The Senate Agriculture Committee unveiled a fresh Farm Bill Friday, including $50 million per year for the Rural Broadband Loan Program operated by the Rural Utilities Service. Congress must pass a Farm Bill every five years -- the current law expires at the end of 2012. Also last week, Agriculture Committee member Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, introduced the Connecting Rural America Act, which would reauthorize the program but provide only $20 million annually. Rural telecom companies hailed the Brown bill, aimed at further expanding broadband access to small, remote, and high poverty communities.

BRUSSELS -- The importance of private sector leadership, privatization, liberalization, competition, regulatory transparency and independence could be discussed in talks to revise the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) later this year, speakers said Thursday at a workshop (CD April 20 p7). Economic issues drew the strongest concerns from participants at the event hosted by the ITU and the European Telecommunications’ Network Operators Association (ETNO). An ITU Council working group meets on conference preparations the week of April 23.

Some at the FCC are giving consideration to scaling back a draft order so TV stations can keep information on paper about how much political ads cost. Under some broadcaster proposals getting attention on the agency’s eighth floor, that data would exempt from public-file documents that must go online reporting of lowest unit charges for political spots, agency and industry officials said. They said Chairman Julius Genachowski and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn haven’t made any final decisions about whether to seek changes to a Media Bureau order tentatively scheduled for a vote at next Friday’s public meeting. But they said the potential for changes appears higher now than it did earlier last week, when Genachowski seemed set against any modifications (CD April 18 p7). Some still doubt the order will change.

Comcast and Time Warner Cable expect to upgrade a substantial number of broadband customers from the current IPv4 protocol to the newer IPv6 this year, although neither company is offering many specific details just yet. Those plans put the top two U.S. cable operators at the forefront of announced IPv6 deployments by major U.S. ISPs.

T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham questioned the timing of the announcements that Verizon Wireless was buying AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox, during a panel discussion on the deals Thursday hosted by the FCBA. Ham squared off against Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, who questioned how the FCC could turn down the deals, based on the strictures of the Communications Act. The transactions are before the agency and the Department of Justice.

A draft FCC rulemaking that will soon be approved by commissioners will look at whether noncommercial broadcasters should be allowed to devote some on-air time to raise funds for other non-profit organizations, agency officials said. But industry executives said it’s unclear how willing stations are to interrupt programming for third-party organizations. The proposal was suggested by the National Religious Broadcasters and was included in the commission’s report this summer on the information needs of communities (http://xrl.us/bkq83f). The commission is tentatively scheduled to vote on the notice of proposed rulemaking (CD April 9 p5) at next Friday’s meeting.

The FCC rescinded a ban on text-to-speech emergency alert system warnings four days before new EAS rules take effect (CD March 23 p4). A new format of emergency alert system messages that all pay-TV providers and broadcasters must implement by June 30 couldn’t have included text-to-speech warnings, under a January order on equipment certification for the Common Alerting Protocol format. An order approved by commissioners Thursday -- nine days after circulating for a vote (http://xrl.us/bmxdnu) -- reversed that ban and left consideration of part of the issue for another day.

BRUSSELS -- Revision of International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) should be a “catalyst for future development,” Malcolm Johnson, director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), told a workshop on talks to revise the treaty later this year. Most of the proposals on compensation for terminating traffic have encountered “significant skepticism” or “outright opposition,” another ITU official said. The meeting’s aim was to raise the importance of the conference in the minds of industry, Johnson said.

Verizon Communications’ Q1 profit was up 19.7 percent year-over-year to $3.9 billion. The growth was helped by gains in wireless and broadband services, Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said during a conference call Thursday. Though FiOS is a bright spot, the wireline unit continued to decline. The company will stop selling DSL services in areas where its FiOS service is available, Shammo said.

BRUSSELS -- Talks on revising the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) should focus on the high-level principles needed to spur investment and boost network capacity to meet demands in the coming decades, executives told a workshop on talks to revise the ITU treaty later this year. Internet governance issues are on the front line, said an executive representing 45 operators in 25 countries.