ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 2, 1996 TAG: 9602030016
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Congress voted Thursday to free the exploding television, telephone and home computer industries to jump into each other's fields and reshape the culture and commerce of the 21st century.
The bill - saluted by Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., as a telecommunications ``road map'' into the new century - flew through the House, 414-16, and then the Senate, 91-5.
All of Virginia's House members and both senators voted for the bill.
President Clinton hailed the action, saying in a statement, ``consumers will receive the benefits of lower prices, better quality and greater choices in their telephone and cable services, and they will continue to benefit from a diversity of voices and viewpoints in radio, television and the print media.''
The president will sign the bill ``probably within a week,'' Vice President Al Gore said in a telephone interview.
The reworking of the 61-year-old Communications Act would let local and long-distance telephone companies and cable companies into each others' businesses, deregulate cable rates and allow media companies to expand their holdings more easily. It also would restrict smutty material on computer networks and television.
The bill also would give parents a powerful new tool - a computer chip in TV sets allowing them to keep violent, sexually oriented or other objectionable shows off their screens.
The V-chip sets won't be available for at least two years, says the Electronic Industries Association. The TV industry contends that requirement would jeopardize advertising revenue and has promised to fight it in court.
``It will propel our country into the next century,'' Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas said of the bill.
Supporters say the measure would boost jobs, expand consumer choices and potentially lower prices for cable, telephone and other communications services.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, said he was grateful for the House vote and views it as a personal victory. The telecommunications reform bill that passed Thursday is a descendant of legislation introduced in 1988 by Boucher and Gore, then a Democratic Senator from Tennessee.
The 1988 bill, designed to allow telephone companies to offer cable television services, was prompted by his and Gore's desire to help consumers and to give the phone companies an incentive to improve their networks by installing fiber-optic or coaxial cable, Boucher said. After becoming vice president, Gore referred to the proposed high-speed communications networks as an "information superhighway."
Boucher claims the telecommunications bill is the biggest job-creation measure so far in the Clinton administration, with the potential of creating 3.5 million jobs nationwide as companies make the investments needed to compete.
Opponents say more jobs will be lost than gained through consolidation, that choices will be limited and that cable and telephone rates are likely to go up considerably because the level of competition envisioned by supporters will not emerge.
The bill covers the $700 billion telecommunications industry, which accounts for one-sixth of the nation's economy.
A major roadblock to Senate passage was cleared when Dole received assurances from the Federal Communications Commission that it would not issue new digital television licenses until Congress decides whether broadcasters should have to pay for them.
In the end, five senators voted against the bill: John McCain, R-Ariz., Russell Feingold, D-Wis., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Paul Simon, D-Ill., and Paul Wellstone, D-Minn.
In the House, Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., said the bill ``will link us as Americans together as never before. This is a grand celebration of the free-market system. It is a grand strategy to unleash the technologies geniuses are working on and to give them a chance to become tomorrow's Microsoft.''
But one opponent, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., said it does more for big business than for consumers. Congress has decided, he said, ``that consumer protection must take a back seat to industry demand.''
Staff writer Greg Edwards contributed information to this story.
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