The Senate must act on the FCC Process Reform Act, said Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev. It passed the House by voice vote Tuesday. Heller introduced companion legislation to that bipartisan compromise bill earlier this year. “The Administration and the House of Representatives have weighed in on the issue of process reform,” he said, pointing to “growing momentum” for the legislation. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai also backs this bill and the FCC Consolidated Reporting Act, which the House unanimously passed last fall. “Together, these bills recognize the need to modernize the FCC to reflect our dynamic, converged communications marketplace,” Pai said. “And they would eliminate outdated mandates on the agency, streamline its operations, and make it more accountable to the public.” The FCC Process Reform Act “furthers the important objective of encouraging greater transparency and predictability in FCC decision making, and ensures that business can continue to invest and innovate with more consistent federal oversight,” NCTA said in a statement. “While agency process has improved under recent chairmen, this legislation will ensure that reforms remain in place from one administration to the next,” House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said in a statement after the bill’s passage. Consumers “deserve a transparent and responsive” FCC, Walden said on the House floor Tuesday night. He mentioned “dangerous outcomes” that can occur otherwise, bringing up the FCC’s canceled Critical Information Needs study -- a high point of controversy drawing heavy Republican criticism in recent months. The bill is widely expected to stall in the Senate.

The House Communications Subcommittee has not typically weighed in on such big deals as the proposed combination of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the panel’s Republican leader said Wednesday. “I'm going to let the experts in the agencies do their evaluation going forward,” Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., told reporters after a subcommittee hearing. “We have not generally done hearings on specific deals because we have experts in the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice and the FCC who are fully capable and competent at working through these.” But the issues of mergers and the video marketplace “may well be a topic” in the subcommittee’s Communications Act overhaul, he said. He declined to rule out a subcommittee hearing. The subcommittee had held one on the deal between Comcast and NBCUniversal.

The potential next head of the National Security Agency is open to shifting a key U.S. phone surveillance program, as the administration and some members of Congress have indicated they want to do. “I believe, sir, with the right construct we could make that work,” Vice Admiral Michael Rogers, nominated to be the next NSA director and head of U.S. Cyber Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday at a hearing, speaking of how the government could shift possession of phone metadata collected in bulk to a third party or to service providers. He declined to weigh in on the Patriot Act Section 215 phone surveillance program’s value or effectiveness. He stressed that the program should retain “speed” and the ability to access the intelligence information “in a timely manner.” The administration should give Rogers “more support in explaining these [surveillance] programs” than before, said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., top Republican on the Intelligence Committee. Chambliss added he has some “confidence” the administration will. Chambliss also said during the hearing he is “very close” to reaching a deal with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to introduce the committee’s cybersecurity bill. Cybersecurity observers have long anticipated the committee’s bill, which they believe would most closely mirror the House-passed Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (HR-624). The “last remaining obstacle” Chambliss and Feinstein are working on deals with one of the Senate bill’s key provisions, which deals with liability protections, Chambliss said during the hearing. A Senate Intelligence bill on cybersecurity would be a “step in the right direction,” Rogers said. But, the “right answer” on cybersecurity probably will need to include improved information sharing between the federal government and critical infrastructure companies, he said.

The Telecommunications Industry Association underscored the necessity of passing the FCC Process Reform Act (HR-3675) into law, and praised the House for its scheduled floor vote Tuesday.

