Congress Takes Up Cable TV Regulation : * Legislation: Rules adopted by the FCC don’t go far enough, some lawmakers say. A handful of tougher bills have been introduced.

Lawmakers, unhappy at what they claimed were weak and ineffective rules drawn up earlier this week by the Federal Communications Commission to control the spiraling cost of cable TV rates, said Friday that they will now speed up efforts in Congress to adopt tougher legislation aimed at re-regulating the cable industry.

One cable re-regulation bill has already been reported out of the Senate Commerce Committee, and a handful of others have been introduced into the House.

But several congressmen, who had been taking a wait-and-see approach until the FCC adopted new cable regulations, said the federal agency’s decision on Thursday did not go far enough.

“This underscores the need for congressional action,” said Larry Irving, a senior aide to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Telecommunications subcommittee. “Most members are not looking just to re-regulate cable. They want to promote competition as well as protect consumers from the abusive behavior of some cable operators.”

The FCC this week adopted regulations that would give local cities and towns greater authority in controlling cable-TV rates. But the decision was sharply criticized by consumer groups and local governments because it would leave many systems uneffected.

At the heart of the FCC’s decision was a change in the standard of when a cable TV system faces “effective competition” and therefore is not subject to regulation.

Under the old standard, which applied to 97% of the cable TV systems in the country, local systems were free from price controls if there were at least three over-the-air broadcast TV stations in their market area.

But the new standard, which the cable industry says affects 60% of all systems in the country, would raise the threshold to six over-the-air TV signals or the availability of an alternative multichannel system, such as wireless cable or microwave service.

Still, critics charge that the new FCC standards do not go far enough in controlling the cost of rising cable TV rates.

One of the main reasons the FCC’s new rules are said to be ineffective is that many cable systems across the country have rejiggered their channel lineup over the past year so that the more popular program services are exempt from price controls.

Next Tuesday, the House Telecommunications subcommittee will begin the first of three hearings on a bill introduced by Markey and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich), the powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

That bill, H 1303, is similar to a cable re-regulation bill that was passed overwhelmingly last year by the House before expiring in the Senate. But this year the Senate has already reported out of committee its own cable re-regulation bill, S 12, which proponents hope will be voted upon this summer.

The major element in both bills would permit the FCC to set national standards in regulating most levels of cable TV service. The FCC is now limited to regulating the lowest level of service that carry only the off-air TV signals. The “expanded basic” tiers that include many popular cable networks, such as ESPN or Discovery Channel, and pay channels, such as HBO, are exempted.