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CWA Urges Senate Support for Breaux Bill: Measure Will Create New Jobs, Competition and Choice in Br

Washington, D.C. – The Communications Workers of America urged support for a bill introduced today by Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) that will jump start the economy by creating jobs and promoting strong competition between companies that provide broadband services to consumers.

The bill, the "Broadband Regulatory Parity Act of 2002," is urgently needed if we are going to achieve true competition, access and job opportunities in Internet and data network systems, said Morton Bahr, president of the Communications Workers of America.

The Breaux bill seeks to bring about parity in the deployment of broadband and will ensure that cable and telephone companies are competing under the same regulations with the same opportunities to earn a return on their network investment.

"Competition to build multiple broadband networks using different technologies will spur job growth and will foster the development of new and lower-priced Internet services for consumers. It also will mean increased access to broadband services especially for Americans living in rural areas who now have little or no access to this important technology," Bahr said.

The accelerated deployment of broadband will provide a much-needed boost to the economy, particularly the still-struggling telecommunications sector, and will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, he added.

Breaux's bill requires the Federal Communications Commission to recommend new rules to eliminate the regulatory disparity between cable companies and other telecom providers of high speed Internet services. This would eliminate the "unlevel playing field" that has given cable monopolies an unfair advantage in broadband and stymied other investment in the sector, Breaux has said.

The introduction of Breaux's bill follows House passage of the Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act, H.R. 1542, which Bahr called an important step toward universal, affordable broadband networks.
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CWA represents more than 700,000 workers in communications and information services, media, broadcast and publishing, higher education, health care and public service, the airline industry and manufacturing.

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