-payer abuses. Besides, voters seem more concerned with the economy and health care than about futuristic communications policy.
"It's an issue that has not reached fruition out in the public yet," said Rep. Mike Oxley, an Ohio Republican co-sponsoring Boucher's bill. "Nobody wants to cast those kind of votes. They're not fun politically."
Boucher's campaign is a lonely one, despite support voiced by colleagues. "When you step into this issue," said Tim Regan, public policy director for Corning Inc., "you step into a battle among giants - and you're likely to get squashed. That's why so few people want to take it on; they're afraid of it."
And giants they are.
There are the nation's network broadcasters and local station owners, fearful that the phone companies will package and sell their own programming over newly deployed fiber-optic lines.
Cable operators, deregulated for the past eight years, worry their virtual monopoly on television to the home will be broken and they'll be buried by the larger and wealthier telephone industry.
"Cable lives or dies for the Cable Act of 1984," said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., Boucher's colleague on the telecommunications and finance subcommittee. And allowing the phone companies into the cable business amounts to "the death penalty. Every year they can stall us is worth millions."
Newspaper companies with cable interests - such as the Washington Post Co.; Times Mirror Co.; Richmond-based Media General; and Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, owner of Cox Cable Roanoke Inc. - get jittery at the thought of seeing phone companies in the cable business. After all, many of their cable holdings saw double-digit growth over the past eight years, fattening already-healthy profit margins.
Even the Consumer Federation of America opposes Boucher's efforts, saying the phone companies' history of anti-consumer behavior should be reason enough to continually bar them from the cable TV business.
"Whether you agree with Boucher's position or not, you have to give him an `A' for courage," said Tom Tauke, a former Republican congressman from Iowa who now lobbies his colleagues for New York-based Nynex Corp., one of the Baby Bell phone companies. "In politics . . . the perceptions are the enemies remember you and the friends don't."
Lawmakers are nervous "because the cable industry has a lot of stroke, and [Congress doesn't] want to get caught in a battle between the telephone companies and cable" industry, observed Ward White, vice president of government and public affairs at the United States Telephone Association.
"It's loaded, there's no question about that," said Rep. Norman Sisisky, D-Petersburg. "And I think it's to [Boucher's] advantage to take it on."
House staffers, asking not to be named, agreed. "Politically, it's a winner for him because he can beat up on the cable operators and be pro-consumer," one said. "Boucher owns this issue in the House. Members spend their whole lives trying to own an issue. He owns an issue.
"It's his wedge into a big-time issue," the staffer continued. "It gets him into The New York Times." Indeed, Boucher and, especially, his staff are quick to inundate visitors with recent stories from Time and Broadcasting magazines exploring the telecommunications tug of war.
A recent three-part series in The Washington Post on cable TV and its future cited Boucher's legislation deep in one installment. When asked about the stories a few weeks later, the congressman betrayed an almost child-like excitement: "They mentioned my bill."
Such moments are rare for a man who seems always in control, focused, even in a hurry. Colleagues describe him as a "workhorse, not a show horse." For Boucher, there are lawmakers who vote on legislation put before them and there are those who put forth the legislation.
"I think being engaged, being in the arena, is the way to live life," he said.
Boucher is obviously uncomfortable when asked if he "owns" the cable-telephone company issue on Capitol Hill. He rattles off other pending legislation, such as his interstate waste transportation bill inspired by Alleghany County's Kim-Stan Landfill controversy.
"This one, for the current year, may have the most popular appeal," he conceded. But "it [would] be difficult for me to say that it's more important to succeed on that front than others."
And Boucher is equally uncomfortable with suggestions that his prominent role on telecommunications policy could somehow be positioning him for higher office - say, a run for governor next year or the U.S. Senate in 1994.
Leaving the House - especially his assignment on Energy and Commerce, the vortex of domestic policy making in Congress - makes little sense to Boucher. He said he has no plans to run for anything except a sixth term.
It's seldom easy to do the right thing on Capitol Hill, the complaints go, where keeping things from happening is the time-honored tradition of some lawmakers and the lobbyists who contribute to their re-election campaigns.
Not surprisingly, Boucher himself has received significant campaign contributions from telephone and telecommunications political action committees. But allowing the phone companies into the cable business, he insisted, is good public policy even if it is dicey politics.
In Washington, though, politics often triumphs over policy. For the short term, Boucher appears outnumbered by those who seem to think the quick tonic for consumer discontent with steadily rising cable rates is reregulation. The Senate passed a reregulation measure in January, which now is being considered in the House.
Simple reregulation, Boucher complains, will do nothing to upgrade the nation's telecommunications network; will do nothing to extend cable service to rural areas such as his district; and will not even lower current cable rates. The best consumers can hope for is a "flexible cap" that will slow rate increases.
Still, momentum seems to be building in Congress for a reregulation bill, despite a vow by the Bush Administration to veto a cable bill that favors regulation over competition. The logic: Congress will give the president a cable bill, watch him veto it and then tell voters - in an election year - that it tried and Bush failed.
"I think making a political statement on this issue is just an enormous mistake," Boucher said. "The country's tired of political statements, and so am I."
A politics of mistrust infuses the cable TV-telephone company debate in congressional offices and hearing rooms. Cable operators and some consumer advocates insist that telephone companies cannot be trusted to play by rules drafted by Boucher.
Consider the counterarguments, courtesy of the National Cable Television Association:
Boucher's bill would do little more than advance the telephone industry's goal of achieving a union of telecommunications and video services. A single company could then control telephone, data and video transmission over a network it owns.
"The result for consumers," says an NCTA position paper, "will be higher phone rates, less competition and decreased reliability." Consumers would also have their communications eggs in one basket, increasing their exposure to system failures and other glitches.
Telephone companies would offset the cost of such non-regulated services as cable TV with the guaranteed rates paid by phone customers - underpricing competitors and driving them out of business. Then, prices would rise.
Boucher's safeguards against telephone company abuses have proven ineffective in the past. Rules against cross-subsidization - using revenues from one part of a company to fund another - have long existed, but have been difficult to enforce.
Boucher's attempt to raise an exemption allowing phone companies to offer cable TV in rural areas is nothing more than allowing phone companies into the cable business with no safeguards. Phone companies operating in towns of 2,500 or fewer people now can offer cable. Boucher would raise that to 10,000, opening the door for enhanced service in his rural district.
Officially, the cable TV group will not talk about Boucher and his role in the legislation it is battling, saying it would be inappropriate to comment about an individual congressman. But the NCTA's stance in Boucher's bill is clear:
"The safeguards proposed in the . . . legislation have been tried and failed," said spokeswoman Peggy Laramie. "Unless you unhook the telephone companies from their monopoly services, no government safeguards are going to be enough."
Cable operators, certain their days as unregulated providers are numbered, want the freedom to offer local telephone service over their lines. Pending legislation to limit the phone companies' role in the information services business would allow cable systems in the phone business, widening further the telecommunications bazaar.
The nation's major phone companies support Boucher and his bill, but appear to have made a tactical decision to let the cable reregulation bill make its way through Congress without pushing for a green-light to enter the cable business. They worry that by pushing too much too soon they might appear greedy, and could scuttle plans to enter several new businesses, including cable television.
The phone companies "took a pass in the first round," said one lawmaker familiar with the Boucher bill. "It will be taken up in the next round."
by CNB