NEW ORLEANS -- FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell Tuesday said the government must do what it can to get a better estimate of the actual cost of moving federal users off the 1755-1850 MHz band. NTIA Deputy Administrator Anna Gomez conceded over the weekend that NTIA’s report on the band merely repeated numbers submitted by federal agencies like the Department of Defense on their internal estimates of how much it would cost them to move operations out of the much-coveted band (CD May 8 p3). McDowell spoke on a panel at the CTIA annual meeting.

The Senate approved the nominations of Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel by unanimous consent Monday to become FCC commissioners. Pai, a Republican from Kansas, was an aide to former Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., has worked as a lawyer at the FCC and replaces former commissioner Meredith Baker, for a term ending July 1, 2016. Rosenworcel, a Democrat from Connecticut, was an aide to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and replaces former commissioner Michael Copps, in a term that ends July 1, 2015.

CAMBRIDGE, Md. -- The FCC “transformed” the USF in a series of recent orders rather than just reforming it, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn told the FCBA’s annual retreat on Saturday. “It’s a perpetual transformation of a regime we all knew needed to be modernized,” she said. “I think we all knew it was going to be difficult and will continue to be difficult. … It’s a balancing act, but it’s one worth embarking on."

CAMBRIDGE, Md. -- FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick and Chief of Staff Zac Katz denied that uncertainty created by the Comcast v. FCC decision, and pending appellate reviews of the FCC’s net neutrality and data roaming orders, have slowed agency work in other areas. Their comments came, during a discussion at the FCBA annual meeting late Friday. Schlick noted pointedly that one company, Verizon, could remove future uncertainty since it is a lead appellant challenging both orders.

The broadband adoption gap between blacks and whites is narrowing, the National Urban League’s Policy Institute said in a report released Wednesday. In 2010, the gap fell to 11 percentage points -- 56 percent for African Americans versus 67 percent for whites, according to the report. That gap is down from 19 percent the previous year, the report said. The league released the report at the NCTA, at an event attended by all three FCC commissioners.

With 555 question marks, the 182-page further notice of proposed rulemaking on contribution reform, released late Monday, contains as many questions as there are feet in the Washington Monument. Throughout the further notice, after posing several dozen questions, the commission pauses to ask whether certain proposals are consistent with its fundamental goal of being efficient, fair, and sustainable.

SILICON VALLEY -- FCC-subsidized rural telehealth projects face obstacles from excessive commission paperwork to hooking up servers located in shower stalls, the head of California’s program said Tuesday. “Those forms … they're pretty onerous,” said CEO Eric Brown of the California Telehealth Network. Asked about the complaint, the Wireline Bureau’s spokesman said by email that “the FCC launched an NPRM in 2010, which, among other things, is looking at the lessons learned in the Pilot as part of broader reform of the universal service Rural Health Care program.”

Current FCC support levels allocated for Phase II of the USF Mobility Fund are “inadequate to achieve vital universal service goals,” and the agency should use a further rulemaking notice “to make additional funding available to competitive wireless providers,” the Rural Cellular Association said in a filing. The commission could reallocate “support foregone by price cap carriers that decline to exercise their statewide right of first refusal” to the Mobility Fund, RCA suggested (http://xrl.us/bm5sbp). “RCA further argued that the Commission should free up additional funds to support mobile wireless services by eliminating excessive support flowing to rural incumbent LECs, including by lowering the prescribed rate of return and limiting permissible recovery levels for capital and operating expenses."

The California VoIP legislation (SB-1161), as amended, wouldn’t eliminate any existing regulation or prohibit any future state regulation of traditional telephone service through a landline connection, said a letter by state Sen. Alex Padilla to supporters of the bill Friday. The bill, which would ban regulation over VoIP in the state, had spurred concerns over consumer protection of basic services (CD April 18 p6). The amendments also made clear that the bill would make no change to state USF and carrier-of-last-resort laws and regulations. It wouldn’t change the right of any customer to choose to subscribe to basic landline voice service, which comes with all the state consumer protections. Additionally, for consumers who choose to get voice service through a broadband connection, the bill wouldn’t eliminate any of the federal and state consumer protections that apply to those services, which include the requirement to provide 911 service, the letter said. The bill will be next heard in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Everything’s up in the air as the further notice of proposed rulemaking on contribution reform contains many more questions than answers. The notice, approved unanimously by the FCC Friday, poses questions about what types of communications providers should contribute to the Universal Service Fund, how contributions should be assessed, and how to reduce the overall cost of contribution. The text of the notice was not released by our deadline.