A federal-state board recommended Fri. that the FCC limit universal service support to one line per customer to make sure the Universal Service Fund (USF) remains solvent. The recommendation by the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service drew partial dissents from 3 members. FCC Comr. Adelstein, Mont. PSC Comr. Bob Rowe and Nanette Thompson of the Alaska Regulatory Commission said restricting funds to primary lines “is a well-intentioned effort that will have a deleterious effect on the provision of universal service.” In a joint statement, they said “restricting funding to primary lines is not necessary to control fund growth.”

Comcast finds itself in the unusual position of fighting for the little guy on phone issues. Comcast Phone, a division of cable giant Comcast that provides traditional circuit-switched telephony, complained about some ILEC practices in a recent FCC filing. The letter was filed in response to BellSouth’s request for a declaratory ruling that state commissions not be allowed to require BellSouth to provide wholesale or retail broadband services to consumers who get voice services from CLECs when those accounts use unbundled network elements (UNEs).

In another run at opposing Nextel’s position on fixing public safety interference at 800 MHz, Verizon Wireless told the FCC Thurs. it was willing to bid in an “immediate” auction of spectrum at 1.9 GHz. This is among the bands Nextel would receive under a “consensus plan” proposal in exchange for giving up spectrum elsewhere. Meanwhile, 23 Republican and House members urged FCC Chmn. Powell not to give Nextel spectrum outside the 800 MHz band without conducting an auction under Sec. 309(j) of the Communications Act.

The FCC’s emphasis on VoIP is fine but the FCC should first make sure the underlying broadband infrastructure is deployed throughout the country, FCC Comr. Copps said Wed. at a symposium sponsored by Mich. State U.’s Quello Center. “No matter how enthusiastic the rhetoric [about VoIP], IP technologies will only reach their potential if the infrastructure is there,” he said. “We should be thinking larger thoughts,” Copps said: “If we ever needed a national conference on how to deal with disruptive technology it’s now.”

FCC Chmn. Powell endorsed reform of the Telecom Act during his testimony Tues. before the Senate Commerce Committee. He told the committee regulation of new technology such as VoIP couldn’t be resolved under the Telecom Act of 1996, and legislative reform should occur. Powell said the current law wouldn’t allow such services as VoIP to be “harmonized” and would make it difficult to resolve intercarrier compensation. “The days are numbered on the way we're doing this under the current statute,” Powell said: “I do believe there is going to have to be a statute in the future that recognizes these dramatic technical changes.”

The FCC should broaden its definition of “rural” for the Commission’s rural health care universal service support mechanism, according to several comments filed with the Commission. Some rural health care providers even argued that none of the definitions available could be applied to all rural areas and asked the FCC to adopt multiple methods of defining rural.

DBS operators need to pay market-based fees for programming they provide, several witnesses said Tues. during a House Judiciary Intellectual Property Subcommittee hearing on the renewal of the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act (SHVIA). None actually proposed an end to SHVIA, but the NAB, MPAA and the U.S. Copyright Office said the fees should be adjusted. The hearing continued after our deadline.

