A Telecom Act rewrite poses the risk of causing more headaches th...

congressman from Wash. said in response to a question: “They're just as likely to create [new] problems as solve old ones. On the other hand, we have to give them a chance” because “we've got a big, complicated telecom regulatory scheme that needs to be fixed.” The problems are that telecom is so heavily regulated and the issues are so complex Congress leans heavily on a few experts, so “it’s very hard not to get a distorted bill,” White said: “That’s what we discovered in 1996.” TechNet’s priorities for the 109th Congress involve broad business and economic concerns as opposed to specific tech policy issues. The top ways Congress could help high tech are by bolstering education, fixing the economy and especially improving research funding, White said. The efficacy of govt. research subsidies shows up in everything from the Internet to HDTV, he said, and legal reform is the most important way Washington could remove obstacles to the industry. White said he was optimistic of the “will at the national level” to accomplish this “when the political forces are converging to make it possible,” notably the addition of 5 Republican votes in the Senate. He said the govt. could also help by removing impediments to broadband growth such as taxes and zoning restrictions. Among the few ways govt. can affirmatively aid technology are “keeping the economy on an even keel,” reducing trade barriers overseas, stepping up as a customer for promising technologies and stepping up as a last resort to set needed standards that aren’t emerging privately. But govt. is “not too good at predicting what the technology of the future is going to be,” White said. He cited previous intense concern, ultimately unwarranted, that Japanese supremacy in analog HDTV would mean a major blow to U.S. industry.