SEATTLE -- Developing data sets that separate consumer information by county and average revenue per subscriber is an expensive and difficult requirement for providers, said USTelecom Senior Vice President of Law and Policy Jonathan Banks. The task poses security and efficiency concerns to providers who want help expand broadband’s reach through the stimulus, he said during the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners’ summer meeting Tuesday.

Tighter lobbying restrictions haven’t dampened spending significantly, according to preliminary Senate disclosure reports filed Monday, the deadline for second quarter filings. The NAB spent $3.3 million in the quarter, up from $2.6 million first quarter. Sprint-Nextel reported an increase to $756,000 from $550,000. TIA’s spending rose to $195,000 from $190,000. Spending by the Consumer Electronics Association went up to $480,000 from $360,000. But Qualcomm’s spending declined slightly to $1.5 million from $1.6 million. Qwest’s total dropped to $821,000 from $980,000. T-Mobile reported a decline to $690,000 from $903,000. Second-quarter reports from AT&T, Verizon, Verizon Wireless, the NCTA and USTelecom weren’t available right away.

People sending ideas to the FCC on its national broadband plan must do better to submit realistic and workable suggestions, Blair Levin, coordinator of the commission’s plan, said Monday at the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council conference. The FCC has limited time and a limited budget, so it needs people’s “best ideas” quickly and clearly, he said. But many commenters don’t seem to recognize there are limits and that the plan must include tradeoffs, he said.

The FCC lacks authority to approve three petitions asking it to tell cable operators and telco TV providers how to handle public, educational and government channels, said a filing Monday by AT&T, the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance and USTelecom. AT&T is among the subjects of the requests (CD June 15 p12). Approving the petitions “would effectively preempt state and local government authority over PEG programming,” the filing said, and that’s contrary to the “plain language” of the Cable Act. Preventing pay-TV companies and franchising authorities from “cooperatively developing new and innovative delivery models” would be “profoundly bad policy,” it said.

With the FCC considering an investigation into the special access market (CD July 2 p1), USTelecom released a report Thursday showing “growing competition, investment and innovation in high-capacity services.” The report pulls together financial reports and other public information from phone, cable, wireless and other broadband players, said the association, which has opposed calls by competitive carriers and others for new regulation of the special access market. “In a sector characterized by entrepreneurism, growth, investment and competition, there is no rational basis to impose the drastic price controls that some are proposing, and doing so would be inconsistent with incentivizing increased investment in our nation’s broadband networks,” said USTelecom CEO Walter McCormick. Even with the report, McCormick said, the FCC must collect more data from competitive providers if it wants to “obtain a complete and accurate picture of the level of competition.” Supporters of special-access regulation condemned the study. “It may have a fancy new cover, but it’s still the same old story that tries to paper over AT&T and Verizon’s outrageous profits, prices and practices,” said a spokeswoman for the NoChokePoints Coalition. “We've offered to deliver real data to the FCC, and we hope they will act upon it soon.”

Jeff Pulver aims to “reboot telecom” by lobbying in Washington for widespread adoption of HD voice technology, the VoIP pioneer and Vonage co-founder said Tuesday. Pulver plans in September to formally introduce his effort, which seeks to make HD voice the “bare-bone minimum quality” voice standard for broadband, wireless and traditional wireline by 2015, he said.

An AT&T emergency petition on Universal Service Fund contributions is expected to flare up old arguments before the new FCC, telecom industry officials said Monday. Late Friday, the company urged “immediate commission action” to adopt the plan by AT&T and Verizon for a pure numbers-based mechanism, in light of the all-time high 12.9 percent contribution factor that kicked in earlier this month. But AT&T’s foes don’t appear to have budged on the subject.

Qwest rejoined USTelecom, nearly eight years after falling out with the association over membership dues. In 2001, USTelecom suspended Qwest as a member, saying the company was four months behind in paying membership fees and the association didn’t want to create the lower-priced class of membership that Qwest had sought. The same day, Qwest said it “resigned” from USTelecom because it didn’t fully serve its needs. Qwest has rejoined USTelecom as a tier-one member, the same level it was before, a USTelecom spokesman told us Friday. The association doesn’t give out dues information, he said. A Qwest spokesman said it had left “because we believed it to be in our best interests to do so at that time,” but today it is “very excited” to be back. In statements, executives didn’t mention Qwest’s controversial departure from USTelecom. Qwest’s return marks a “formalization” of a collaboration that’s been ongoing “for a number of years,” USTelecom Chairman Ron McCue said. Qwest Senior Vice President Steve Davis said Qwest joined “to work together with their other member companies on important communications issues such as broadband deployment, Universal Service Fund reform, and intercarrier compensation reform, including traffic pumping and phantom traffic.”

RUS and NTIA will further clarify the definitions of some major terms in the notice of funds availability (NOFA), said Cheryl Cook, the agricultural department’s deputy undersecretary for rural development, at a House subcommittee hearing Thursday. Cooke said the clarifications of the terms, including “rural” and “remote,” should come out over the next two weeks.

Verizon and USTelecom endorsed AT&T’s challenge to several audit findings (CD June 8 p6) by the Universal Service Administrative Co., in comments this week at the FCC. They said USAC was wrong when it decided that it should recover toll limitation service support from AT&T California and AT&T Nevada because the carriers requested less TLS support than allowed; that AT&T Nevada was required to separately identify and advertise supported services in Lifeline ads; and that AT&T Nevada was required to provide, on line 9 of FCC Form 497, partial or pro-rata dollars attributable to Lifeline subscribers who entered and left the Lifeline program in the same month. USTelecom said the decision on partial-month reporting in particular was a “substantive” change from the FCC’s “settled interpretation” of the issue. AT&T has previously challenged USAC decisions on partial-month reporting.