Telcos, cable companies and Web brands began a campaign to promote safe practices by children on the Internet. While perhaps unintended, the effort could help fend off or dilute congressional proposals for data retention mandates on ISPs and filtering technologies on social networking websites. The Internet Education Foundation, whose Hill events in recent years have stressed a hands-off approach to such issues, is coordinating the publicity. Support is coming from AT&T, NCTA, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Qwest, Time Warner Cable, MySpace.com parent Fox Interactive Media, Facebook.com, News Corp., domain registrar Network Solutions, BlogSafety.com, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and others. A spokeswoman for USTelecom couldn’t immediately tell us whether the telco trade group was recruited -- as cable peer NCTA seems to have been -- or declined. The Foundation spokeswoman said she didn’t know if USTelecom had been approached, but said “a wide net was cast” for participants, and “anyone who could contribute materials or tools was listed as a participant.” Some entities may have been “turned off” because the group isn’t an “active coalition” and won’t take policy positions, she added. Project Online Safety provides Internet safety tools and educational materials on parental control technologies, reporting cybercrime, cyberbullying and kid-friendly sites. Participants will “devote resources toward distributing and encouraging the broadcast” of public service announcements on Internet safety sponsored by DoJ, NCMEC and the Ad Council, which will run on cable, broadcast and Internet properties. PSAs will run this spring. Participants are conducting “national traveling education programs” and training authorities on dealing with Internet predators -- www.ProjectOnlineSafety.com.

A proposed White House FY 2008 budget would double FCC spending for oversight of the Universal Service Fund, add $2 billion in interoperability funds and spend $426.3 million on the digital converter box program, according to documents submitted Mon. to Congress. OMB Dir. Rob Portman called the President’s budget request “credible” in a briefing with reporters. Portman said he consulted with Congress before drafting the document so he could be responsive to concerns.

USTelecom enlisted Howard Waltzman, ex-chief counsel, telecom and the Internet for the House Commerce Committee, to help make its case against requiring carriers to get consent from customers before sharing CPNI information with vendors. Waltzman recently left the House to join law firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.

Congress should move quickly to repeal what’s left of the federal phone excise tax, based on revised estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), USTelecom said Thurs. CBO says fully repealing the excise tax would save taxpayers about $1.5 billion over 10 years. That contrasts with a 2006 figure from the Joint Committee on Taxation of $4.5 billion. The committee follows the CBO baseline in making estimates for tax legislation. “While the IRS has already taken action to end the tax on long distance service, the remaining tax irrationally penalizes customers who still subscribe to standalone service,” USTelecom Pres. Walter McCormick said in a written statement.

Wireline and wireless carriers want the FCC to step away from proposed rules that would block carriers from sharing customer proprietary network information (CPNI) with vendors handling billing and marketing. Chmn. Martin told reporters last week that CPNI rules he has circulated would limit sharing of data among carriers and partners in joint ventures as well as independent contractors (CD Jan 18 p4). Under the revised rules, customers would have to “opt in” before private information could be shared.

Motient board member David Grain resigns, joins advisory board of subsidiary TerreStar Global… Deb Swann, ex-Verizon, becomes Society of Cable Telecom Engineers vp- mktg. & business development… Wayne Crawford, ex-NAB and CES, named exec. dir. of joint TIA-USTelecom NXTcomm trade show… Heidi Salow, ex-Sprint Nextel, joins DLA Piper’s communications, e-commerce & privacy practice as of-counsel in D.C. office.

GENEVA “Minuscule progress” occurred Thurs. toward a new broadcast treaty as WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) was meeting, said a knowledgeable diplomat. After non-govt. entities voiced concerns about the treaty, they were shepherded, along with intergovernmental organizations, from the meeting room as national delegations began negotiating behind closed doors.

