The Senate Commerce Committee unanimously approved amended Internet accessibility legislation by Sens. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and John Kerry, D-Mass., in a voice vote Thursday morning. The bill (S-3304) aims to increase the number of hearing aid-compatible phones, improve access to 911 emergency services, and expand and update closed captioning and video description requirements. Democrats and Republicans supported the bill, despite lingering concerns by consumer electronics companies (CED July 15 p6).

Comcast’s planned purchase of control in NBC Universal would create horizontal and vertical harms, American Cable Association (ACA) President Matt Polka told the FCC official heading review of the deal, said a filing posted in docket 10-56 Tuesday. Prof. William Rogerson of Northwestern University went through slides with review head John Flynn purporting to show those harms that previously were discussed with other commission officials (CD April 20 p18). Separately, a group opposing the deal that’s advised by ex-FCC Chairman Kevin Martin criticized Comcast’s plan to put $20 million into a venture capital fund for expanding opportunities to minority entrepreneurs (CD July 9 p1) as “extremely insulting.” The company spends that amount of money annually on basic office supplies like paper clips, said National Coalition of African American Owned Media President Stanley Washington Wednesday. “NCAAOM will not be deterred and will continue to fight for diverse ownership on the Comcast platform until they agree to a pre-merger commitment to allocate 10 percent of their channel capacity (approximately 50 Networks) to Wholly-Owned African American Media interests and widely carried on their basic tier.” That works out to committing $800 million in annual spending, Washington said. Speaking Tuesday night at an FCC informational hearing in Chicago on Comcast-NBCU, Wide Open West CEO Colleen Abdoulah again sought “robust, complete and long-lasting conditions.” Otherwise, “it will result in material harm to consumers and competition,” said Abdoulah, also on ACA’s board. Comcast’s past actions show it likely will decrease local programming on NBC Universal-owned TV stations if the deal goes through, President Tyrone Brown of opponent Media Access Project told the event. Brown is also a former FCC commissioner. “Aside from public service announcements and regional sports programming, about which Comcast is very aggressive, it has largely declined to get into the mix of creating its own local programming.” The deal would give Comcast additional incentive to favor content it owns over that owned by independent programmers, said Tennis Channel CEO Ken Solomon. The channel has made a complaint to the FCC that Comcast discriminated against it in favor of programming Comcast owns. Its pledge to add additional independent networks isn’t enough, Solomon said in his opening statement in Chicago. “This voluntary commitment does nothing to ensure that new networks will be able to obtain terms and conditions of carriage that are comparable to what Comcast offers its own affiliated networks that compete with these new networks."

Wisconsin’s Universal Service Fund will distribute a total of $1 million in grants among 27 non-profit health organizations, Gov. Jim Doyle (D) said Tuesday. “These funds will help deliver vital medical services to communities throughout Wisconsin,” Doyle said. Telemedicine grants go annually to clinics, hospitals and public health agencies for telecom equipment used in video conferencing, home health monitoring, telemedicine examination gear, wound management systems, medical data transmission systems and other hardware and software. The state received 37 applications for grants in 2010-2011, the Public Service Commission said.

Florida’s Public Service Commission designated T-Mobile an eligible telecom carrier able to receive federal Universal Service Fund support. This means T-Mobile will be able to expand its facilities more quickly in rural areas, lowering service costs to rural residents, the commission said Tuesday. T-Mobile must show annually when applying for recertification that it uses high-cost funding to invest in infrastructure in Florida. The company plans to offer the Lifeline discount service in some parts of the state. Lifeline customers, who will receive a discounted or free handset based on contract term and type of phone, will get 145 “whenever” minutes, 500 night minutes and 500 weekend minutes per month for $6.49 per month, once the $13.50 Lifeline discount is applied to a $19.99 plan.

The National Broadband Plan’s suggestions for transforming funding support for voice and broadband generated a sharp divide between small, rural carriers and larger carriers that serve both urban and rural districts. The FCC received nearly 100 comments Monday, the deadline for responding to a notice of inquiry and notice of proposed rulemaking on changing legacy support systems, bringing broadband to unserved areas before the Connect America Fund (CAF) is created and using an economic model to target support. The wireless industry also weighed in, with carriers making the case that reforms have to be competitively neutral, not giving wireline any advantages.

Rural telecommunications providers are speaking up in opposition to the National Broadband Plan, saying it will leave rural America behind and harm the providers’ ability to bring voice and Internet services to the last isolated pockets of the nation. The plan’s simultaneous goals of reaching by 2020 100 Mbps download speed for 100 million homes and 4 Mbps download speed for “universal” availability strike some as inequitable.