A White House report to Congress emphasized the importance of broadband stimulus investment. “The Economic Report of the President,” as it’s titled, said one trend “that presents a major opportunity for long-term growth is the rapid advance in telecommunications technology, particularly in fast and widely available wired and wireless broadband networks, and in their capacity to allow mobile devices to take advantage of cloud computing,” it said (http://1.usa.gov/OdLAdJ). “From 2009 to 2012, annual investment in U.S. wireless networks grew more than 40 percent from $21 billion to $30 billion, and the United States now leads the world in the availability of advanced 4G wireless broadband Internet services. This infrastructure is at the center of a vibrant ecosystem that includes smartphone design, mobile app development, and the deployment of these technologies in sectors like business, health care, education, public safety, entertainment, and more.” It pointed to broadband stimulus grants that yielded more than 110,000 miles of infrastructure added or improved as well as high-speed connections made available to 20,000 community anchor institutions. The report emphasized the role of spectrum and called for “new advances in the sharing of spectrum between different users, particularly between government and private users.” It also emphasized the importance of the White House’s ConnectED initiative and attention to patents.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., plans to introduce legislation requiring the reallocation of 200 MHz of federally held spectrum for commercial use by wireless carriers, he said at a Washington event hosted by the Jack Kemp Foundation. “The more spectrum and bandwidth we can open up to the private sector, the more jobs we can create,” Rubio said, citing what he sees as a spectrum “highway” getting crowded. “If we do not address it, innovations will go unrealized, consumers will face more dropped calls, overcapacity networks and higher prices.” He will introduce a bill “soon” that he hopes “will be bipartisan, to increase wireless access and affordability,” he said, speaking Monday afternoon at Google’s Washington headquarters. Such legislation could add up to $35 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product and add 140,000 jobs to the country’s economy, a Rubio fact sheet said (http://1.usa.gov/1lshTAU). The legislation would also promote wireless deployment and innovation, the fact sheet said. Rubio emphasized the importance of a free and open Internet and mentioned plans to introduce legislation enshrining the multistakeholder model of governance. When asked about the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal, Rubio declined comment. “That’s still working itself through the Justice Department process, is that correct?” Rubio said. “I don’t know enough of the details about all the monopoly issues they would be concerned about to opine on it directly.” Rubio emphasized the different ways consumers can receive services from a variety of providers, however, and wondered how that may influence the Justice Department’s decision.

House Democrats praised a report on the effect of broadband stimulus money on small firms, released by GAO Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1i5JHLi). It “confirms the success of the Recovery Act’s broadband programs,” said House Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., in a statement. The broadband investments “have not just delivered quicker, cheaper, more reliable service, they have opened new economic opportunity for businesses and people,” said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. The report “confirms that when it comes to closing our digital divide, federal investment in broadband deployment has been pivotal to the success of America’s small businesses,” said House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. “Affordable broadband access allows small businesses to operate more efficiently, retain a talented workforce, and improve services to their customers.” GAO found many benefits from the federal stimulus funding for broadband, though noted higher speeds in urban areas they surveyed compared with rural. “In 9 of the 14 communities where GAO collected information on broadband speeds and prices, federally funded or municipal networks offered higher top speeds than other networks in the same community and networks in nearby communities,” GAO said. “Prices charged by federally funded and municipal networks were slightly lower than the comparison networks’ prices for similar speeds. Prices for lower to mid-range speed tiers available from federally funded and municipal networks in nonurban areas also compared favorably to prices in urban areas in the same state."

A hearing on Section 512 of Title 17 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee has been rescheduled for Thursday at 2141 Rayburn at 9:30 a.m., according to the committee’s website (http://1.usa.gov/1niubgx).

Two senators strongly urged the U.S. Transportation Department to ban in-flight cellphone conversation on commercial flights, in a letter Thursday to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “Adding the burden of listening to a cacophony of personal conversations while confined to a 17-inch seat strikes us as unnecessary,” said Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., lamenting the “hostile atmosphere” they believe would result (http://1.usa.gov/P9HNiS). “A clear prohibition of phone calls by the [Federal Aviation Administration] will reduce the likelihood that crew will be forced to place themselves in harm’s way to disrupt physical or verbal altercations between passengers.” They introduced legislation together late last year to forbid such in-flight cellphone conversation. “I'm glad the Department of Transportation is thinking about putting the brakes on a bad idea before it takes flight,” Alexander said in a statement. “With two million passengers hurtling through the air each day, the Transportation Security Administration would have to hire three times as many air marshals to deal with fistfights."

The Senate Commerce Committee said Friday it is again postponing an executive session, set for Wednesday, in which it was expected to mark up the Transparency in Assertion of Patents Act (S-2049) and seven other bills. The committee had previously scheduled the markup for March 5 (CD March 3 p19).