USTelecom responded favorably to lawmakers’ push this week (CD May 7 p2) for the FCC to expand USF support beyond the provision of voice. “Updating the Connect America Fund to encourage broadband investment by rate-of-return carriers will spur economic activity and benefit consumers,” said Vice President-Policy David Cohen in a written statement Wednesday. “A rational and predictable high-cost mechanism that includes support for broadband-only lines will enable carriers to continue to provide rural Americans with affordable high-quality communications services.” Two letters to the FCC urging an expansion were signed by 133 senators and congressmen.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., again slammed the FCC’s proposal on new net neutrality rules, this time in a video released Wednesday as part of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s NoSlowLane.com. He elaborated on the principle of net neutrality in the video, just under three minutes long. “Now net neutrality is under threat as it never has been,” Franken said. “We have to win this.” The FCC is taking up this net neutrality item at its May 15 meeting.

Legislation released Wednesday would deny the right to retransmission consent to a TV station or AM/FM radio station unless it agrees to provide compensation for transmitting a sound recording, said a news release from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. (http://1.usa.gov/1o7N091). The bill, the Protecting the Rights of Musicians Act (HR-4588) (http://1.usa.gov/1isK0fG), is co-sponsored by Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Blackburn, vice chairwoman of the House Commerce Committee.

Some witnesses plan to air grievances about Comcast’s proposed buy of Time Warner Cable during Thursday’s House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee hearing. “ACA is most concerned about the competitive effects of the proposed Comcast-TWC transaction in two intertwined industries -- the (downstream) MVPD industry, which distributes video programming to consumers, and the (upstream) video programming industry, which provides this programming to these distributors,” American Cable Association President Matthew Polka will say, according to written testimony (http://1.usa.gov/1j3bCrL). “Comcast is a behemoth in both industries.” The hearing will be at 9:30 a.m. in 2141 Rayburn. The FCC and Justice Department must approve the cable company deal, and these regulators must not “ignore or treat lightly the potential harms or provide inadequate relief” of the deal, Polka will say. Cogent Communications CEO Dave Schaeffer will slam the deal quite strongly, arguing it will hurt consumers and stifle innovation and criticizing the paid peering deals Comcast is seeking: “Fundamentally, Comcast’s strategy is to get everyone to pay them, either through paid peering with content providers like Netflix, paid peering with backbone providers like Cogent, or both,” Schaeffer will say (http://1.usa.gov/1kMpKY3). Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen and Time Warner Cable CEO Robert Marcus will also testify, defending the deal, and will submit a joint written testimony spanning more than 100 pages. The deal would yield “better broadband, video, and voice services for millions of additional consumers, while enabling the combined company to upgrade its broadband network, expand last-mile services, and increase Wi-Fi availability,” they said (http://1.usa.gov/1fUMau8). “It will make Comcast a more viable competitor for advanced business services, especially for the underserved small and medium-sized business segments, but also for regional, super-regional, and national enterprise customers.”

Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., attacked in a blog post for The Hill Tuesday the notion of paid data prioritization deals. “Allowing deals for prioritization could easily be used to favor some content at the expense of others and be used as a barrier to entry for a small startup without the resources to buy access to an Internet fast lane,” Matsui said (http://bit.ly/1iYOQRY). “We need open Internet rules that encourage companies to compete for customers without striking special deals.” She encouraged people to weigh in on net neutrality with the FCC. Net neutrality means there shouldn’t be any “'gatekeepers,’ or toll roads,” she said. The FCC is expected to vote May 15 on a net neutrality NPRM (CD May 6 p1).

