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.

Glenn Reynolds joined the NTIA as chief of staff, from USTelecom where he was vice president-policy. Reynolds is also a veteran of BellSouth and the FCC, where he was deputy chief of the Common Carrier Bureau and chief of the FCC’s Enforcement Division. Reynolds replaces Tony Wilhelm, longtime chief of staff who left in May and is now vice president-external relations at Affiniti.

Neustar capped the contentious back and forth with Telcordia, its rival that seeks the Local Number Portability Administrator (LNPA) contract Neustar now has, saying in a filing posted Monday that the FCC cannot legally grant the contract to Telcordia. The agency needs to issue a rulemaking notice before acting, Neustar said in the filing submitted Friday, at the end of the comment period on the North American Numbering Council’s recommendation to give Telcordia the contract. Neustar questioned the request for proposal process as “procedurally flawed,” in docket 09-109 (http://bit.ly/1kjyDyu).

USTelecom Senior Vice President-Law and Policy Jonathan Banks expressed concern about the speed metric used in the FCC’s 2014 Measuring Broadband America Report on Fixed Broadband during a July 16 meeting that broadband providers, public interest groups and others had with commission staff, according to an ex parte report (http://bit.ly/1o0m8lW) posted Friday. Banks questioned using the metric of whether users experienced the advertised speed 80 percent of the time, the report said. The FCC felt comfortable with the measure but it could be discussed further at the next meeting of the group, said Walter Johnson, chief of the FCC’s Electromagnetic Compatibility Division, according to the filing. The FCC is putting in place a policy to release raw broadband speed data to the public every six months, to ensure that the release of data was not linked to the schedule for the report, Johnson said, according to the filing. The commission is also broadening its scope to include performance of video services, the filing quoted Johnson as saying.

Large telcos supported eliminating FCC network non-duplication and exclusivity rules, while broadcasters and large content companies fired back at multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) for including calls for retransmission consent reform in the proceeding focused on exclusivity rules. MVPDs, direct broadcast satellite companies and Time Warner Cable echoed their calls for elimination, in reply comments, due last week, in docket 10-71.

Basing net neutrality regulations on Title II authority would cause “World War III” and years of litigation, predicted Latham Watkins attorney Matthew Brill, who represented NCTA on a panel Wednesday. Brill predicted, though, the FCC will eventually adopt an approach under Section 706, along the lines of its rulemaking notice. Speaking at a National Regulatory Research Institute Web seminar, Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld and Evan Engstrom, policy director for Engine Advocacy, which represents startups, countered that Title II would offer more protections against discrimination by ISPs.

TiVo let loose another volley in its quest to prevent a provision’s attachment to Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization legislation, its battles in the House lost and now focused on the Senate. The House approved a five-year STELA reauthorization bill (HR-4572) Tuesday by voice vote. It included the provision which would kill the set-top box integration ban compelling cable operators use CableCARDs instead of built-in security in set-top boxes. Senate Commerce Committee leaders of both parties told us the provision would possibly be part of their draft in process, slated for consideration in September.

USTelecom Vice President-Law and Policy Kevin Rupy testified before Congress Wednesday about the association’s efforts to tackle phone scams. “Our industry has ramped up a concerted, broad-based, public-private effort focused exclusively on the issue of telephony abuse,” he said in written testimony (http://1.usa.gov/1zJDj4Z) before the Senate Special Committee on Aging. “Our member companies continue to work with government and industry stakeholders to develop more secure forms of caller identification authentication to more effectively address a practice that facilitates fraud, caller-ID spoofing.” The telcos are working to offer services to cut the number of fraudulent calls, he said. Rupy also raised the challenges of robocalls. USTelecom members “will initiate legal actions against robocallers when they can be found,” he said.

Comments on both sides of the net neutrality debate continued to pour in to the FCC Wednesday, before Friday’s deadline, as the number approached 1 million. The tally by noon was 905,692, an FCC spokesman said, meaning more than 200,000 comments were filed since Monday, when the agency reported 677,000 comments. Amid the deluge, the agency Tuesday extended the comment period a few days (CD July 16 p1).