The FCC has made significant progress in reducing a backlog of cable company requests for local rate deregulation, according to agency records and interviews with lawyers who file petitions for operators or oppose them on behalf of municipalities. There were 56 requests for Media Bureau findings of effective video competition pending as of June 30, agency figures show. That’s the lowest figure in any Communications Daily review of such requests in the last six years (CD June 3/10 p4, Feb 2/07 p3, Sept 29/05 p1), although exact data for earlier periods is unavailable. Recent recipients of effective competition findings include the four largest U.S. cable operators.

LOS ANGELES -- The FCC needs to recommit to the principles of Universal Service and revamp the system in a manner that won’t weaken the system that has helped connect rural America for decades, former Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said during NARUC’s summer meeting Tuesday. Meanwhile, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson emphasized wireless is essential for universal broadband. The AT&T/T-Mobile merger, which is getting a closer look from the California Attorney General, is a private party solution to achieve universal broadband, Stephenson said.

Spectrum auctions could be a major part of Commerce committees’ savings plans to meet goals set by a deficit reduction plan released Tuesday by the bipartisan “Gang of Six” senators. The proposal, endorsed Tuesday by President Barack Obama, would direct the committees to find $11 billion for deficit reduction within six months, according to an executive summary of the plan. The proposal set up a two-step legislative process, in which there would be immediate cuts totaling $500 billion, followed by a process in which Commerce and other congressional committees would find further savings.

Upcoming results from a broadband speed study should be viewed skeptically because the FCC has been captured by ISPs, said New America Foundation Director Sascha Meinrath. “Even though we have been a core partner on this project and were a part of the official meetings for months and months, recently, we have not been invited to any of the meetings (nor have we seen ex partes from those meetings),” he said in an email exchange. Earlier meetings where ISPs discussed SamKnows work with agency officials were reported in such filings, and Meinrath was talking about the results of the SamKnows study involving 13 Internet companies. Release of the speed study has been pushed back to August (CD July 19 p14).

The controversy over the GOP’s efforts to use the Universal Service Fund to pay down the nation’s deficit ought to remind the telecom industry that the money is “finite,” AT&T Vice President Hulk Hultquist said Tuesday. Last week, the industry went into uproar when it emerged that House Republicans were considering using $1 billion from the fund to help close the budget gap (CD July 14 p1). Telcos small and large, which had disagreed over how to fix universal service, united in their condemnation. “There are definitely legal issues with that … that aren’t well understood,” Hultquist said at a Broadband Breakfast in Washington: “You know, there are limited means to do what we want to accomplish.”

Meredith Baker and her aides consulted with FCC lawyers at least 10 times in the three-and-a-half weeks between when the then-commissioner began considering working for Comcast and when the cable operator hired her, agency records show. Emails between Baker and FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick and ethics official Patrick Carney in the Office of General Counsel (OGC) and Baker’s calendar entries were released to Warren Communications News, publisher of Communications Daily. The records confirm the accounts given publicly by FCC and Comcast officials that Baker consulted with the OGC before the date she says she began considering a job at the cable operator, and that she recused herself from any issues at the commission affecting the company. Of the 17 documents Warren received under a Freedom of Information Act request, six were completely blacked out and two were partly redacted.

The FCC does have a role to play in speeding up broadband deployment beyond its zoning “shot clock,” Verizon and Verizon Wireless said in a filing at the commission in response to an April notice of inquiry asking for comments on improving government policies for access to rights of way and wireless facilities siting. Numerous local governments told the FCC to back off (CD July 19 p 7). But several companies and trade associations also filed, suggesting that the FCC has more to do to help industry deal with too slow zoning and siting decisions.

LOS ANGELES - Regulators need to fix video content price discrimination, tiering and tying practices, panelists said at the National Association of Rural Utility Commissioners summer meeting. Small Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPD) are the victims

LOS ANGELES -- There’s no time to lose in addressing issues with call completion because public safety, homeland security and economic well-being in rural America are threatened, said panelists at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners meeting. Meanwhile, no commitments were made during Chairman Julius Genachowski’s meeting with the USF Federal/State Joint Board and the NARUC Telecom Committee.

Republican candidates received more than Democrats in political action committee contributions from the communications industry in the early part of the 2011-2012 election cycle. The Communications and Electronics sector has made $3.2 million in federal contributions, and 57 percent of the contributions have gone to the GOP, said the Center for Responsive Politics, citing July 5 data from the Federal Election Commission. That’s a reversal from the 2009-2010 cycle, when the sector spent 53 percent of nearly $25 million raised on Democrats. A spokesman for the center cautioned that only some PACs have filed data for April and May.