A Capitol Hill deal on net neutrality looks increasingly unlikely, Hill staffers said Wednesday. A Senate agreement probably won’t be made before Congress adjourns next month, a Senate staffer said. Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., of the Senate Communications Subcommittee said Tuesday (CD Sept 22 p1) he was working with ranking member John Ensign, D-Nev., on a “compromise concept.” Kerry and Ensign’s offices “are in constant communication but have not reached a consensus on the specifics of a compromise on network neutrality,” the staffer said. “With the clock running out on this session, it is unlikely that we will produce anything prior to adjournment. But the issue is not going away and the senators will continue listening to each other and working with each other as well as other colleagues on the committee to encourage outcomes that all participants in the market and consumers can understand, respect, and comply with.” Meanwhile, the House is still looking for consensus. The pieces aren’t in place to introduce a bill, a House staffer told us. A measure could still drop Thursday or even Friday, but it’s “now or never,” said the staffer.
Legislation for a public safety network probably won’t pass this year, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told us after a news conference Tuesday afternoon. McCain has a bill with Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., that would give the 700 MHz D-block to public safety agencies. After they introduced it, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., introduced his own bill to do the same. Since Rockefeller is chairman of the Commerce Committee, “I think that’s a good thing, and I look forward to working with him,” McCain said. He said he hasn’t seen Rockefeller’s bill, but he hopes to read it.
The House hopes to pass a communications accessibility bill before adjourning next month, said a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. The House and Senate are working to resolve differences between their bills, HR-3101 and S-3304, the Pelosi spokesman said. The House could pass a modified version of the Senate bill as early as this week, a telecom lobbyist said.
A Senate deal on net neutrality is being discussed by Senate Communications Subcommittee leaders, subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., told us Tuesday. But a Senate aide said the staffs of Kerry and Ranking Member John Ensign, R-Nev., failed to reach agreement in discussions over the August recess. The House Commerce Committee is still in talks over its own net neutrality bill, said Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
The House likely will vote Thursday on the Small Business Jobs Act, a House staffer said. The president may sign it into law as early as next week, the staffer said Monday. The Senate has approved the bill, which contains language removing wireless devices from IRS’s listed property rules (CD Sept 20 p8).
Auctioning the D-block is “right technically, it’s right as public policy, [and] it’s even right politics,” said T-Mobile Vice President Tom Sugrue at a press conference Monday. But most major public safety groups oppose an auction and want Congress to give them the D-block spectrum. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has a bill to give public safety the D-block and scheduled a hearing for Thursday morning. “This is a long process and there’s always ups and downs,” but the 4G Coalition plans to keep fighting and convince policymakers to auction the spectrum, Sugrue said. While the Senate is moving to D-block reallocation, a bipartisan group of House members seemed to agree with the auction approach at a hearing earlier this year, Sugrue said. “This week’s hearing may go a little differently, but we'll see.” House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who was working on a draft bill authorizing an auction, still seems interested but appears to be waiting to see “how the process plays out” before introducing the bill, Sugrue told us afterward. There may be some desire in Congress to do a comprehensive spectrum bill next year, and public safety could get wrapped into that, he added. A lack of funding has held back a national public safety network, said T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham. “It has nothing to do with spectrum.” Auctioning the D-block will bring “competition and choice” to public safety and consumers, she said. The FCC should move forward on its rulemaking to determine how the network will operate and what the licensing scheme will be, she said. On most days, public safety would have sufficient capacity for its network using its existing 10 MHz allocation of 700 MHz spectrum, and in emergencies they could share capacity on the LTE networks of major carriers, said Ken Zdunek, chief technology officer of Roberson and Associates, a consulting firm that prepared a recent technical white paper for T-Mobile. The LTE standard would make it easy for consumers and public safety to “peacefully coexist,” said the consulting firm’s president and former Motorola CTO Dennis Roberson. Leveraging commercial networks would offer great network resiliency because commercial towers are built closely together and because public safety could fall back on multiple networks, Zdunek said. T-Mobile, meanwhile, explained how it ran a scan of spectrum use by the government in eight cities whose results it filed with the commission (CD Aug 26 p6). The scan used spectrum analyzers on T-Mobile towers with clear lines of sight to known federal facilities, T-Mobile said in a call with Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julie Knapp, according to an ex parte filing. “A resolution bandwidth of 30 kHz was used for the scan of the spectrum between 1755-1800 MHz, with particular attention paid to the spectrum between 1755-1780 MHz,” the carrier said. “The equipment was calibrated for the noise floor before each scan and utilized both omni-directional and directional antennas pointed towards the federal facilities.”
The House must quickly introduce net neutrality legislation if it’s to have a shot of passing this year, industry observers said Monday. The House Commerce Committee is putting the finishing touches on a bill that would give the FCC authority for two years to enforce its four open-Internet principles but not the additional two principles on nondiscrimination and transparency proposed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Hill and industry officials said. “We are working hard on legislation to protect the open Internet and are actively working to develop a bipartisan consensus,” said a committee spokeswoman.
Citing “an agreement” on net neutrality, House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., urged a subcommittee hearing. “As far as I am concerned, given the realities of Washington, D.C., there is an agreement,” Stearns told us in a written statement Friday. “In fact, there should be a hearing on this agreement.” The deal could see edits “later on,” and “some disagreements may remain,” but Stearns believes “the main principles have been agreed upon.” The pact is based on negotiations that “have been going on for over a year,” he said. Stearns and Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., had been meeting with industry stakeholders involved in talks that were being held at the FCC. The commission shut down its own talks last month. Boucher didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The telephone and cable industries “endorse” Universal Service Fund legislation by Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., USTelecom and NCTA executives said in written testimony for a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Thursday morning. HR-5828 “balances many competing interests to modernize universal service and to bring robust broadband to areas of rural America where today’s business case would not support such deployment,” said USTelecom President Walter McCormick.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., urged Congress to quicken the pace on bipartisan spectrum and public safety network bills. Congress’ sense of urgency about building a public safety network must be raised if it’s to pass any legislation, he told an Information Technology & Innovation Foundation conference Tuesday. Meanwhile, Warner’s spectrum relocation bill is held up by questions about paying for the bill and the roles of agencies, he said.