A broad state role is critical to modernize and streamline Universal Service and Intercarrier Compensation policies, state members of the Federal-State USF Joint Board told an FCC workshop Thursday. Speakers debated proposed changes in fund size.

President Barack Obama’s broadband stimulus program was “vindicated” by new NTIA findings that up to two-thirds of America’s schools can’t get broadband at speeds they need, NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling. Thursday, the agency unveiled its new broadband map. The map indicated that up to 10 percent of Americans can’t get broadband. The map is based on more than 125 million searchable records in the new mapping database, with information from some 1,600 broadband companies. “All of these records can be analyzed in countless ways,” Strickling said. “But the data continues to show that a digital divide continues to exist."

The FCC should fix the problems of extra Lifeline payments through a separate rulemaking, several associations said in an ex parte notice made public on Wednesday. In January, the Wireline Bureau ordered the Universal Service Administrative Co. to give Lifeline customers who violate the “one per household” rule 30 days to select a single carrier or be dropped from the program. “The bureau, which lacks authority to promulgate substantive Lifeline rules, developed these rules without public input,” Wednesday’s letter said. It was signed by USTelecom, the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies, AT&T, Qwest, Windstream Communications, CTIA, National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, Rural Cellular Association, Western Telecommunications Alliance, CenturyLink, TracFone Wireless and Verizon. “At a minimum, implementation of the new bureau rules must be suspended pending a rulemaking,” they said: “In addition to suffering from significant legal infirmities, these rules raise a number of operational issues of significant concern to the undersigned parties, which represent many of the state- or commission-designated” eligible telecommunications carriers.

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."