Democrats grill FCC about net neutrality, other issues

Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives criticized the U.S. Federal Communications Commission Wednesday, complaining that the agency hasn’t investigated government spying on telephone and Internet conversations and hasn’t taken a strong stand for network neutrality.

Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, questioned why the FCC hasn’t launched an investigation into a U.S. National Security Agency surveillance program that allegedly spied on U.S. residents with the participation of AT&T Inc.

Markey suggested carrier participation in the program without court orders is illegal under telecom law enforced by the FCC. An independent agency has “its own obligations” to investigate violations of the laws it enforces, he said during a subcommittee hearing.

The U.S. Department of Justice has maintained that the surveillance program is “covered by national security,” said Kevin Martin, the Republican chairman of the FCC. The FCC has asked for details about the program, but the DOJ has not yet responded.

“I think we can predict the answer that you’ll receive from Attorney General [Alberto] Gonzales,” Markey said.

Markey and other Democrats also called on the FCC to take a stronger stand for net neutrality rules, which would prohibit broadband carriers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors or from speeding up partners’ content. Markey called net neutrality an “indispensable policy for the future of the Internet.”

But rules on what traffic broadband networks must carry could discourage providers from rolling out new technologies, Martin said. “I’m certainly concerned that if we subjected them to network neutrality rules, it would impede some investment,” he said.

The subcommittee’s FCC oversight hearing Wednesday gave the new Democratic majority a chance to question commissioners on a number of issues, including the rollout of broadband, interoperability of emergency communications and AT&T’s merger with BellSouth Corp. It was the first time in three years that commissioners had appeared before the subcommittee, and some Democrats suggested the Republican majority in years past had given the FCC too free a rein over telecom issues.

Several lawmakers asked about the FCC’s plans to create interoperable networks that police and fire departments can use to communicate with each other. Emergency response agencies are scheduled to get a new 24Mhz chunk of spectrum in February 2009, but there are conflicting ideas about what to do with that spectrum, which is being given up by U.S. television stations as they switch from analog to digital broadcasts.

Industry efforts to develop interoperability standards seem to be moving slowly, said Representative Chip Pickering, a Mississippi Republican. Pickering said he’s working on legislation that would set a deadline for private interoperability standards, with the FCC tasked with creating standards if the deadline isn’t met.

Commissioners said they would support such a bill. But the deadline should be soon, because the U.S. still hasn’t solved the emergency communication problems that plagued rescuers during and after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat. The public won’t accept government excuses that it was surprised about the communication problems during the next disaster, he said.

“It’s been five years since 9/11,” Copps added. “We still don’t have interoperability.”