Passions are sure to be high with the reintroduction of net neutrality legislation by Sens. Snowe (R-Me.) and Dorgan (D-N.D.) Tues. The Internet Freedom Preservation Act requires broadband providers to treat equally all content, applications and services on the network, without giving preference through commercial deals, and to prevent users from connecting devices to the network only if they “physically damage or substantially degrade the use” of the network by other users. The bill also prohibits providers from selling broadband only with other services, such as phone or cable, from the provider. It sets a 90-day limit for the FCC to handle complaints, and 6 months from enactment for the agency to set up rules governing complaints. A Dorgan spokesman told us the bill is identical to one introduced last Congress. The Internet has succeeded because “the marketplace picked winners and losers, not some central gatekeeper,” Dorgan said: “That freedom -- the very core of what makes the Internet what it is today -- must be preserved.” Snowe’s assessment: “The tide has turned in the debate between those who seek to maintain equality and those who would benefit from the creation of a toll road on the Internet super highway.” She’s the only Republican among cosponsors who include Kerry (Mass.), Boxer (Cal.), Leahy (Vt.), Clinton (N.Y.) and Obama (Ill.). Reactions were predictable from pro- and antineutrality camps. The bill is “a first step towards a national policy that will ensure that all consumers, not just the most affluent, have affordable access to high-speed Internet services,” Consumers Union analyst Jeannine Kenney said. The Snowe-Dorgan effort is the “next step” following AT&T’s consent not only to net- neutrality provisions in its BellSouth merger but to expanded network reach and “competitive prices to consumers -- demonstrating that neutrality and affordable access are not mutually exclusive,” said Consumer Federation of America Research Dir. Mark Cooper. Verizon continues to put quotation marks around “network neutrality” and prefers to call it “net regulation.” The legislation attempts “to solve a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Peter Davidson, senior vp-federal govt. relations. Policymakers will wonder how neutrality aids broadband deployment, especially given the proliferation of “broadband-enabled innovations” at CES this week, he added: “There is a ‘disconnect’ between consumers’ desires for new products and services and the stifling effects of this bill.” USTelecom Pres.-CEO Walter McCormick said the bill would “make it against the law for any company to invest in customized Internet service. That would mean all of us losing advances in home health monitoring, greater security of our financial transactions, new entertainment choices and telecommuting opportunities.” Brian Dietz, NCTA vp-communications, said neutrality mandates “will only stifle the investment, innovation and creativity that has been the hallmark of today’s dynamic broadband marketplace.” Free State Foundation Pres. Randolph May said Snowe and Dorgan “would have received a subpoena” from the FTC “if truth-in- labeling applied to our senators,” because they're actually trying to reimpose “analog era” common-carrier regulation.

Critics of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s revision of its broadcasting treaty (CD Aug 4 p7) are finding monsters under the bed and erasing U.S. law in their warnings, an NAB official told opponents Wed. Speaking to a roundtable organized by the Copyright Office and Patent & Trademark Office, Ben Ivins, NAB senior assoc. gen. counsel, said “the imagination truly runs wild” in harms traced to the latest draft.

The FCC should preserve and strengthen program access rules and scrutinize how cable operators “are actively thwarting new telco entry” into video by keeping them out of multiple dwelling units, USTelecom said in reply comments filed before a Dec. 29 deadline in the Commission’s annual video competition docket. “There is little doubt what would happen” if program access rules expire in 2007, USTelecom said. Under the rules, cable operators that also own programming networks must license programming to other pay-TV providers. Too many apartment buildings and condos come under exclusive access agreements with incumbent operators, said USTelecom. In separate comments, the Organization for the Promotion & Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies (OPASTCO) suggested reforming the retransmission consent rules because they hurt rural telcos’ chances of entering the video market. The FCC should “grant the American Cable Association’s petition on retransmission consent and adopt the suggested rules,” OPASTCO said. The Commission also should move to do away with confidential program carriage contracts between networks and pay-TV operators, OPASTCO said. Rural carriers can’t get “a sense of the true market value of the programming they are purchasing” without knowing what others pay, the group said. And the FCC should make it harder for cable operators to use FCC findings of effective competition to escape rate regulation, OPASTCO said. The FCC has no statutory basis on which to expand program access rules beyond “vertically- integrated, satellite delivered programming,” NCTA reply comments said: “Such increased intrusion in the marketplace would be unwarranted.” The pay TV market is already competitive, the group said: “The Commission should report to Congress once and for all that the delivery of video programming is fully competitive… [and] reject proposals for further government intrusion in the workings of a competitive marketplace.”