Privacy advocates had mixed reactions to the House Judiciary Committee taking up the USA Freedom Act (HR-3361) for markup Wednesday at 1 p.m. as well as the substitute language key committee lawmakers plan to offer, as the committee announced earlier this week. “The mere fact that the Judiciary Committee is taking up this bill now is positive and encouraging,” the ACLU said (http://bit.ly/1kTXXHN). “The details still need to be hammered out, but the bill is certainly better than the one that the House Intelligence Committee will be considering this week, which is a non-starter.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation called the substitute a “potentially powerful approach to stopping the mass collection of phone records under the Patriot Act,” but said: “Nonetheless, we are deeply concerned about the number of ‘hops’ that the bill would permit, as well as the undefined phrase ’selection term,’ which may leave the door open to government attempts to take a nonintuitive interpretation of the language” (http://bit.ly/1if9Fg0). “We are also concerned that this bill [substitute language] omits important transparency provisions found in the USA FREEDOM Act, which are necessary to shed light on surveillance abuses.” The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute also said it was pleased the bill is being taken up but said it’s “dismayed to see that the strong transparency provisions in the original USA FREEDOM Act, which would have allowed Internet companies to engage in more reporting about the number and kind of government demands for information they receive and which were broadly supported by both industry and privacy advocates, have been removed” (http://bit.ly/1iZZFD7).

The House Communications Subcommittee received 58 responses to its Communications Act update white paper asking about spectrum policy, it said Tuesday, posting all of the comments in large batches on its website (http://1.usa.gov/1duRyNw). Comments were due late last month. Commenters included several stakeholders whose comments were already known, such as AT&T, CTIA, NCTA, NTCA, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. Other commenters included Comptel, Microsoft, Motorola Mobility, Public Knowledge, Qualcomm, the Satellite Industry Association and the Utilities Telecom Council, who weighed in on myriad spectrum policy issues, from FCC structure and spectrum management to unlicensed spectrum to how the agency handles spectrum auctions. “The priority of the auction must be to ensure an adequately competitive environment for consumer wireless access nationwide,” Public Knowledge told Congress of spectrum auctions generally. “Any additional consideration of revenue, such as deficit reduction, has too attenuated an effect on the public interest to be taken into account. Auction revenue should be irrelevant.” Recommended approaches differed notably depending on the commenter. Congress “should consider using spectrum auction revenue to create an ‘efficiency endowment fund’ to cover agency costs to experiment with new technologies or systems that would enable them to relinquish Federal spectrum,” Mobile Future said. “Without such funding and targeted budgets for these initiatives, agencies have little incentive to incur the costs and risks associated with such system and process upgrades.”

Opening statements for House Commerce Committee markup of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization draft and the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act begin Wednesday at 4 p.m. in 2123 Rayburn, said a committee news release Monday night (http://1.usa.gov/1lT8oww). The markup vote on the bills begins Thursday at 10 a.m. in the same room, it said. The STELA draft cleared the subcommittee with some tension remaining between Republicans and Democrats. They haven’t reached complete consensus on the STELA draft and are trying to hash out a compromise on the TV station joint sharing agreements provision this week, industry lobbyists told us. The DOTCOM Act (HR-4342) seeks to delay NTIA’s transition proposal of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority until a study is done by the GAO (CD April 11 p2). House Communications Subcommittee members John Shimkus, R-Ill., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., are co-sponsors of that bill, which passed the subcommittee in a markup vote along party lines last month.

Two House Homeland Security Committee subcommittees plan a joint hearing Thursday to “examine the persistent threat, assess intentions and capabilities of these bad actors, and review U.S. coordination and response efforts,” said Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., in a statement. National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center Director Larry Zelvin is among the witnesses to testify during the hearing, which the Cybersecurity and Intelligence subcommittees are co-hosting. FBI Assistant Director-Cyber Division Joseph Demarest and Glenn Lemons, DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis senior intelligence officer-Cyber Intelligence Analysis Division, are also to testify. The hearing is to begin at 10 a.m. in 311 Cannon (http://1.usa.gov/1nZJopy).

The Senate Appropriations Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Subcommittee plans a hearing Wednesday on investment in cybersecurity. Phyllis Schneck, DHS deputy undersecretary-cybersecurity, is among the DHS officials to testify. Others include Peter Edge, executive associate director-homeland security investigations, and William Noonan, U.S. Secret Service deputy special agent in charge-Criminal Investigative Division Cyber Operations. Representatives from CenturyLink, Entergy, Indiana Statewide Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives and the University of Maryland are also to testify. The hearing is to begin at 2 p.m. in 192 Dirksen (http://1.usa.gov/Su3Tyc).