The FCC granted 97 waiver requests and rejected 158 from applicants denied consideration under the E-rate program on grounds they hadn’t filed on time. In four cases, the applications were filed on time and the Universal Service Administrative Co. mistakenly denied them, the commission said. The FCC granted 57 requests in cases in which the applicants filed form 471 within two weeks of the deadline, six requests in cases in which waiver requests were filed within two weeks of the deadline, three requests in which the applicants were delayed by unexpected illness or death in the family but filed within a month, and 27 requests in which the applicant filed the form 471 on time but didn’t file the form 470 or 471 certification on time. The violations were merely procedural, the commission said, so they don’t warrant complete rejection. The FCC noted that its order tells USAC to consider the applications, not necessarily to provide funding. The applications were for funding years 2001-2009.

FCC data on the Universal Service Fund released by the House Commerce Committee last week (CD July 9 p5) “clearly proves that taxpayers are paying the price” for the government’s delay in overhauling the fund, said Rural Cellular Association President Steve Berry. The commission should cut USF funding for “antiquated technologies and adopt reform mechanisms that reflect consumers’ migration from wireline to wireless,” he said.

The FCC should continue allowing E-rate money to go to basic maintenance of internal connections and Web hosting, schools wrote in comments about a rulemaking on the schools and libraries universal service program. Internet providers agreed with the proposal’s streamlining plans but asked that any expansion of the program be technology-neutral. Cristo Rey Network, which operates 23 high schools throughout the country, said it relies on E-rate funding to keep its networks operational because it can’t afford to have dedicated IT staff. Eliminating the program would add an annual expense, it said. St. John’s Catholic School of Kansas said E-rate money helps it keep its website up. “Students and their parents expect our district to provide them with timely information, and more than ever before, this information is disseminated via the Internet. … As a result of recent reductions in state funding, Kansas school districts are reducing staff to balance our budgets. … Eliminating E-rate funding for web hosting will only further hinder financially struggling districts, including ours, and our overworked staff,” it said. Cristo Rey also argued against funding programs at a per-student rate. Doing that would “cripple” small needy schools, it said. Using a hypothetical example of capping the rate at $15 a student, it said the support it would receive for a typical project would decrease to 2.4 percent from 90 percent. Charter Communications, however, said it supports the per-student cap. With a cap and the elimination of the 2-in-5 rule, which limits an eligible entity’s receipt of discounts on internal connections to twice every five years, schools could predict funding better, it said. Charter also supported eliminating technology plans and procurement processes that overlap with state or local requirements and suggested that funding approvals be for the length of a contract, in place of a requirement of annual requests even when a multiyear contract is in place. The E-rate Service Providers Association, though, said technology plans aren’t necessarily duplicative but can be used with both the state and the commission. Instead, applicants should be able to explain and amend technology plans, it said. In addition, Charter opposed using E-rate to subsidize leases of dark fiber. NCTA also opposed including dark fiber among the allowed services, saying that would go against the principle that “schools may not request funding for more services than are necessary for educational purposes. … Devoting a fiber network for the sole use of a school (or even a school district) would amount to over-investment in infrastructure because it goes beyond meeting the needs of students and teachers.” NCTA also said if the commission decides to provide support to off-campus Internet access, it should make the support available for wireline and wireless access. But if the FCC adds off-campus support, it would no longer be able to require that the Internet be used solely for educational purposes, the association added. Instead, the commission should adjust the support amounts to reflect the mixed uses, NCTA said. The Richmond Public Library in Virginia said almost all public schools take part in the program, but only half of public libraries do. Simplifying the regulations would help increase libraries’ participation, it said. The current discount matrix means few libraries qualify for Priority Two funding, it said. It compared the funding levels of Richmond Public Schools and itself and noted that in some years the library has been denied all Priority Two funding.

The Universal Service Administrative Co. can begin processing a funding request from 2001 that was suspended because of irregularities, the FCC Wireline Bureau said Wednesday. USAC suspended payments to Puerto Rico’s Department of Education after finding there were no computers in the audited classrooms, a violation of FCC rules for the E-rate program. The commission later issued an order directing USAC not to process funding requests for 2001 or 2002 from the department that involved Data Research Corp., because Puerto Rico’s Justice Department was investigating the company. Data Research filed a petition in 2006 asking that processing resume because the investigation was over. Now the bureau has agreed that the funding requests shouldn’t remain on hold. It ordered USAC to resume processing the 2001 department requests involving the company, applying the usual provisions for uncovering waste, fraud and abuse.