As Congress considers updating communications law, some want extreme changes. Comments on the committee’s first Communications Act update white paper were due Friday. Several commenters posted or shared their comments with us, and the House Commerce Committee posted them Wednesday at the #CommActUpdate section of its website (http://1.usa.gov/1lBg6gN). House Republicans have said they want to update the Communications Act over the next two years.

Comments are due Feb. 19 on a USTelecom petition for waiver of the FCC’s rules on “non-exogenous cost data filing requirements” for the short-form tariff review plan, a public notice said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1boedKs). USTelecom asks that all price cap LECs receive a waiver from the requirement that they submit PC-1 and IND-1 forms. They also seek a deadline extension. Reply comments in WC docket 14-18 are due March 3.

The telecom market isn’t “uniformly competitive, due to the industry’s history of government-sanctioned monopolies,” Sprint warned the House in comments on overhauling the Communications Act. “While there is remarkable diversity in terms of service providers, network architectures, and customer markets, there remain key choke points that impact the operation of the entire ecosystem.” Sprint insisted any rewrite of the Communications Act “preserve and promote interconnection rights and obligations” and maintain access to “critical competitive inputs” and “carefully tailored regulatory oversight and safeguards.” It pointed to a “handful” of companies that still control the bulk of the market. Comments were due to the House Commerce Committee Friday (CD Feb 3 p8).

Video interests reign, as industry has spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying Capitol Hill on key communications issues, Q4 lobbying disclosure reports showed this week. Spending was often significantly up from the same period last year, particularly for stakeholders with video interests, but not always. Many disclosure reports highlighted pending priorities before Congress, such as the reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA), which expires at the end of 2014 and is the source of much debate -- such as whether the reauthorization should address updates to retransmission consent law. Lobbying is widely expected to spike in 2014 as the House takes on an overhaul of the Communications Act.

Telco and cable ISPs are unlikely to change broadband data policies because of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling last week (CD Jan 15 p1) that struck down most FCC net neutrality rules, said industry officials and observers in interviews. They said large telco and cable ISPs have been vocal about not changing customer-facing policies following the ruling, and aren’t likely to change other policies at least in the near term because of uncertainty about how the FCC will respond to the ruling. Small and mid-sized ISPs aren’t likely to change data policies for broadband customers or OK preferential traffic arrangements with websites because of the ruling, said their associations.

USTelecom and the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance jointly asked the FCC to revise its Nov. 8 rural call completion order to drop a data collection requirement on intraLATA interexchange/toll calls carried entirely over the originating LEC’s network or handed off by the originating LEC directly to the terminating LEC. The associations questioned whether requiring LECs to tabulate and report this data is consistent with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). NARUC and several other parties also commented on a further NPRM released with the order. The FCC, under acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn, unanimously approved rules in late October, limiting data retention obligations to calls destined only to rural ILECs (CD Oct 29 p2).

The FCC must implement Phase II of its Connect America Fund program in 2014 if it wants to accomplish its goal of ensuring rural America is connected to modern broadband networks, officials from USTelecom, AT&T, CenturyLink, FairPoint and Alaska Communication Systems told an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler Jan. 9, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1cqh0lP). The commission’s current cost model, “as a result of substantial public input through workshops and multiple rounds of comments, appears to produce generally reliable results,” the groups said. The commission should quickly finalize the cost model and begin a challenge process to determine where support will be allocated, they said. The groups also asked the commission to resolve other “key” issues early this year, such as redefining eligible telecom carrier obligations to reflect CAF Phase II’s targeting of support to “discrete geographic areas” rather than on a broad study area basis. They also asked the FCC to specify the “precise nature of any obligation to provide levels of broadband service other than at the 4/1 Mbps level."

Several key telecom trade associations united before Congress to back the reinstatement of the bonus depreciation provision of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. In a Monday letter to Senate and House leaders of both parties, the executives leading USTelecom, CTIA, NCTA, NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association, The Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, the Telecommunications Industry Association and PCIA-The Wireless Infrastructure Association told Congress they support efforts to comprehensively update the corporate tax code, but “we believe that the business certainty needed for sustained domestic job growth during the nation’s economic recovery requires renewal for 2014 of the bonus depreciation provision,” which expired Dec. 31. Any overhaul of the tax code would -- “it appears increasingly possible” -- not potentially take effect until Jan. 1, 2015, they said. Until a tax overhaul is effective, “extending bonus depreciation is essential to maintaining the nation’s economic momentum,” they said (http://bit.ly/1djGIgh). “In order to plan with certainty, companies must know as soon as possible what the tax rules for capital investment and job creation in America will be in 2014.” The bonus depreciation provision allowed businesses making domestic investments to “receive substantial tax benefits,” according to USTelecom’s press release. That benefit, as part of the 2012 act, amounts to 50-percent bonus depreciation for such investment. Some observers have argued the provision should stay expired. “Bonus depreciation is costly, particularly if policymakers make it permanent,” Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in a blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/KVZtvn). “While a one-year extension would cost about $5 billion, the ten-year cost of a permanent extension would be about $280 billion.” He said the provision was intended as temporary, dating back to the economic recession of 2008, and criticized it for “low bang for the buck."

The FCC Wireline Bureau denied a request Thursday to stay rules requiring ILECs to submit revised study area boundary data. USTelecom, NTCA, the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, WTA and the Eastern Rural Telecom Association had asked for a six-month extension, pointing to comments by Chairman Tom Wheeler they said implied the new data wasn’t needed just yet. The Wireline Bureau disagreed, but granted a two-month extension to March 17. The associations told us they hoped that would be enough time.

Accuracy of state maps of broadband availability, as oversight shifts to the FCC from NTIA, is generally considered good. And any issues are on very small geographic levels, in a project that’s more comprehensive than anything ever amalgamated in the U.S. That’s according to stakeholders in interviews Thursday. The night before, government, public interest and city officials discussed the national broadband map, as data collection funding is ending for all states, U.S. territories and the District of Columbia for maps that some said will be used to parcel out $1.75 billion a year of USF-for-broadband money. Some have criticized accuracy, while acknowledging improvements since the National Broadband Map went online in February 2011 (CD Jan 10/13 p5).