Small rural telcos must answer questions about practices that large carriers call traffic pumping to increase access revenue, Democratic leaders of the House Commerce Committee told the companies in 24 letters sent late Tuesday. The inquiries follow up on October letters (CD Oct 15 p13) to AT&T, Verizon, Qwest and Sprint Nextel. An attorney for addressees of the new letter said he expects the rural carriers to be eager to cooperate.
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., plans to fight the proposed elimination of the FCC’s Telecommunications Development Fund, a spokesman said Thursday. In the fiscal 2011 budget, President Barack Obama proposed ending the fund (CD Feb 2 p1). Towns, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was an important supporter of the fund’s creation in 1996. “The chairman is concerned about the budget cut but plans to work with his colleagues on the budget committee to prevent a full cut of this program,” the spokesman said. The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council has opposed dropping the program. The Congressional Black Caucus, which has supported the fund, declined to comment.
Universal Service Fund legislation by Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Lee Terry, D-Neb., could win more urban support by integrating aspects of two other USF bills introduced by Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Doris Matsui, D-Calif., said industry officials. But some warned that a combination could simultaneously cost the support of current backers of the Boucher-Terry legislation. The urban legislators’ bills, proposing new E-Rate and Lifeline programs to spur broadband adoption, may be at odds with the cost-saving focus of the Boucher bill, they said.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., introduced a bill Tuesday that would update the Universal Service Fund E-Rate program to increase broadband adoption. After the FCC releases its National Broadband Plan next month, it’s expected the House will take a close look at the Markey legislation, a bill on broadband affordability (HR-3646) by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and a long-gestating USF revamp bill by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., as possible ways to overhaul USF, said a House source. Markey’s E-Rate 2.0 Act (HR-4619), co-sponsored by Matsui and Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., would direct the FCC to start three E-rate pilot programs. One would distribute vouchers to low-income students to buy residential broadband services, Markey said in the House Tuesday as he introduced the bill. The second would open a competitive grant program to provide funding for broadband equipment and services to “selected community colleges and head start facilities that best demonstrate need and incorporation of broadband use in their educational mission,” Markey said. The third would allow certain E-rate applicants serving “particularly low-income students to apply for significantly discounted services and technologies for the use of e-books,” he said. The bill would also increase the current $2.25 billion cap on E-Rate to adjust for inflation, and streamline the application process. NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow praised the bill as “proposing pragmatic steps that will enable students participating in the federal school lunch program to utilize broadband to improve their educational experience.”
A federal appeals court rejected a government effort to withhold on privacy grounds the names of telcos and their lobbyists that argued for retroactive immunity in lawsuits over the National Security Agency’s illegal surveillance program. But in a decision Tuesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco disagreed with a district judge who had ruled that the government must also disclose the lobbyists’ e-mail addresses, and told the judge to review whether the government can withhold the names under a different exemption in the Freedom of Information Act from the one under consideration in this ruling. The 9th Circuit also told the district court to do a more detailed review of the documents to exclude from disclosure letters exchanged only within the executive branch.
The first round of hearings on Comcast’s deal to buy control of NBC Universal went better than expected for the companies and may bode well for the ultimate reception for the purchase on the Hill, said a participant and some observers. Back-to-back House Communications Subcommittee and Senate Antitrust Subcommittee hearings Thursday (CD Feb 5 p1)included vigorous questioning but didn’t raise worries for the deal, said some. The sessions may set the tone for further hearings, said a lobbyist and a communications lawyer.
Policymakers must address “end-user equity issues” on the Internet while keeping the platform “open and accessible to everyone,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., at a Third Way lunch Tuesday. She backed ISP price models that would force heavy users to pay more. Later, Rep. Doris Matsui, D- Calif., said government must provide money to spur broadband adoption among low-income Americans.
The NTIA and the FCC would work together on a plan to make more spectrum available, under President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal 2011. A big surprise in the budget, released Monday, was its call for the elimination of the Telecommunications Development Fund (TDF), a program that has traditionally had the strong support of important Democratic constituencies including the Congressional Black Caucus. The proposed budget also would cut two programs that helped support public broadcasters’ transition to digital.
Senators from both parties said NTIA is too slowly dispersing broadband stimulus funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, during an Appropriations Commerce Subcommittee hearing Thursday. Chair Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said she’s concerned NTIA has only awarded $300 million in grants, even though it was given $4.7 billion to dole out by Sept. 30, 2010. Ranking Member Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said the administration seems to be “negligently … and wastefully sitting on a grand total of $6.5 billion in taxpayer’s money.”
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., believes concerns about the Comcast-NBC Universal merger can be overcome, he told us after a Democratic policy lunch Tuesday in the Senate. “There are some questions to be asked,” said the Senate Communications Subcommittee chairman. “Probably they can be resolved, so I'm not exercised about it at this point in time. … It’s just a question about access to information and how the picture’s going to look like afterwards.” He joked that “NBC has enough challenges that I don’t think that [presents] the problem.” A Senate Commerce hearing hasn’t been announced, but some say it may happen a month after the House Commerce and Senate Judiciary hearings on the merger (CD Jan 26 p1).