Sean Farrell, ex-aide to Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., joins USTelecom as director-government affairs … Terry Jarrett, Missouri PSC, to chair NARUC infrastructure committee … Cox names Asheesh Saksena, ex-Time Warner Cable, executive vice president-chief strategy officer.

Price cap carriers would be given $300 million for broadband deployment in unserved areas in the first year of universal service and intercarrier compensation reform under a proposed order being circulated at the FCC, telecom officials told us Thursday. The money would come on top of the legacy universal service support the price cap companies are already receiving, the officials said. Having received the money, the price cap companies will have to meet minimum standards for broadband deployment within two years, they said.

NCTA CEO Michael Powell sees signs from Universal Service Fund stakeholders that USF and intercarrier compensation can be reformed, as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski seeks (CD Oct 7 p1). Industries with different proposals to use some of the USF to pay for broadband and to make changes to ICC generally understand they won’t get everything they want, he said in his first news conference. Powell said Capitol Hill is giving the commission room to work on the order that Genachowski wants voted on at the Oct. 27 meeting, and FCC members seem inclined to engage.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski offered reassurance Thursday, in a speech at FCC headquarters as he prepared to circulate the FCC’s version of Universal Service Fund and intercarrier comp overhaul, most likely late Thursday evening. Genachowski’s speech was short on details on how his proposal differs from plans already before the commission, particularly the ABC plan. Instead, he reassured consumers they have nothing to fear and that the proposed reforms will, in the long run, drive down the size of their monthly phone bills.

Cybersecurity is a jobs issue and thus deserves congressional attention, the House Republican Cybersecurity Task Force said in recommendations released Wednesday. “It is not just national security information that is being stolen from databases in the U.S.,” but intellectual property of all kinds, the report said: “Information stolen from U.S. databases equals jobs stolen from the U.S. economy,” including small businesses that are hacked and then find copies of their new products “flooding the market at cutrate prices from China within a few months.” That echoes accusations of Chinese hacking made at a House Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday. The task force, composed of members of nine House committees and led by House Intelligence member Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, recommended Congress provide “voluntary incentives” for companies to improve cybersecurity, such as rewards for participating in cybersecurity standards development. Rewards could include “varying degrees of liability protections afforded to companies that voluntarily implement the enhanced security practices.” Congress and the White House should give companies subject to information-security regulations in multiple sectors, such as financial services and healthcare, one standard to meet that covers them all. Congress should consider extending tax credits to cyber investments, require minimum cybersecurity protection for federal grant eligibility, and evaluate the cybersecurity insurance market. The government should work with each sector to identify the truly “critical functions or facilities” and not impose regulation on “entire organizations,” and grant liability protection when computers of companies that follow standards are breached, the report said. The Department of Homeland Security should work with other regulators to coordinate standards across and within sectors subject to multiple regulators. The report recommends that Congress “facilitate” an external organization to “act as a clearing house of information and intelligence sharing” between government and critical infrastructure, so as to “detect and mitigate cyber attacks in real time before they reach their target.” The organization would take the government’s knowledge of “classified threat signatures” and combine it with threats known to businesses, so ISPs and other networks could block attacks, and information would be scrubbed of individuals’ “sensitive personally identifiable information” before the government gets it back. Congress would have to change some laws, give “narrowly targeted exceptions” and add lawsuit-liability protection, and possibly give an antitrust exemption, to let carriers share and act on cyber information, the report said. The task force recommended several actions on existing laws: (1) The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) should focus on “secure, continuous, automated monitoring of IT systems rather than the current checklist exercise.” (2) Extend the definition of “protected computers” in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to critical infrastructures, “with attached criminal penalties.” (3) Various electronic communications laws need exemptions for sharing cybersecurity information, as well as “some sort of anonymous reporting mechanism” for companies to use so a cyber insurance market can function. (4) Computer fraud should be added to the definition of racketeering in federal law, and criminal penalties instituted for “intentional failures” to provide breach notification for sensitive personally identifiable information. The government needs to answer “difficult questions,” such as its responsibility or authority to defend a private business from cyberattack, how to deter “bad actors” online, the parameters for using intelligence-community information, and the military’s role. The task force raised several other issues that don’t fit neatly into its mandate, including encouraging U.S. ISPs to create a voluntary code of conduct as ISPs in Australia have done with its national “icode.” The report drew applause from USTelecom, CTIA, the Software and Information Industry Association, Information Technology Industry Council and others. Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, called the report “the most detailed and pragmatic public policy blueprint on cybersecurity any government entity has produced,” and largely consistent with the White House’s own cyber proposal. House Republican proposals on data breach notification, FISMA reform, liability protection and information sharing “provide momentum for much-needed legislation that should happen this year,” said Liesyl Franz, TechAmerica vice president of cybersecurity and global public policy.

State regulators are taking their case against preemption in intercarrier compensation regime reform to the Hill, telecom lobbyists and a NARUC official told us Monday. The FCC is weighing reform proposals from incumbents that would preempt state rates and lower them to $0.0007 per minute -- the so-called “triple-zero” option -- within five years for price cap companies and eight years for rate-of-return companies. State officials, having endorsed the FCC’s reform process, are now meeting with legislators, hoping to stall preemption, said telecom lobbyists and NARUC Legislative Director Brian O'Hara.

Universal service lobbying was intensifying at the FCC as the deadline for the October open meeting drew near, filings on docket 10-90 showed. Comcast, Cox Communications, Northeast Colorado Cellular, U.S. Cellular, USTelecom, NTCA, NECA, Free Press, Dish Network and CompTel posted ex parte notices Friday. If the commission is to adopt an order for the Oct. 27 meeting, drafts must circulate by Thursday. Most industry observers expect such an order, but weren’t certain how many changes staff would make from the incumbent-backed ABC and rural consensus plans. The most-contested provisions remained the right-of-first-refusal provision for wireline carriers and the size of the mobility fund, but Free Press also filed a lengthy denunciation of the plans.

USTelecom joined dozens of other American business groups in urging the congressional budget super committee to reform entitlement programs and “comprehensively” remake American tax laws. “The U.S. tax system is in desperate need of simplification and fundamental, comprehensive reform that encourages investment and employment,” the letter said. It was dated Wednesday and released Thursday. Signers range from the Air Conditioning Contractors of America to the Nuclear Energy Institute to the Woodworking Machinery Industry Association.

Wireless carrier officials say they see some willingness on the FCC’s part to make changes to the final Universal Service Fund/intercarrier comp order to address wireless concerns. Numerous small and mid-sized carriers have been at the commission in recent days to make clear their concerns. One discussion point has been the size of the fund, industry officials said. A second has been putting in place rules that would guarantee a dedicated fund for wireless buildout.

Rate-of-return carriers would receive more than $13 billion in Universal Service Fund cash over the next six years under the ABC plan, executives from the incumbent companies behind the plan said last week in a meeting with FCC staff. USF support for rate-of-return areas would start at $2 billion in 2012 and reach $2.3 billion in 2017, executives said, according to an ex parte notice posted Wednesday to docket 10-90. The program would generate $161 million in budget surplus over the next five years, the executives said in their presentation (http://xrl.us/bmesfk). Under the ABC plan, the “legacy” high cost Universal Service Fund would spend a little more than $2 billion over four years, starting with $821 million in 2012 before dropping to zero in 2016, the ABC executives said. The Connect America Fund would start by spending $440 million in 2012 and reach more than $2.2 billion by 2017, the executives said. The executives were from AT&T, Frontier, USTelecom, Verizon, Windstream and CenturyLink.