By JOHN BREAUX

Access to high-speed internet connections in homes across the country is vital to our national interest and the health of our national economy. If more American homes had high-speed internet access – also known as broadband – there would be more e-commerce and information sharing, a jump-start to investment in the high-speed industry, and job creation in the depressed telecommunications industry.

Federal and state regulations, however, view the emerging broadband market through different sets of eyes, focusing regulatory policies on the type of provider rather than the type of service.

In fact, regulations governing high-speed internet access are based largely on an outdated view of the telecom and high-tech industry. Indeed, many of these regulations were written when there was almost no high-speed internet access in American homes.

To encourage and ensure wider residential deployment of broadband networks, Congress must level the regulatory playing field in the broadband market. We must end a practice that forces one type of provider – namely digital subscriber lines (DSL) – to jump through a succession of regulatory hoops while allowing other providers to operate with minimal or no regulation.

There are currently four competing technologies that provide consumers high-speed internet access – cable modem, DSL, fixed wireless and satellite.

Cable providers control 70 percent of the competitive broadband market, yet cable, along with wireless and satellite providers, not surprisingly, face virtually no regulation of their broadband networks.

Only DSL, provided by local telephone companies, with less than 30 percent market share, are heavily regulated and subject to an ever-evolving morass of federal and state obligations.

To be sure, there are significant regulatory barriers for telephone companies that want to deploy broadband. The Bell companies have a duty to interconnect with competitors at below-cost prices, to file tariffs, to provide subscriber list information and to negotiate with competitors for network access – all just a small sample of the regulatory requirements imposed on local phone companies.

None of these regulatory requirements, not a single one, applies to cable, satellite or fixed wireless providers of broadband.

The effect of this disparate regulatory treatment among providers has been to stifle telephone companies from making new investment in broadband networks. The lack of broadband connections affects all sectors, from hardware manufacturers such as Cisco, Lucent and Intel, to content providers such as Disney and Yahoo!

In the midst of a severe decline since 2000, global telecom losses are accelerating. Once-strong companies have been forced to make record write-offs, and a new round of layoffs has contributed to a loss of more than 300,000 telecom jobs last year alone.

It makes no sense in the Information Age that companies that want to deploy and invest in broadband technology are hamstrung by regulatory discrimination.

To revitalize the moribund telecom industry, experts agree we need a change in public policy to encourage the widespread deployment of broadband technology.

Last month, I introduced the “Broadband Regulatory Parity Act of 2002” with Sen. Don Nickles (R-Ok.) to bring regulatory parity to all providers of high-speed internet access and services.

This “Breaux-Nickles” bill will subject providers of broadband services and broadband access services to the same regulatory requirements as other players in the broadband market. Unlike broadband legislation that passed the House, our Senate bill identifies the Federal Communications Commission as the appropriate authority to determine which regulatory requirements – if any – should be retained and which should be eliminated.

In the Information Age, if the goal is to bring the benefits of high-speed internet to the maximum number of Americans, the government must get out of the business of picking the winners in the broadband deployment race. Consumers are better served and the broadband market will flourish when these regulations are made technology-neutral.

I am grateful to chairman of the Commerce Committee, Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), for his commitment to give this legislation a fair vetting in the full committee. I look forward to working with Chairman Hollings and other committee members to make regulatory parity a reality in the deployment of broadband technology.

JOHN BREAUX represents Louisiana in the United States Senate.