The universal service contribution base has long been broken, and will be insufficient to deploy ubiquitous broadband service unless major reforms are made. That was the consensus among industry panelists at NARUC Tuesday. But there was no agreement on how to draw funds from a system in which some customers pay for telecommunication services and some pay for information services, and panelists said figuring out interstate retail revenue is complicated.

Four public interest groups Tuesday urged the FCC to release unredacted versions of marketing agreements between Verizon, SpectrumCo and Cox filed at the FCC, as the commission examines a series of AWS license sales. The companies last month filed the agreements voluntarily (CD Jan 20 p1). But Free Press, the Media Access Project, Public Knowledge and the Greenlining Institute said the redacted filings are so full of holes they're nearly unintelligible.

The FCC issued a request for quotations (http://xrl.us/bmra7g) on a study examining how Americans meet their information needs, how the media addresses those needs and what barriers exist to providing content and services to address those needs, a Monday public notice said. The commission is asking for an analysis of the existing research to determine the utility of existing data, the notice said. “It is first necessary to examine what prior research has been conducted,” the notice said. The FCC also asked for suggestions by Feb. 27 on additional studies it should commission.

The FCC’s Lifeline reform order, released Monday, lays out in detail the mechanism the FCC has put in place to impose controls on the program. The order asserts the reforms will save “an estimated $2 billion over the next three years” but also acknowledges that without changes, the size of the program would likely soar to $2.4 billion in 2012 and $3.3 billion in 2014, from $1.7 billion last year. But the order makes clear that the commission’s overarching ambition is to expand the Lifeline program to cover broadband. The FCC also released a further rulemaking notice asking more questions.

A rulemaking notice circulated among FCC commissioners last month will seek comment on whether the commission should extend rules that require cable operators to deliver the signals of must-carry broadcast stations in both analog and digital formats, industry and FCC officials said. The rules, which the broadcast industry termed “viewability” and the cable industry “dual-carriage,” are set to expire in June, three years after the analog cutoff of 2009.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., is “optimistic” that the latest cybersecurity bill will be introduced as early as Thursday, he told us Tuesday before the Senate policy lunches. “We're moving. We will probably file it by the end of the week,” he said. Then “we are going to hold a hearing on the new bill just to give it a public airing next week.”

GENEVA -- Administrations in a sub-regional African group have “diverse positions” on the need to allocate frequencies below 790 MHz to spur mobile broadband, this month at the World Radiocommunication Conference, said a regulator who supports a cautious approach by including the possible allocations on the agenda of the 2015 conference. The 2006 regional agreement for digital broadcasting in 120 countries in Europe, Africa, parts of the Middle East and ex-Soviet states would need to be revisited, participants said.

Nebraska Public Service Commissioner Anne Boyle ended a discussion on spectrum issues at NARUC Monday by calling CTIA Vice President Chris Guttman-McCabe onto the carpet for what she said were “self serving,” misleading complaints about the high taxes paid by wireless subscribers. Much of the discussion focused on how to make more spectrum available to meet what many experts view as an inevitable spectrum crunch.

Coinstar’s new venture with Verizon gives it a long-sought digital streaming and download service, but whether that can be parlayed into wireless video business remains to be seen, analysts said. The deal with Verizon will allow Coinstar to offer “expanded content offerings and great flexibility for how and when they enjoy entertainment,” Coinstar CEO Paul Davis said in a prepared statement.

Consolidated Communications agreed to buy SureWest for $341 million in cash and stock, the companies said. The deal gives Consolidated SureWest’s 130,000 residential subscribers and 15,700 commercial businesses in the greater Sacramento and Kansas City areas. The combined companies will have about 1,775 employees. The move came less than two weeks after an analyst said Google could buy SureWest to boost its fiber initiatives. Consolidated will pay $23 per SureWest share, or an equal amount of Consolidated common stock. The per-share price represented a 47 percent premium to SureWest’s Friday closing stock price. The deal is expected to save $25 million in operating cost and $5 million to $10 million in capital expenditure, the companies said. Consolidated expects to incur merger and integration costs, excluding closing costs, of around $20 million to $25 million over the first two years after closing.