House Panel Votes to Reimpose Cable Controls : Television: A controversial amendment to allow telephone companies into the industry fails, however.

In a major step toward re-regulating cable television, a House committee Thursday unanimously approved legislation to control the industry, after removing a controversial amendment that would have allowed phone companies into the business.

Similar legislation is already before the full Senate, and both chambers may vote as early as next week, with approval expected. The Bush Administration has expressed staunch opposition to regulating cable, but it is unclear whether it will risk during an election year a veto of a bill designed to answer consumer complaints about high cable prices and poor service.

The effort to reimpose some regulatory control over the cable industry, which Congress freed of all regulation in 1984, has taken on rare political velocity. Congressmen have found that few issues seem to compel citizen response, particularly in certain rural areas, as quickly as the variety of choices and service on the American family’s TV set.

The bill, which was reported out of the Energy and Commerce Committee, also seemed to get a boost Thursday from the Federal Communications Commission, which issued a long-awaited report on the effects of six years of deregulation in the cable industry. While the FCC cautioned that it thought competition, not re-regulation, was the answer to problems in cable in the long run, it deferred to Congress on short-term regulatory measures of the sort contained in the legislation.

“Some cable operators have betrayed the trust placed in them by the Congress,” said Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), one of the bill’s principal sponsors. This measure would “rein in these sorts of renegades,” he said.

The legislation’s approval in committee became assured, and its ultimate passage greatly enhanced, when proponents of the most controversial element in the cable question admitted Thursday that they lacked the votes they needed to amend the legislation.

Rep. Frederick Boucher (D-Va.) had proposed an amendment to allow telephone companies into the cable television business, a way of encouraging competition. Proponents argued that allowing them in would speed the development of fiber-optic telecommunications networks that could carry voice, data and video in one wire.

Critics have argued that the phone companies are so big and would enjoy such competitive advantages that they would quickly monopolize the industry.

Support for the phone company amendment is so weak that Boucher also promised not to introduce it when the legislation comes before the House. However, he vowed to introduce the bill again next year, contending that it is the best hope for competition in the cable industry.

A similar phone company bill is expected to go before the Senate Commerce Committee next week, but its failure in the House weakens its chances.

National Cable Television Assn. lobbyist James Mooney complained that “the bill goes too far,” although he is not actively opposing it.

Edward O. Fritts, president of the National Assn. of Broadcasters, said he was “very pleased” that the telephone entry was defeated. He called the bill “real relief from abusive cable practices.”

Overall, the House bill is “modest” regulation, said W. J. (Billy) Tauzin (D-La.).

But “it is the best we can do . . . substantively and politically” this year, said Matthew J. Rinaldo (D-N.J.). It is “a pragmatic approach that will solve the problems that consumers have thrown in our lap.”

Specifically, the House bill orders:

* The FCC to set rates for a “basic tier” of service for over-the-air stations, plus public TV and government channels.

* State or local authorities to appeal to the FCC if they think rates in their areas “unreasonable or abusive” for premium programming. This provision also would apply to existing rates, meaning that current cable prices could be rolled back.

* Cable programmers to provide their signals to back-yard satellite-dish owners at fair rates and to require cable systems to carry public and commercial stations, mainly on their existing channel assignments.

The bill, however, continues to allow cable operators to sign “exclusive contracts” with programmers, forbidding them from selling their programming to potential rivals, as long as it does not “significantly impede competition.”

The Senate version has weaker language on what kinds of rates could be rolled back, but does not protect the so-called exclusivity clauses that cable programmers want.