Rural electric cooperatives excel at providing broadband access and need funding, Robert Hance, CEO of Midwest Energy Cooperative, testifying on behalf the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, told House lawmakers Tuesday. The FCC must be “inclusive” with its Connect America Fund money, Hance said during a House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Rural Development and Credit, telling Congress that rural electric cooperatives “need your support to compete for the billions of dollars available to provide broadband in high cost areas.” The FCC is still struggling when it comes to providing USF for rate-of-return companies, USTelecom Vice President-Policy David Cohen testified, praising the agency’s retreat from quantile regression analysis and urging “serious consideration” of the proposal put forth by the rural telecom industry. Rural Utilities Service (RUS) Administrator John Padalino touted the government’s efforts to finance rural telecom and the relevance of RUS in the 21st century. “While the focus of this hearing is on the deployment of broadband through Rural Utilit[ies] Service programs, these programs are not operated in a vacuum,” Subcommittee Chairman Rick Crawford, R-Ark., said in his opening statement. “It will be helpful to review those changes in the recent Farm Bill in light of the FCC’s changes to how rural telecommunication companies receive assistance. The efforts by the FCC to reform the USF have a direct impact on smaller rate-of-return carriers who both rely on USF support to provide service, and RUS loans to expand their coverage areas.” Officials representing CTIA and NTCA also testified (CD July 29 p12).

CTIA sees spectrum as its top priority, it plans to tell the House Tuesday: “Congress therefore must encourage the [FCC] to do everything necessary to ensure that these [spectrum] auctions are successful and on schedule,” Executive Vice President Chris Guttman-McCabe plans to say, according to his written testimony, at a House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Rural Development and Credit hearing on broadband investment. He will advocate for less regulation for the wireless industry and a “predictable, expedited process for seeking siting approvals,” as well as the removal of barriers to the deployment of fiber. The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in 1300 Longworth. Rural Utilities Service Administrator John Padalino is also scheduled to testify, as is USTelecom Vice President-Policy David Cohen; Robert Hance, CEO of the Midwest Energy Cooperative on behalf of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association; and Lang Zimmerman, vice president of Yelcot Communications on behalf of NTCA. Zimmerman plans to focus on the funding that rural companies need. “Unfortunately, the success, momentum, and economic development achieved from the RUS’s telecommunication programs were put at risk as a result of the regulatory uncertainty arising out of USF reforms,” he will say, according to written testimony. “It will be all the more important to continue providing RUS with the resources it needs to lend to the rural telecom industry as demand for financing will inevitably increase when reforms are improved and small carriers are given certainty, hopefully through a program like the Connect America Fund that is designed to promote broadband investment.” He will also talk about the urgency with which rural companies require access to such funding, warning against the possible implementation delays that could come from any major tweaks in reauthorizing the farm bill. “Thankfully, it appears that the final Farm Bill left RUS with discretion in administering the program that grants sufficient leeway to make it function more smoothly than the initial Senate Farm Bill would've allowed,” Zimmerman will say. Congress should give “an express directive” to the FCC to broaden “the [USF] contribution base to include the information services that USF already supports,” he will say.

Senior officials from the FCC and FTC are scheduled to testify on wireless cramming before Congress this week. The witnesses for Wednesday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing are, as the committee announced Monday, CTIA General Counsel Michael Altschul, FCC Enforcement Bureau Acting Chief Travis LeBlanc, FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny and Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell. The hearing will be at 2:30 p.m. in 253 Russell.

Congress should embrace the surveillance overhaul compromise bill that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is preparing to unveil this week, The New York Times editorial board said (http://nyti.ms/1zmVSed). The bill, not yet released but expected to be announced Tuesday, is a “breakthrough” and “a significant improvement over the halfhearted measure passed by the House in May,” the board said. The legislation is based on a measure Leahy introduced last fall, known as the USA Freedom Act. The House passed a version of the USA Freedom Act that many privacy advocates and lawmakers said was far too watered down. Leahy’s revised bill “would require the agency to ask for the records of a specific person or address it is tracking, instead of conducting a broad dragnet of an entire area code or city in the hopes of turning up something useful,” the board said. “The new bill would also make the process more transparent by requiring the government to disclose how many people’s data was collected by intelligence agencies, and how many of those people were American.” Leahy should add a provision on backdoor surveillance, “a proposal requiring the government to get the court’s permission before examining communications of Americans that were collected when tracking foreigners,” the board added.

The House Commerce Committee plans to mark up three telecom bills this week: The Anti-Spoofing Act of 2013 (HR-3670), the E-LABEL Act (HR-5161) and the Kelsey Smith Act (HR-1575). Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, had offered an amendment in the nature of a substitute to the Anti-Spoofing Act, updating the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009, “to focus the bill on specific text messaging and voice over Internet protocol services,” said the GOP memo for the markup (http://1.usa.gov/1lOjCQ5). The E-LABEL Act would remove a requirement that electronics manufacturers display a physical label of FCC approval. The Kelsey Smith Act “would require telecommunications carriers to share call location data with law enforcement when it is necessary to respond to an emergency call or in an emergency situation where a person’s life may be in danger,” the memo said. “The law also provides liability protection for companies that provide the data to law enforcement.” House Commerce lawmakers will begin the markup session Tuesday at 4 p.m. in 2123 Rayburn to give opening statements and then reconvene there at 10 a.m. Wednesday to complete the markup.

