The Women’s Media Center urged President Barack Obama to make history and appoint the first woman to chair the FCC. “We're writing to make sure that with all that crosses your desk, you see a piece of good news,” the group said Friday in a letter to the president (http://bit.ly/Yu372W). “The best qualified candidates to chair the Federal Communications Commission are all women. You will be able make good policy and good history at the same time. You have the chance to democratize the media with one key appointment when you nominate the next Chair of the Federal Communications Commission. We are writing to urge you to pick a woman.” The center lists as candidates former Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Ambassador Karen Kornbluh, current commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, and former commissioners Susan Ness and Cathy Sandoval. “While there is no easy fix to getting women into the top jobs in the telecom and media industries, the government watchdog can and should be headed by a woman,” the center said.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Friday he will leave the FCC in a matter of weeks. Industry officials told us they expect an announcement from the White House as early as this week on a replacement, with former CTIA and NCTA President Tom Wheeler still considered the likely front runner. In the interim, industry and government officials expect the White House to designate Commissioner Mignon Clyburn as the first woman to chair the commission, until a new permanent chairman is confirmed and in place.

Susan Crawford remained positive when discussing the exit of the FCC chairman on the morning he announced his departure. (See separate report in this issue.) “Julius Genachowski is an unfailingly gracious, kind man,” she said on stage after her Friday keynote at the SouthEast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors meeting in Charlotte, N.C. “He catered to a situation in which he felt his freedom of action was quite strained.”

An appeals court declined to overrule a Mississippi Public Service Commission interpretation of an interconnection agreement (ICA) between two local telcos. “It is binding law in this circuit that a federal court reviews a state utility commission’s interpretation of an ICA under an arbitrary and capricious standard,” the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/103filG). Dixie-Net Communications and AT&T Mississippi had differing interpretations of their 2007 ICA, and the MPSC had determined that AT&T was not required to pay intrastate switched access fees to Dixie-Net for those calls (http://bit.ly/14ay14f). The circuit court agreed with a lower court’s finding that MPSC’s ruling was not arbitrary and capricious.

Regulators need to be patient as the burgeoning real-time IP-to-IP communication markets sort themselves out, FCC commissioners and telco executives said Thursday at the Free State Foundation conference. Outgoing Commissioner Robert McDowell threw his support behind AT&T’s proposed deregulatory trials in some wire centers, and cautioned against well-intentioned regulations that stop innovation in its tracks. Pai denounced the Open Internet order, questioning the commission’s legal authority to act.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a presumptive candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2016, said Internet freedom will be one of his top issues as a new member of the Senate Commerce Committee. Rubio also emphasized the importance of spectrum, in a luncheon speech to the conservative Free State Foundation.

Google Fiber is coming to another city -- Olathe, Kan., the fifth-most-populous municipality in the state and located not far from the Kansas City area where Google has begun building its gigabit network. Olathe has about 125,000 residents and is about 20 miles southwest of Kansas City. The Olathe City Council unanimously voted in favor of an agreement with the tech giant Tuesday night, the city said (http://bit.ly/WDJsgw), as the company hints at more such announcements to come.

The state of Washington may change how it taxes telecom. Legislators introduced House Bill 1971 Feb. 27 and held a House Finance Committee hearing last week. Sponsored by one Democrat and one Republican, the bill would remove some tax exemptions from the law and draw millions of dollars more in taxes, as well as create a five-year state USF. The bill’s central purpose is tax parity, said House Finance Committee Chairman Reuven Carlyle (D), a bill sponsor, at the hearing. The state’s tax policies “are behind the age and the era,” he said. “We're also trying to recognize that issues like bundling ... really call us to try to get a much simpler, more consistent approach to taxation that is a better reflection of what’s happening in the marketplace."

FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn offered an impassioned defense of the Lifeline program, responding to critics who've attacked what they've called an “Obama Phone” program that sends multiple free cellphones to the poor regardless of whether they meet the qualifications. “Allow me to set the record straight,” Clyburn said, according to prepared remarks delivered at a Consumer Federation of America event Friday. “Without this program, 15 million low income families would literally be choosing between feeding their children or going without a dial tone that potentially could save their lives.” Clyburn also expressed support for Internet Protocol interconnection requirements for the exchange of voice traffic as the industry transitions to all-IP networks.

Industry forces battered the tentative principles put forth by the NARUC Telecom Task Force, saying they're out of touch and potentially harmful, while consumer and rural advocates praised the way they elevate the state role. The association of state regulators assembled the task force at its fall meeting (CD Nov 14 p5) and offered up an initial statement of principles for comment, which were due March 8. The comments were posted Friday. The principles outline states’ roles in overseeing consumer protection, public safety and reliability concerns, competition, broadband access, affordability and adoption, interconnection, universal service and regulatory diversity, all in a way that preserves evidence-based decision-making (http://bit.ly/VFfk6k). NARUC President Philip Jones has said the task force’s end goal will be a new version of the association’s 2005 white paper on federalism, to be issued later this year.