Albert Russell Wynn: “I thank the committee chairman for his leadership, the subcommittee chairman for his leadership, as well as Mrs.…”

“I thank the committee chairman for his leadership, the subcommittee chairman for his leadership, as well as Mrs. Blackburn of Tennessee who worked with me on the Video Choice Act which was somewhat of a precursor to this bill. I want to say, first of all, that this bill is not about net neutrality. The Google crowd, the Internet crowd does not care about cable rates. But this bill is about cable rates. And what we know today is that cable rates are too high in America. We know that consumers are paying as much as 80 percent increases over the last years in cable rates, and so that is what this bill seeks to address. It addresses it by trying to create more competition. And there is no disagreement that if we had more competition in video services we would have lower cable bills. Now, there are new companies, telephone companies and other companies, that want to come into the market. But under current law, they have to negotiate hundreds of thousands of individual agreements with local governments. That is why we don't have more competition. This bill creates a national franchise and says we can bring in new entrants to provide competitive services and lower prices. What happens with this? Well, we do protect the local communities because they still receive franchise fees from new entrants. We protect their rights to control their rights-of-way. We also have antidiscrimination to protect against redlining.…”