The FNPRM on potential quantile regression analysis (QRA) replacements proposes several new mechanisms to more efficiently disburse limited USF money, agency and industry officials told us. A Connect America Fund order on circulation (CD April 8 p1) would eliminate the QRA benchmarks rule, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a blog post Wednesday (http://fcc.us/1iq7vHP). The QRA was “well-intentioned” but hasn’t had “the desired effect,” Wheeler wrote. The order also deals with the local rate floor, timing, amounts, and does some “cleanup” on reporting dates, agency and industry officials said.

While AT&T and other telephone companies have been seeking deregulation from states to avoid having to provide costly and increasingly unprofitable landline service (CD March 19 p12), Maine’s primary telco is taking a different tact. FairPoint Communications is asking the Public Utilities Commission for a $67.6 million-a-year public subsidy to continue providing landline. The company is also asking $2-a-month increase for residential and business landline customers.

Lawmakers remained dubious of the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger Wednesday at the first Capitol Hill hearing on the deal. It needs FCC and Justice Department approval. The full Senate Judiciary Committee held the hearing, which lasted just under three hours, and House Judiciary announced a hearing May 8 at 9:30 a.m. in 2141 Rayburn. Comcast filed its long merger application with the FCC Tuesday.

A major point of contention in any Telecom Act rewrite will be whether the kinds of rights that govern interconnection in the context of current sections 251 and 252 will apply to IP interconnection, stakeholders on all sides of the issue said in interviews. CLECs say those protections give them needed leverage as they negotiate against the big incumbents, and a regulatory backstop of state regulators when there’s an impasse. To ILECs and their supporters, grafting the legacy interconnection rules onto a new act would mean inefficiency and potentially onerous regulation in an IP world that is brimming with competition.

Clarity on the definition of a multichannel video programming distributor could be addressed on the back of bigger issues like the retransmission consent model and must-carry rules if Congress goes ahead with a Telecom Act rewrite, said attorneys and executives in media, cable and MVPD. An expansion of the definition to include companies using the Internet to deliver video to subscribers was largely opposed by cable operators when the FCC proceeding closed for comment in 2012. The FCC proceeding has been dormant for two years, and it stemmed from a 2010 program access complaint from Sky Angel against Discovery Communications, concerning Sky Angel’s video service FAVE-TV. The complaint raised the Media Bureau proceeding on how to interpret the terms “MVPD” and “channel.” Some TV station owners, DirecTV and some Internet video distributors supported a broader approach to the term to include entities that provide multiple linear networks of video programming.

The Telecom Act was largely a success, which spurred competition, said former FCC officials in interviews. They disagreed whether Congress should again take on comprehensive legislation, more than 18 years after the act was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Satellite legislation, widely considered must-pass, has become embroiled in wider 2014 debates over updating communications law, creating tension over whether updates should go in that bill or in a Telecom Act overhaul, key parties told us. Pay-TV industry heavyweights eye the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization process as the vehicle to insert video market changes, rather than wait for what lawmakers and lobbyists anticipate will be years before a Telecom Act update. STELA expires at the end of 2014 unless Congress reauthorizes it, a recurring five-year process begun in 1988.

A global initiative is “urgently needed” to boost user protection and security online, said a report for the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) approved Wednesday in Strasbourg. CoE members must enact and enforce “powerful laws” that ensure data is moved, stored and intercepted only in ways that are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and all new devices and services should automatically include encryption, filtering, virus protection and authentication tools, said the report by Axel Fischer, of the European People’s Party (EPP) and Germany. Providers of cloud services or Wi-Fi hotspots “should face special oversight,” and ISPs must be more up-front about their policies, it said. It urged the ITU to set technical standards. The assembly also green-lighted a report by Jaana Pelkonen, of the EPP and Finland, urging governments to make Internet access a universal service requirement and adopt strict net neutrality rules.

With the Internet-enabled ubiquity of high-speed communications, definitions of the FCC’s once sector-specific market have expanded to touch other government agencies, including the FTC. This year’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision striking down some FCC net neutrality rules (CD Jan 15 p1), but empowering the commission to regulate the Internet under Telecom Act Section 706, further overlapped the agencies, said some observers in interviews.

Two issues being hotly debated in state capitals and the FCC could land in Congress’ lap as part any Telecom Act update, said officials at associations for state and local governments and interest groups in recent interviews. Much will depend on FCC actions, but a commission move to preempt state laws that throw up obstacles to creating municipal broadband networks would run into the objection of state legislatures, particularly from those that have passed laws they see as protecting taxpayers from potential boondoggles, said Utah Senate President Pro-Tem Curt Bramble, a Republican.