A Capitol Hill telecom rewrite could and should include many priorities that could gain bipartisan support, said panelists at a Wednesday Hill event hosted by NetCompetition, whose members include major ISPs and associations like CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom. “We’re all competing in this same space,” Minority Media and Telecommunications Council Vice President Nicol Turner-Lee said, adding that the old Communications Act titles don’t necessarily make sense anymore. “When you have an obsolete law, it causes problems,” NetCompetition Chairman Scott Cleland said. He said he sees several problems with current telecom law, citing an anti-innovation bias, uncertain and eroding FCC regulatory authority and a decay of the public switched telephone network (PSTN), with the “fiscal insanity” of a fifth of consumers paying to back the network. Spectrum management -- or lack thereof -- is in a “scandalous” state, Cleland said. “Who’s hoarding most of it? It’s the federal government,” he said, lamenting lack of “coherent policy” and “no formal spectrum budget process.” Internet Innovation Alliance honorary co-chair Rick Boucher, a former Democratic chairman of the House Communications Subcommittee, repeated his backing for a rewrite, citing the unsustainable PSTN and a need to eliminate barriers. “Let’s find a creative way to get [spectrum] on the auction block a lot faster,” Boucher said, expressing pleasant shock at the AWS-3 spectrum auction having surpassed $40 billion in bids. Several panelists, including ex-FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell and Free State Foundation President Randolph May, cited the trouble with the Communications Act silos, regulating different types of industries that offer similar services with different rules.

Republican leaders of the Commerce committees want what they call a public discussion on a new net neutrality proposal. House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., is partnering with Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D. Some observers see bipartisan congressional resolution of net neutrality debates as the only way to allow an overhaul of the Communications Act later this Congress.

President Barack Obama declared his support Wednesday for ending state laws that restrict or prohibit municipal broadband deployments and said he would file a letter with the FCC urging the commission to use its authority to remove barriers to local broadband deployments, as expected (see 1501130067). “I believe a community has the right to make its own choice” on deploying broadband free from state restrictions, Obama said in a speech in Cedar Falls, Iowa, which has a municipal broadband network. He said “all of us,” including the FCC, “should do everything we can to push back on those old laws.”

Comments on the FCC’s IP transition NPRM are due Feb. 5, replies March 9, said a proposed rulemaking published in the Federal Register Tuesday. The wide-ranging NPRM deals with a variety of issues, from requirements for discontinuing service to battery backup requirements (see 1411210037). Opposition to USTelecom’s petition for reconsideration of a declaratory ruling, approved with the NPRM, toughening approval requirements for discontinuing service is due Jan. 23, with replies due Jan. 30 (see 1412300038).

About half the $100 million in rural broadband funds provisionally awarded by the FCC went to bidders unable to provide financial disclosure statements to show they were qualified, according to the agency’s figures in a public notice.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is circulating to the commission a proposal to increase the broadband benchmark speed to 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload, from the current 4 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload standard, said an agency fact sheet made available to us Wednesday. Wheeler is also circulating a Notice of Inquiry asking what additional actions the agency should take to accelerate broadband deployment, the fact sheet said.

“Title X” is the calling card one lawmaker and industry lobbyists associate with net neutrality legislation likely coming down the pike early in 2015. The phrase doesn't refer to any actual title of the Communications Act but seems to be the placeholder name given to a new title intended for broadband service, which would allow for net neutrality protections without what some see as anachronistic regulatory burdens of Title II and the forbearance it may require.

The FCC Wireline Bureau Tuesday provided more time for parties to file oppositions to USTelecom’s petition for reconsideration of the FCC’s Nov. 24 declaratory ruling on what constitutes a "discontinuance, reduction, or impairment of a service” for purposes of interpreting Section 214 of the Communications Act. USTelecom argued the ruling imposed “new substantive requirements, or rules, on providers without any notice or opportunity for comment.” Public Knowledge asked for additional time, in a filing also posted by the FCC Tuesday in docket 14-174. Oppositions were due Jan. 2 and the new due date is Jan. 23. Replies are due Jan. 30. The bureau said there has been some confusion about the opposition deadline and that major holidays fall during the response period. “We find that granting the extension requested by Public Knowledge is warranted by the unusual circumstances here,” the bureau said.

USTelecom asked the FCC to reconsider a Nov. 25 declaratory ruling changing the “long-standing” definition of what constitutes a “discontinuance, reduction, or impairment of service” under Communications Act Section 214. “The new definition is impermissibly vague and, instead of terminating a controversy or removing uncertainty, it creates unnecessary confusion,” USTelecom said in a petition for reconsideration filed Tuesday. The new standard says a service may no longer be defined by its provider, but should be defined under an “amorphous” functional test “that takes into account the totality of the circumstances from the perspective of the relevant community or part of a community,” USTelecom said. “Under this new view, providers are unable to gauge what services or aspects of their products or services might require a section 214 filing to discontinue or grandfather.”

The revolving door rotates freely in government public relations. At just one federal agency with about 1,700 total employees, at least 14 public relations experts and lawyers who advise on issues including PR came or left during the Obama administration. Careers of PR practitioners exiting the FCC since about Jan. 21, 2009, spanned the gamut. Some job changes resembled the traditional revolving door, with officials leaving for the industries their employer used to regulate, others were so-called reverse revolvers coming to the agency from entities that lobbied the FCC, while other career paths were less orthodox and don't fall under the revolving door rubric at all. That is according to Communications Daily Freedom of Information Act requests, other records and interviews with those who reviewed our database.