Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens is still plugging away with his attempt to pass a massive telecommunications bill. You’ve got to admire him for that. He claims to be fairly close to the 60 votes he needs to bring the bill to the Senate floor to debate, and perhaps by speaking out as if the bill really has a chance this session, he is trying to keep some senators from drifting away while recruiting new legislators to the cause.

At the same time, however, a new poll paid for by Verizon is serving to undermine his cause because it shows what the public really wants in a telecom policy. Here’s a hint: Having the telephone and cable companies control the Internet isn’t in the lineup. Unfortunately, that’s what would happen if Stevens’ bill gets passed, because there are no guarantees that the companies controlling the telecom networks won’t start levying new fees and playing favorites. It’s that drive to keep the principle of non-discrimination alive that’s embodied in the poorly named issue Net Neutrality.

The poll was released in the Senate Commerce Committee hearing room, under an official Senate Commerce Committee press release that the Bell companies and their friends were able to make public their poll showing how “the majority of Americans favor video choice over onerous net neutrality regulations.”

The money question in the poll that has garnered so much attention was this one:

“Which of the following two items do you think is the most important to you:

Delivering the benefits of new TV and video choice so consumers will see increased competition and lower prices for cable TV

OR

Enhancing Internet neutrality by barring high speed internet providers from offering specialized services like faster speed and increased security for a fee”

Even for a stacked poll like this one the question is just silly. Of course, everyone wants the benefits of new TV and video. The only problem is that neither version of the telecom bill will, with any certainty, bring said benefits. There’s no build-out requirement. So some areas might get competition and some won’t. There’s not even a guarantee of lower prices. There might be now in those few areas in which Verizon has started competing, but over time? It’s more likely that the dust will settle into a nice pattern of mutually assured profitability.

The second part of the question is equally problematic. No one is barring high-speed Internet providers from offering specialized services. The whole point of Net Neutrality is to make sure that those who operate the networks don’t pick who gets to operate which service, to the detriment of others.

What’s truly ironic about this poll, however, is that it really contains the perfect argument for Net Neutrality, because it shows fairly convincingly that what consumers want is freedom to choose for themselves, and not have the telephone and cable companies rig the game.

This is the real first poll question -- “How important is it to you that (Insert State) residents have a choice of service providers when it comes to cable TV – in other words, that there is more than one company to choose from?” In the overall survey of 800 voters, 73 percent said the choice was “very important. Separate surveys from 400 voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri had similar results.

Supposed we rephrased it just a little, to read: “How important is it to you that (Insert State) residents have a choice of service providers when it comes to high-speed Internet service – in other words, that there are more than two companies to choose from?”

This is the real second question -- “How interested would you be in having more companies to choose from for your cable TV service?” The response was that 50 percent were “very interested” and 26 percent were “somewhat interested.” What if the second question read: “How interested would you be in having more companies to choose from for your high-speed Internet service?”

It is deeply ironic, considering 98 percent of consumers get their broadband services from either the telephone company or the cable company that a survey by Net Neutrality opponents would emphasize the type of choices that consumers don’t have. Once upon a time we had a flourishing, competitive Internet industry, with thousands and thousands of Internet Service Providers. Little by little regulatory decisions, made at the behest of those which are left, whittled the once-flourishing industry down to next to nothing. Most of the country has no choice in broadband. Some places don’t have broadband, and won’t for the foreseeable future. Someone is lucky if they have those big two from which to pick.

Instead of trying to jam the Stevens bill through this session of Congress, we should have a broad-based policy discussion of how we can bring real competition to our consumers, as consumers are starting to benefit overseas.

Taken as a whole, what the responses to the Verizon survey shows, and show emphatically, is the need for a broader discussion of our broadband policy that has lowered us to 12^th or 16^th in the world, or lower, depending on whose statistics you use, for broadband penetration. If we don’t start down a more enlightened path, the next telecom policy debate will happen when we drop out of the top 25.

Then the question Congress will have to answer is what’s more important – giving the telephone and cable companies the control they want, or giving the Internet users and service providers the freedom to develop and flourish by following other policy paths.

Having the telephone and cable companies’ controlling the Internet, as they do in the Stevens bill, doesn’t seem to be the way to go.