House subcommittees dealing with privacy issues plan to review a draft comprehensive bill by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., at their next hearing on the subject, said Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush, D-Ill. At a hearing on location-based services Wednesday, Rush promised “our next hearing on privacy will be a legislative hearing.” Rules on location-based services will be part of the larger privacy bill, Boucher said. Republicans said they need to see the draft bill, and warned that any legislation must balance consumer privacy with industry innovation and public safety needs.
Sprint Nextel plans to eventually hold phone manufacturers to new green design standards, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told the Senate Communications Subcommittee at a hearing Tuesday. The carrier also is expanding its cellphone recycling program to credit customers for turning in other carriers’ phones, he said. Senators applauded Sprint’s green efforts, but Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., needled Hesse on early termination fees. Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., said he’s frustrated that more companies haven’t gone green.
With less than a week to go until satellite TV licenses expire, Senate leaders haven’t decided how they would put off a satellite TV shutoff for millions of Americans. A reauthorization or extension of the satellite licenses must pass by Feb. 28 or satellite-TV companies will lose their ability to import distant-content signals legally. A jobs bill that received a cloture vote after our deadline didn’t include satellite TV provisions. A solution may be a separate package to deal with satellite TV and other legislation expiring at month’s end, Senate staffers said.
Storms that closed down the federal government this month delayed the Rural Utilities Service a week in telling round-one broadband-stimulus applicants about awards, said Ken Kuchno, the director of the agency’s broadband program. But the weather didn’t slow the agency’s review work, he said at an Federal Communications Bar Association lunch Friday. “Everybody should know within hopefully a week, no later than beginning of the week after next exactly where everything stands,” he said. The NTIA also plans to finish sending notifications soon, said John Morabito, a senior policy adviser for the agency’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.
The House Communications and Consumer Protection subcommittees plan a joint hearing Wednesday morning on collection and use of location information for commercial purposes, Hill and industry officials said. The hearing is to start at 10 a.m. in room 2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building. Last month, Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he planned to circulate a discussion draft “soon” on planned privacy legislation (CD Jan 28 p3) OR (WID Jan 28 p1).
Small rural telcos must answer questions about practices that large carriers call traffic pumping to increase access revenue, Democratic leaders of the House Commerce Committee told the companies in 24 letters sent late Tuesday. The inquiries follow up on October letters (CD Oct 15 p13) to AT&T, Verizon, Qwest and Sprint Nextel. An attorney for addressees of the new letter said he expects the rural carriers to be eager to cooperate.
The Senate Commerce Committee plans hearings Tuesday on cybersecurity and on using communications technology to increase energy efficiency, the committee said Wednesday. The energy hearing starts at 10 a.m., the cybersecurity session at 2:30 p.m. No witnesses were announced. Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse was invited to testify at the energy hearing, and plans to discuss what the company is doing to operate the company in a more sustainable manner, said an industry official.
Universal Service Fund legislation by Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Lee Terry, D-Neb., could win more urban support by integrating aspects of two other USF bills introduced by Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Doris Matsui, D-Calif., said industry officials. But some warned that a combination could simultaneously cost the support of current backers of the Boucher-Terry legislation. The urban legislators’ bills, proposing new E-Rate and Lifeline programs to spur broadband adoption, may be at odds with the cost-saving focus of the Boucher bill, they said.
Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., plans to fight the proposed elimination of the FCC’s Telecommunications Development Fund, a spokesman said Thursday. In the fiscal 2011 budget, President Barack Obama proposed ending the fund (CD Feb 2 p1). Towns, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was an important supporter of the fund’s creation in 1996. “The chairman is concerned about the budget cut but plans to work with his colleagues on the budget committee to prevent a full cut of this program,” the spokesman said. The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council has opposed dropping the program. The Congressional Black Caucus, which has supported the fund, declined to comment.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., introduced a bill Tuesday that would update the Universal Service Fund E-Rate program to increase broadband adoption. After the FCC releases its National Broadband Plan next month, it’s expected the House will take a close look at the Markey legislation, a bill on broadband affordability (HR-3646) by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and a long-gestating USF revamp bill by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., as possible ways to overhaul USF, said a House source. Markey’s E-Rate 2.0 Act (HR-4619), co-sponsored by Matsui and Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., would direct the FCC to start three E-rate pilot programs. One would distribute vouchers to low-income students to buy residential broadband services, Markey said in the House Tuesday as he introduced the bill. The second would open a competitive grant program to provide funding for broadband equipment and services to “selected community colleges and head start facilities that best demonstrate need and incorporation of broadband use in their educational mission,” Markey said. The third would allow certain E-rate applicants serving “particularly low-income students to apply for significantly discounted services and technologies for the use of e-books,” he said. The bill would also increase the current $2.25 billion cap on E-Rate to adjust for inflation, and streamline the application process. NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow praised the bill as “proposing pragmatic steps that will enable students participating in the federal school lunch program to utilize broadband to improve their educational experience.”