E-Rate disbursements “would be simplified and made more efficient” if service providers were taken out of the Universal Service Administrative Co.’s funding flow equations, USTelecom said in an FCC ex parte notice published Friday. The next commission rulemaking notice on E-Rate should also consider USTelecom’s petition on what’s called the lowest corresponding price obligation, the group said. And the commission should consider “updating the discount matrix formula,” considering additional factors that “more appropriately match a school’s or library’s current needs with funding distributions such as including a broadband capability factor in the discount matrix formula,” USTelecom said.

The FCC took its first steps toward remaking the Universal Service Fund and the intercarrier compensation system Tuesday with a 5-0 vote in favor of a broadly worded rulemaking notice. The commission also voted to adopt a notice for a separate rulemaking that commission officials said will “streamline its data collection program” and eliminate “unneeded data collections that impose unnecessary burdens on filers.”

House Republicans are preparing a bill to increase oversight of the broadband stimulus program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In a hearing notice circulated Thursday, Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he plans to circulate a draft bill before a hearing Thursday about Recovery Act broadband spending. The draft bill “would increase accountability for this spending to return unused or reclaimed broadband stimulus funds to the U.S. Treasury,” Walden said. The hearing is at 10 a.m., in Room 2322, Rayburn House Office Building. Also Thursday, the House Oversight Committee plans hearing on “regulatory impediments to job creation.” The hearing is 9:30 a.m. in HVC 210, Capitol Visitors Center. In December and January, the committee’s Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., sent NAB, USTelecom and other industry groups letters asking which current and proposed federal regulations would harm job growth. He plans to make the responses and his analysis public by Friday, he said last month (CD Jan 25 p8).

The Obama administration, working with companies like Facebook, Intel, IBM, Google and Hewlett-Packard, has created a Startup America campaign to help technology entrepreneurs, officials said Monday at a White House briefing. The effort proposes to speed up patent reviews and provide tax relief and credits as well as funding. Steve Case, co-founder of AOL and Chairman of the Case Foundation, will chair the partnership.

p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }The FCC’s rulemaking notice on the Universal Service Fund should be specific enough to allow the commission to promptly adopt final rules, USTelecom said in an ex parte notice posted in docket 10-90 on Friday. “Phantom Traffic, Traffic Pumping and compensation for IP-based traffic have been thoroughly addressed in these proceedings over the past several years,” the association said. But if the commission “chooses to issue further notices on these issues,” it should “consider final rules ahead of its completion of more comprehensive reform as action on them is urgent and overdue as acknowledged in the National Broadband Plan.” Windstream separately “warned” the agency against “a significant reduction in intercarrier compensation payments.” A filing by the company urged the commission to “act now to confirm that VoIP traffic terminating to the PSTN is subject to the same intercarrier compensation rules as other voice providers with whom they compete.” That’s in line with a letter Jan. 18 from the CEOs of CenturyLink, Qwest, Frontier, and Windstream to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., wants tougher net neutrality rules for ISPs. On Tuesday she introduced legislation with Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., to create a new section in Title II of the Communications Act to codify the FCC’s six net neutrality principles. The bill would apply equally to wireline and wireless providers. Public interest groups that thought the FCC didn’t go far enough in its order said they supported the Cantwell measure.

Industry responses to a letter by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., will be made public by Feb. 11, Issa said Monday. Issa also plans to release his initial analysis by that date, he said in a letter Monday to the committee’s Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, D-Md. In December and January, Issa sent NAB, USTelecom and other industry groups letters asking what existing and proposed federal regulations would harm job growth (CD Jan 5 p7). Also in the letter, Issa applauded President Barack Obama for calling on federal agencies to kill burdensome regulations. Issa said he will “work with him to indentify those regulations that are stifling job creation."

While getting more spectrum for mobile broadband is important, reallocating broadcast spectrum could harm the whole industry, broadcasters said on a Minority Media & Telecom Council Summit panel. Stations’ sharing a channel, as proposed, could produce technical issues and loss of service, said James Winston, executive director of the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, said late Thursday. There are only a few minority TV stations, so the FCC needs to study the risks carefully, he said. “The issue can’t be handled in a hurry."

Payphone operators’ request for emergency cash and long-term Universal Service Fund support was panned by Sprint-Nextel, Verizon, USTelecom and TracFone Wireless. The American Public Communications Council filed a petition last month asking the FCC for about $57 million in emergency Lifeline money and for a proceeding on whether payphones should receive universal service support permanently (CD Dec 6 p6). The petition drew support from the Florida Public Telecommunications Association, which said that the collapse of the payphone industry “has been greatly exacerbated in Florida and other states … due to the introduction of ‘free’ governmentally supported cell phone service offered by TracFone and more recently Virgin Mobile.”

Congress is unlikely to take up a total rewrite of the Telecom Act until late this session at the earliest, telecom trade group executives said Tuesday on a Broadband Breakfast panel. USTelecom, CompTel and the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association will be busy early this year lobbying members on broadband issues, they said. But “the next two years are going to go by pretty fast,” and “there just won’t be enough time to address all the issues that we'd like to see addressed,” said Qwest spokesman Tom McMahon.