One of the stars of There Will Be Blood will testify at a Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing Wednesday on access to Internet content for blind and deaf people, the subcommittee said Tuesday. Russell Harvard portrayed the deaf son of Daniel Day Lewis’s character in the Oscar-winning film, and is himself deaf. The hearing will consider a bill to improve technology access for those groups, sponsored by Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. Also testifying: Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., sponsor of a similar House bill; Brian Pearce, a retired U.S. Army sergeant; Thomas Wlodkowski, accessibility director for AOL; Bobbie Beth Scoggins, president of the National Association of the Deaf; and Walter McCormick, president of USTelecom.

Congress will develop proposals to update the Communications Act, Democratic Commerce Committee leaders in both houses said Monday. The process will be headed by House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., and their Senate counterparts Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and John Kerry, D-Mass. Telcos, broadcasters and Public Knowledge were among those who backed the effort at our deadline.

Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., introduced a bill to prevent the FCC from regulating information and Internet-access services without first proving a market crisis. The text of the bill (HR-5257) surfaced earlier this week (CD May 11 p11) OR (CD May 11 p7). “I see no reason for Internet regulation,” which could discourage investment, Stearns said Tuesday. “Yet, if there is ever a cause for regulation, it is a decision to be made by Congress -- not the FCC.” Stearns called broadband “an information service outside the reach of Title II” and said, “This point was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in its Brand X decision in 2005.” ISPs welcomed the bill. “This legislation recognizes that unprecedented government regulation of the Internet must be a measure of last resort and that our nation’s broadband future depends on continuing policies that promote private investment,” said NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow. USTelecom believes the measure lays out a “thoughtful, fact-driven approach in requiring the FCC to evaluate, before issuing new regulations, whether there is a failure in the broadband Internet services industry that harms consumers,” said President Walter McCormick. “The bill rightly calls on Congress to provide the Commission with specific guidance on how to oversee the Internet before taking action that could harm investment and jobs in an industry that is thriving.” AT&T believes that “new legislation is needed and this is an encouraging first step,” said Tim McKone, the executive vice president of federal relations. “As the FCC proceeds down the path of regulating the Internet by applying 75-year-old laws developed for the black rotary telephone we are hopeful that the Congress will take a more prudent path."

A weakness in FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s proposed approach to broadband reclassification is that the commission would regulate only broadband transport in the last mile, leaving out other layers of the Internet, critics said this week. The FCC wouldn’t assert control over ISPs and or over actions at the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) level, where Comcast’s throttling of BitTorrent took place, they said.

The FCC will have to be lithe as a circus performer to pull off Chairman Julius Genachowski’s so-called “third way” for regulating broadband, said officials from industry and a free-market think tank at a Progress & Freedom Foundation event Friday morning. And the approach would create significant market uncertainty if applied, they said. Genachowski revealed his plan to seal the commission’s broadband Internet authority on Thursday (CD May 7 p1).

The methodology used to assess regulatory fees is outdated, companies and associations said in comments responding to a notice of proposed rulemaking on the collection and rate of the fees for fiscal 2010. Only a handful of comments were filed. The FCC proposes to collect about $335.7 million in fees, the notice said. The FCC has used the same methodology since 1994, and it “fails to take account of the changes in the communications industry that have occurred in the intervening 16 years,” USTelecom said. The commission must find a way to “reflect the realities of its current regulatory activity in its regulatory fee assessments.” There should be a difference in UHF and VHF fees, Fireweed said. Lower UHF fees made sense when VHF was considered “superior,” but “since the transition to DTV, the advantage now resides with UHF,” the company said. But the American Association of Paging Carriers said although the FCC hasn’t changed the way it assesses CMRS messaging fees since 2003, “the unique circumstances applicable to the paging industry in 2003 still prevail."

Most of those who've expressed a view believe it’s a bad idea to allow outside parties to see data on local telephone competition and broadband connections that carriers must file using Form 477, Verizon and Verizon Wireless said in a joint filing at the commission. But Free Press said it’s asking only that the data be available to parties that sign confidentiality agreements. Outside groups could provide important insights if allowed to analyze the information, it said.

The time has come for the FCC to formally seek comment on whether it should “reclassify” broadband as a Title II service, subject to common carrier regulation, Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld said Tuesday in a debate sponsored by the New America Foundation. Hank Hultquist, vice president of federal regulatory affairs at AT&T, countered that the FCC has plenty of authority regardless of the recent Comcast decision, and reclassification would be a mistake.

AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and the major telecom and cable trade associations threw their weight behind a joint letter Thursday asking the FCC not to reclassify broadband as a Title II service. The letter accuses supporters of the idea of changing how broadband is classified of “alarmist rhetoric” in their arguments that the Comcast decision leaves the FCC “unable to implement the National Broadband Plan” or preserve net neutrality.

There’s a strong statutory argument against the FCC reclassifying broadband to be under Title II regulation, USTelecom Counsel Seth Waxman said during a teleconference. USTelecom filed a letter in response to the commission’s consideration of reclassification. “The letter is directed at the FCC to make them aware of what I see as a very perilous proceeding,” Waxman said. “Given the long history of the commission classifying all forms of broadband Internet access as an integrated information service, not as a telecom Title II service, strongly suggests that a court would properly reject an assertion of Title II authority at this point.” The fact is “the commission has consistently not classified any form of broadband Internet access as a Title II service,” he said. Transformative proposals by some advocates “aren’t driven by any relevant changes in either the law or the facts bearing on the relevant statutory definitions.” Instead, they've cited the Comcast v. FCC decision “as a basis for urging the commission to advance an industry-transforming regulatory agenda.” Title II adoption could revolutionize government regulation “all for the evident purpose of evading the consequences of a court decision limiting the commission’s authority,” Waxman said.