Eliminating telephone excise and Universal Service Fund taxes are options that the Congressional Budget Office suggests lawmakers consider as they works on future federal budgets, a new report said. The options are two of 188 in a report sent to the House and Senate Budget Committees last week to help Congress set priorities in its annual budgets, said CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf. The ideas in the report aren’t recommendations and they aren’t given in order of priority, he said in the report’s preface.

The FCC aims to open soon a proceeding that will “closely examine” wireless handset exclusives, acting Chairman Michael Copps said Thursday. In a keynote speech at the Pike & Fischer Broadband Summit, he also called for an overhaul of the Universal Service Fund and reflected on the agency’s development of a national broadband plan.

Companies and interest groups are rethinking their FCC lobbying strategies as the likelihood seems to grow that Michael Copps will remain the acting chairman well into the summer. Industry sources said Wednesday they're still looking for issues that could be addressed before Julius Genachowski’s nomination to become the chairman clears the Senate.

The FCC will likely get lengthy input on a vast array of controversial telecom issues, as it attempts to develop a national broadband plan, said industry officials we polled for reaction Thursday. In a 52-page notice of inquiry released Wednesday (CD April 9 p1), the FCC asks questions on universal service reform, open networks and nondiscrimination, the role of competition, how to define broadband, and several other big issues. The FCC is required under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to deliver its national broadband plan to Congress by Feb. 17.

Congress should make cybersecurity, not net neutrality, its main communications priority in the year ahead, James Cicconi, AT&T senior executive vice president, told reporters. He said he expects quick action from the FCC and Congress on a Universal Service Fund overhaul because of growing recognition that the current system is broken. And he endorsed Verizon’s position that the 700 MHz D-block should be given to public-safety agencies for immediate use rather than go through a second auction.

There appeared to be little new in the more than 100 comments that flooded into the FCC this week about how to develop a comprehensive broadband strategy for rural parts of the U.S. The recommendations of the commission are expected to be given weight at NTIA and RUS as the agencies develop their respective broadband stimulus programs.

Consensus is building on universal service legislation that would expand the fund to cover broadband, House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., told the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association Tuesday. Boucher asked the group, which held its annual legislative conference this week, to urge members of Congress to support legislation he hopes to introduce “in the near term.” He declined to say when the legislation would be ready.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The federal stimulus grants to spread broadband may not be distributed as quickly or effectively as hoped, speakers, including a California PUC official, said Monday at a Practising Law Institute seminar. “I think it’s going to be a challenge” making the NTIA and Rural Utilities Service grant programs timely successes, said Michael Morris, head of the PUC’s video franchising and broadband group. Daniel Brenner, who just became a partner at the Hogan & Hartson law firm after having been the NCTA’s senior vice president for law & regulatory policy, said he’s “just worried about the broadband” grants programs.

The FCC, states and cellular carriers should come to terms on early termination fees and remove that “distraction” for good, Nebraska Public Utility Commissioner Ann Boyle said on a panel Tuesday at NARUC’s winter meeting in Washington. The group seeks to draft consumer-protection standards for cellphone users.

Michael Copps wants to “cultivate predictability” by making “fact-based” decisions with information gathered “neutrally” by career FCC staffers, he said at his first news conference as acting chairman. He said the commissioners will be included by meeting more often with bureau staffers and by getting options memos, drafts of orders and other documents about the time he does. The changes have started with more-frequent meetings and with commissioners getting items ahead of time (CD Feb 11 p3), FCC officials said. But Copps said change will take time and he hasn’t finished culling lists of long-pending items that bureaus gave him at his request so he can decide what to dispose of.