There’s a deficit of information about broadcaster sharing agreements, the Government Accountability Office said in a 41-page report released Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1nOn1nv). It argued that the FCC “should determine whether it needs to collect additional data to understand the prevalence and context of broadcast agreements and whether broadcaster agreements affect its media policy goals of competition, localism, and diversity,” which the FCC accepted and has begun acting on, including by “proposing disclosure of sharing agreements.” GAO had reviewed, from July 2013 to last month, relevant FCC dockets and interviewed industry stakeholders as well as FCC officials, it told Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who requested the report. “Consumer groups raised concerns that agreements in which stations share news resources can lead to duplicative content in local newscasts,” GAO said. “Station owners counter that the agreements are needed to allow some stations to continue providing news and allow other stations that previously did not provide news to begin doing so.” It provided details on the prevalence of such sharing agreements and in which markets they are more prominent.

Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, wants to help resolve the union contract struggles that FairPoint Communications faces in Maine. “I am encouraging both sides to stay at the bargaining table and to negotiate in good faith on a new contract that will protect workers and help the company to grow and be successful,” he said in a statement last week, citing a recent meeting he had with FairPoint workers and that his staff had with FairPoint. Negotiations are underway between FairPoint and both the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, representing 2,000 FairPoint workers, 750 of them in Maine, Michaud said. “The success of any company -- or the state as a whole for that matter -- is tied to its workforce,” he said. “It’s my hope that a fair agreement can be reached that will protect good jobs in Maine and help Fairpoint to provide top quality service to its customers.” Shenna Bellows, the Democratic challenger for one of Maine’s U.S. Senate seats, backs the Maine FairPoint workers, she said in a news release earlier this month (http://bit.ly/X547Oc). The FairPoint labor contract expires Aug. 2.

The House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet plans a hearing Thursday on the Patent and Trademark Office and the America Invents Act (AIA), said its website (http://1.usa.gov/1t4Yfl8). Congress has been trying to update AIA, despite its having become law fewer than three years ago. However, the Innovation Act (HR-3309) stalled in the Senate after passing the House, and is not seen likely to move this Congress (CD May 23 p3). Thursday’s hearing will be at 3 p.m. in 2141 Rayburn. Witnesses weren’t announced.

Stakeholders aired ongoing concerns following Thursday’s House Communications Subcommittee legislative hearing on a proposed low-power TV bill. During the hearing, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, defended his draft version of the LPTV and Translator Preservation Act, which proposes to help those entities amid the FCC’s broadcast TV incentive auction (CD July 25 p8). “The spectacle we saw today in this Hearing, having a witness who is funded by the full power broadcast industry, and is from an organization which does not disclose how many LPTV members it has, creates for the industry a very bad taste and raw emotions,” said Mike Gravino, director of the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition, in a statement. “Then, to erroneously attempt to blame the FCC for how the Incentive Spectrum Act legislation was written, and to do it while the LPTV industry is facing a collective $1 billion unfunded mandate for channel relocations, creates real and direct harm for these small and diverse businesses.” Gravino was referring to Advanced Broadcasting TV Alliance Executive Director Louis Libin, who last week blasted Gravino’s concerns as “silly” and defended to us his alliance’s majority funding from Sinclair (CD July 24 p6). Jim McDonald, who heads the National Translator Association, also issued a long statement noting that “surprisingly” the subcommittee had refused testimony from his group and that “an important historical and consequential perspective of this matter was left undiscussed” due to its absence. “While the NTA would like to believe that the bill discussed today will have a favorable effect on TV translators and LPTV stations in the anticipated spectrum auction, the FCC’s history with our service is all too well documented,” McDonald said, laying out the history of TV translator struggles. National Religious Broadcasters President Jerry Johnson issued a statement following the hearing urging “Congress to ascertain what steps the FCC will be taking to keep low-power stations from simply being forced off the air.”

Mediacom tore into the arguments of TVFreedom, a coalition of broadcast interests including NAB, in a Friday letter (http://bit.ly/1ph5SB9) to Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. McCaskill has attacked the billing practices of pay-TV providers and begun investigating them, eyeing eventual legislation, which has earned great praise from TVFreedom. Mediacom dismissed TVFreedom’s minimization of broadcast blackouts and argued they far exceed what a TVFreedom spokesman has touted. Broadcasters fear bringing transparency to wholesale billing practices of local TV stations, which could “shine a light” on all the money broadcasters receive from retransmission consent negotiation, Mediacom said, suggesting that Missouri broadcasters disclose what rates they charge pay-TV providers. In response to Mediacom’s letter, a TVFreedom spokesman reiterated the problems he sees with “deceptive billing practices” of pay-TV companies. “Cable and satellite TV providers should be holding themselves accountable for billing errors and more fully examining the negative impact that high equipment rental fees and unnecessary or inflated charges are having on their customers,” the spokesman said. “This is a real market failure that needs to be addressed."