Senate Entering the Fray on USF Overhaul
How universal service fits into Congress’ planned rewrite of the Telecom Act is expected to come up at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Thursday on the Universal Service Fund, industry lobbyists said Monday. The Senate hearing opens a new avenue of Hill dialog on USF, an issue that lately has been mainly the domain of the House. House and Senate Commerce Committee staff meetings on the telecom law revamp start Friday (CD June 21 p8).
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Meanwhile, long-cooking USF legislation in the House may be ready before the weekend. House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., plans to introduce his bill soon and possibly this week, multiple Hill and industry officials told us.
Thursday’s Senate Commerce hearing could be “the first step in the process” to update telecom laws, said Paul Raak, a vice president at the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance. “I believe that there is a growing urgency among both parties in both chambers to become more active in telecommunication issues,” he said. “I would expect a strong statement” Thursday from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., “on where USF reform fits into the bigger picture of a rewrite.” The hearing is at 10 a.m. in Room 253, Russell building.
Conventional wisdom has been that Boucher and the House would take the lead on a broad USF overhaul, said Hill and industry officials. The end game of the Senate hearing may not be to develop comprehensive USF legislation, industry officials said. “Given the difficulty of moving a USF bill at this point, the hearing is probably aimed at influencing the FCC’s upcoming USF rewrite,” said Concept Capital analyst Paul Gallant. A telecom industry lobbyist agreed, but said the telecom law rewrite might still include a narrow USF provision clarifying that USF may be transitioned to support broadband. Such language would dispel disagreement over whether the FCC has that power already, the lobbyist said.
FCC commissioners Michael Copps, Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Baker, who are on the Joint Board on Universal Service, are set to testify at Thursday’s hearing, the Commerce Committee said Monday. The committee has also confirmed several industry officials to speak on a second panel: (1) Windstream CEO Jeff Gardner; (2) NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow; (3) John Gockley, a vice president at U.S. Cellular; (4) Delbert Wilson, general manager for Hill Country Telephone Cooperative; and (5) Ritter Communications President Paul Waits.
Meanwhile, Free Press denied news reports Monday that it has a seat at Communications Act overhaul discussions on the Hill. “We have not yet been invited,” a spokeswoman for the public interest group said. “We have not heard anything yet about being invited.” The Commerce committees haven’t disclosed who will participate, but plan to publicly release a list of participants and submitted statements.
Free Press has been vocal about the Hill meetings, urging the FCC to continue with its plan to reclassify broadband transport under Title II of the Communications Act. “If communications legislation does not emerge from Congress by the end of summer, then the Commission’s efforts will assure consumer protections and broadband deployment while Congress continues its work,” said Free Press Policy Counsel Aparna Sridhar.
Reacting to renewed Hill focus on telecom, ISPs have been bulking up lobbying staffs with former government officials, the Sunlight Foundation said Sunday on its blog (http://xrl.us/bhphb5). The foundation is funded in part by Google, which has a seat on the group’s advisory board. Citing data from lobbyist disclosure forms and the Center for Responsive Politics, the foundation said 72 percent of the lobbyists hired by AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, NCTA and USTelecom have held jobs in government and 18 are former members of Congress. The groups spent $20.6 million combined lobbying the federal government in Q1 2010, the foundation added.