In an order Tuesday, the FCC extended the jurisdictional separations freeze for another year to June 30, 2011. This is the third time the commission has ordered a freeze on Part 36 category relationships and jurisdictional cost allocation factors adopted by the FCC in the 2001 Separations Freeze Order. The extension will “provide stability to carriers that must comply with the commission’s jurisdictional separations rules while the commission and the joint board undertake reform,” the order said. The FCC said lifting the freeze would “create undue instability and administrative burdens” while the commission considers an overhaul.

Though time is quickly running out for the 111th Congress, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told us Tuesday he intends to push forward with a proposal to examine whether the Telecom Act needs to be rewritten. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., conceded in a separate interview that time is short.

Though time is quickly running out for the 111th Congress, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told us Tuesday he intends to push forward with a proposal to examine whether the Telecom Act needs to be rewritten. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., conceded in a separate interview that time is short.

Sprint Nextel has expanded its prepaid wireless service for low-income people, Assurance Wireless. The service, which offers a cellphone and 200 minutes of local and long-distance calling to eligible customers at no charge is launching in Maryland and Texas. The brand is available in Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Customers can qualify based on low household income or on participation in one of several government-assistance programs. Sprint receives a subsidy from the Universal Service Fund. The carrier is making progress in prepaid and probably will improve its churn this quarter, Citi Group analyst Michael Rollins said in a report Monday. Prepaid gains will continue to be offset by subscriber losses on the Nextel iDEN network, he said. But the overall customer decline will continue to slow, he predicted.

The FCC approved the 4.8 million-line transfer from Frontier to Verizon. The transaction, approved Friday, will bring “broadband to millions of consumers and small businesses and anchor institutions in 14 states,” the commission said in a news release. Frontier’s voluntary commitments include offering new broadband deployment with actual speeds of at least 1 Mbps upstream and providing the FCC with data on its deployment progress “at an unprecedented level of detail,” the commission said.

Cable operators large and small largely are unified on many issues that affect the industry, some of them high profile, that are pending before the FCC, our survey of executives found. Retransmission consent deals, where pay-TV operators contend broadcasters force them to pay unfair carriage fees, are the latest example of a unified message across operators of all sizes (CD May 20 p4) and the NCTA, representing big operators and programmers, and the small-operator lobbying group American Cable Association (ACA). Concern about FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s plan to reclassify broadband transport under parts of Title II and a desire to use cheap HD set-top boxes with integrated navigation and security features are shared by many cable system owners.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- Loosening legal restrictions on carriers and other service providers to take cybersecurity actions is a study goal under a unified federal research and development effort, a Department of Homeland Security official said. Research into improving economic incentives -- one of three broad priorities that the administration has set for funding cybersecurity research -- will include consideration of how the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and other laws can be changed to give providers, broadly defined, increased protection from liability and wider freedom of action before they must defer to law enforcement, said Douglas Maughan, the official in charge of cybersecurity research at the department. He spoke late Wednesday at an event to publicize the broader effort for a federal research agenda and invite ideas from technologists. It was held by the federal National Coordinating Office for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) in connection with the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- Loosening legal restrictions on carriers and other service providers to take cybersecurity actions is a study goal under a unified federal research and development effort, a Department of Homeland Security official said. Research into improving economic incentives -- one of three broad priorities that the administration has set for funding cybersecurity research -- will include consideration of how the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and other laws can be changed to give providers, broadly defined, increased protection from liability and wider freedom of action before they must defer to law enforcement, said Douglas Maughan, the official in charge of cybersecurity research at the department. He spoke late Wednesday at an event to publicize the broader effort for a federal research agenda and invite ideas from technologists. It was held by the federal National Coordinating Office for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) in connection with the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.

The Universal Service Administrative Co. will send more than 18,000 funding commitment decision letters notifying schools and libraries of more than $429 million in Universal Service Fund support. “This first wave is the biggest ever for the program,” USAC said in a release. The funding commitments are for telecommunications and Internet access “for all discount bands from 20 percent to 90 percent.” The letters will be sent May 26, USAC said.

The FCC should make Congress a list of National Broadband Plan recommendations that the commission believes can’t be carried out without broadband services’ having been reclassified under Title II of the Communications Act, said ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, of the Senate Commerce Committee. In a letter Wednesday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, she said the FCC gave legislators “conflicting reports” on the Comcast decision’s impact. Immediately after the decision, General Counsel Austin Schlick said the ruling had no effect on most of the plan, but when Genachowski announced his proposal to reclassify, he said the ruling threatened action on several important recommendations including a revamp for the Universal Service Fund, Hutchison noted. She also said she wasn’t satisfied with Genachowski’s reply to a letter she sent him in October about network neutrality. “Your response did not provide the information requested, including the number of investigations or enforcement actions involving alleged violations of the Internet Policy Statement that are currently pending at the Commission.” The FCC declined to comment.