NTIA is responding to a scathing GAO report from May, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said in written testimony for a hearing Wednesday afternoon. Strickling, the lone witness scheduled to testify at the House Communications Subcommittee hearing on federal spectrum, also urged Congress to complete spectrum legislation. More than one-fifth of a Democratic Commerce Committee memo dated Tuesday addresses the May GAO report (CD May 13 p3). The report claimed NTIA lacks focus, accountability and “an overall strategic vision.” The hearing is to start at 2 p.m. in Room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building.

The Arizona Corporation Commission signed off on AT&T’s buy of T-Mobile, without a hearing. The deal is pending before state regulators in California, Hawaii, Louisiana and West Virginia. Meanwhile, both AT&T and merger opponent Sprint Nextel were at the FCC last week, for a series of high-profile meetings on the $39 billion transaction.

Large and mid-size telcos have moved closer together on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime reforms, but several questions remain -- as does the gulf between small rural carriers and the rest of industry, the public record shows and FCC officials told us. Executives from USTelecom, Windstream, CenturyLink, AT&T and Frontier met with wireline advisers to three commissioners last week, USTelecom Vice President Jonathan Banks said in an ex parte notice filed late Friday. The executives were invited in by the staffers, two FCC officials said. The executives said they have agreed in principle to reforms that roll out in stages over several years, the officials said.

The White House’s first ever “Twitter Townhall” is part of the administration’s attempt to find new opportunities to connect with people across the country, said Macon Phillips, White House new media director. On Wednesday at 2 p.m. EDT, President Barack Obama will respond to questions from Twitter users during a webcast, a White House blog post said. People began posting questions for the president Tuesday using the Twitter hashtag #AskObama, Phillips said during a teleconference with reporters.

Broadcasters may succeed in scaling back FCC regulation of on-air cursing and nudity when the first major indecency case in 23 years is heard by the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds, said all scholars we interviewed. The high court decided last Monday to hear the U.S. government’s consolidated case against Disney’s ABC and News Corp.’s Fox networks (CD June 28 p1). Its 7-2 ruling the same day overturning California’s law against the sale of violent videogames to kids and a 6-3 decision earlier in June against a Vermont ban on selling patients’ prescription information to drugmakers point up a recent tilt on First Amendment cases, the law professors said. They expect such an outlook to be on display in the fall 2011 term when the justices consider the indecency case, with the networks seen likely to win.

The FCC’s pending cramming notice of proposed rulemaking is couched as a wireline order, but also has a major focus on wireless, said agency officials who have seen the item and industry officials who have been told some of the details. Some proponents of bill shock rules worry that the wireless parts of the cramming order could be the replacement for proposed bill shock rules. When Chairman Julius Genachowski said he'd circulate a cramming NPRM last month (CD June 21 p6), he also indicated that final bill shock rules were on their way.

Rural telco associations are urging their members to swarm the FCC and Capitol Hill as part of an all-out effort to help shape the pending Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime reforms. “All three associations are working to get as many member companies to Washington, D.C., as possible over the next two or three months to pull out all the stops in conveying to policy-makers both their general concerns about reform as well as details on the specific impacts of the FCC’s reform proposals,” NTCA, OPASTCO and the Western Telecom Alliance told members in an email blast late last month.

FCC decision makers met with all sides on program access complaints, as the officials ponder how to proceed after an appeals court sent some rules back to the agency for rethinking. The June 27 meeting came as the top two telcos seek action now on their 2009 complaints (CD June 22 p6), and as the cable defendants contend the agency must first pursue a rulemaking under the ruling on Cablevision v. FCC. A commission official watching the complaints against that company and its former programming unit said the agency doesn’t seem to have yet decided what to do. At the meeting, commission staffers indicated they could act on the complaints even under last month’s decision by the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit, Cablevision recounted in its filing on the gathering in docket 07-198 (http://xrl.us/bkypff).

The GAO said in a recent report it could not identify any companies that are providing sensitive technologies to Iran. The report, based on interviews with U.S. officials, intelligence agencies, trade publications and SEC filings, said the Iranian regime has focused on developing its own indigenous communications filtering technologies. GAO made no recommendations on addressing that problem.

The FCC overextended itself in its order changing spectrum rules for mobile satellite services when it weighed in on the responsibility for receivers that pick up signals outside of their allocated spectrum, said the U.S. GPS Industry Council and CTIA. The industry groups filed petitions for reconsideration or clarification on the order, based in part on the agency’s take on the role of incumbent users with receivers that pick up signals outside their spectrum. The order was part of the commission’s effort to increase terrestrial broadband use of spectrum allocated for MSS (CD April 7 p6).