With little success negotiating systemwide digital cable carriage deals the past 3 years, public broadcasters are pursuing legislative, regulatory and voluntary options, the Assn. of Public TV (APTS) board was told in Washington Sun. In a regulatory update, David Liroff, chief technology officer for the WGBH Education Foundation, said concurrent with efforts on the Hill and at the FCC, APTS and PBS were negotiating with the NCTA and individual MSOs. PBS was “in the process of concluding a [carriage] deal” with Cox, he said. Liroff referred questions about details to PBS. A PBS spokeswoman confirmed that negotiations were on with Cox, but said the 2 weren’t on the “verge of an agreement.” The talks with Cox were going well, she said. Cox declined to comment. The sticking point in negotiations with NCTA was the “stringent” program nonduplication requirements, he said, and an “appropriate balance” needed to be struck. The question was whether NCTA would make exceptions from nonduplication requirements for PTV stations’ educational and children’s programming, Liroff said. Public broadcasters were also trying to get the FCC to change its ruling on “primary video” entitled to carriage, he said. Saying the digital carriage issue was a “continuously moving target,” Liroff said he expected an FCC decision in the spring. As for satellite carriage, he said public broadcasters would raise --during the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act reauthorization hearings in Congress -- issues of digital carriage and the practice by DBS operators of carrying many local PTV stations and small commercial stations on wing satellites. Consumers need a 2nd dish to get programs on wing satellite, he said, and in most cases they don’t bother to get a 2nd dish. Separately, PBS Pres. Pat Mitchell told an annual members meeting Mon. that the enterprise intended to widely disseminate on the Hill and elsewhere results of a recent study it had commissioned that found the public placed more trust in public TV than in Congress or the federal govt. In the study by research firm Roper ASW, PBS bested even courts in public trust, with commercial broadcasters such as ABC, CBS and NBC finishing a distant 3rd. Most respondents said public broadcasting received “too little” federal funding. PBS ranked 2nd only to the military in value for tax dollars: 36% of respondents picked the military as offering “excellent” use of tax payer dollars, 20% PBS. One reason for the study, Mitchell said, was to demonstrate public TV’s uniqueness, and that was why the “measurements” were different from what commercial broadcasters value. In terms of satisfaction with programming, PBS outdid commercial broadcasters and cable, the study found. While 34% of respondents said they were very satisfied with public TV programming, only 24% and 16% gave that rating to cable and commercial broadcasters respectively. But NBC topped the list of most watched networks with 35%, followed by Fox News (35%), ABC (33%), CBS (32%) and PBS and PTV (31%)). Other findings: (1) Most (59%) believe having PBS is “very important,” with 40% and 36% picking commercial broadcasters and cable networks, receptively. (2) PBS came out on top (40%) in trustworthiness of news and public affairs programming, followed by CNN (33%), Fox News (30%), NPR (23%) and NBC (22%). (3) Most (79%) believe govt. funding for PBS is “money well spent.” (4) More than half said they considered federal funding for public broadcasting “too little.” Federal funding makes up about 15% of the public broadcasting budget. PBS said the survey would be repeated annually.

Changes to the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act (SHVIA) will free valuable broadcast spectrum and speed the transition to DTV, a Progress & Freedom Foundation report said. The House Judiciary Intellectual Property Subcommittee hosts a hearing on SHVIA today (Tues.) (CED Feb 23 p7). “Policy measures such as extending the distant signal retransmission rights of satellite providers to include digital signals can help complete the migration to MVPD [multi-channel video program distributor, such as cable to satellite] at essentially zero cost,” said PFF’s Thomas Lenard. Relying in part on a study by Manhattan Institute economist Thomas Hazlett, Lenard calculated that the social value of freeing analog spectrum “will consist of at least $14 billion to $127 billion in market value plus an equivalent annual amount of consumer surplus.” He said 100% conversion raises the prospect of being able to reclaim the entire 402 MHz and auction it for other, higher-value uses.

A Progress & Freedom Foundation report said changes to the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act (SHVIA) will free valuable broadcast spectrum and speed the transition to DTV. The House Judiciary Intellectual Property Subcommittee hosts a hearing on SHVIA on Feb. 24 (CD Feb 20 p11). “Policy measures such as extending the distant signal retransmission rights of satellite providers to include digital signals can help complete the migration to MVPD [multi-channel video program distributor, such as cable to satellite] at essentially zero cost,” said PFF’s Thomas Lenard. Relying in part on a study by Manhattan Institute economist Thomas Hazlett, Lenard calculated that the social value of freeing analog spectrum “will consist of at least $14 billion to $127 billion in market value plus an equivalent annual amount of consumer surplus.” He said 100% conversion raises the prospect of being able to reclaim the entire 402 MHz and auction it for other, higher-value uses.