Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., plans to reintroduce her Universal Service Fund bill the week of March 1, after the Presidents’ Day recess, a spokeswoman said Monday. She said Matsui plans to discuss the bill at Wednesday’s House Communications Subcommittee hearing. The measure would create a USF Lifeline program to subsidize broadband service for low-income Americans. The bill isn’t directly tied to net neutrality, the hearing’s topic, but is part of the “broader discussion” about expanding Internet access, the spokeswoman said.

The FCC’s failure to deal with VoIP endangers the commission’s broader Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime reforms, said Windstream Vice President for Federal Government Affairs Eric Einhorn Monday. The commission’s rulemaking notice isn’t definitive about VoIP traffic, he said at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ winter meeting, and without clarity nagging questions “could unravel the system before we even get to intercarrier compensation reform.” Einhorn was part of a panel on USF/intercarrier comp reform.

The Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance is turning to Genevieve Morelli as president to help beef up its membership and lead the association through the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation overhauls, the group said Monday. Corporate acquisitions including Windstream-Iowa Telecom, CenturyLink-Embarq and the pending CenturyLink-Qwest deal are cutting into the association’s membership, said board Chairman Matthew Dosch.

The FCC may have punted on contribution overhaul in its Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation rulemaking notice (CD Feb 9 p1), but some changes it proposes will lead to increased calls for taking up contributions sooner rather than later, said Bingham telecom lawyer Andy Lipman. The notice, approved 5-0 Tuesday, makes it clear that the commission wants to ease intercarrier compensation payments down, he said. “In part, that’s going to be made up with additional USF funding, which will in turn lead to more pressure on the fund, which in turn will create more pressure for contribution reform.”

Congress has “an obligation to get involved” in overhauling the Universal Service Fund, House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said after a subcommittee hearing Thursday. (See separate report in this issue.) He said he wants to ensure that USF money goes to places that really need it and that the fund is managed properly. “We've had some very productive discussions with some of our committee members and developed some principles and are working on some further principles,” Walden said. He said Rep. Lee Terry, D-Neb., who last year introduced a USF revamp bill with former Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., will play a key role in the discussion. Walden again said there’s no specific date for introducing the Republicans’ planned resolution of disapproval against the FCC net neutrality order, but it will happen after the order appears in the Federal Register.

Sustaining community media and its adoption of multiple communications platforms must be achieved through better infrastructure, cable franchising and other policy priorities, community media leaders said at an event late Wednesday discussing a new report at the New America Foundation. A major threat is the public’s access to distribution infrastructure, said Joshua Breitbart, an analyst for the foundation’s Open Technology Initiative: “That threat necessitates a multi-platform approach to community media.” Public, educational and governmental (PEG) channels are increasingly taking advantage of new technologies and working across other forms of media, including mobile, wireless and cable, he said. “If there are challenges or losses in one platform, there are other opportunities for distribution."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Universal Service Fund (USF) reform, net neutrality and private investment will help promote future job growth. Speaking Wednesday at an event sponsored by The Atlantic, Genachowski said the FCC is working to promote job creation through private investments by shifting service in a “targeted, efficient way” to transform the USF. He called net neutrality a “sensible step” to promote the Internet job creation and to create more investments through Internet applications and infrastructure. The FCC’s plan to modernize USF is an effort to “make sure we get the most bang for our USF buck.” By removing barriers to speed broadband deployment, he said jobs will be created by the physical buildout of networks like 4G. He said 53,000 jobs will be created to deploy the 40,000 towers needed for next-generation mobile networks. House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said he “commends” the FCC’s efforts to reform USF. “The USF program cannot carry out its critical mission because it is outdated and broken. The Fund must be modernized to support broadband networks, reformed to use public dollars wisely, and strengthened to ensure full transparency and accountability,” he said.

States aren’t expected to be squeezed out of the Universal Service Fund system anytime soon and they'll actively engage in the FCC’s USF and Intercarrier Compensation proceeding, Tony Clark, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utilities Commission, said in an interview. The FCC voted Tuesday to issue a broadly worded rulemaking notice to reshape the USF and ICC system (CD Feb 9 p1). The notice has an entire section on the role of states, an FCC official told us.

Critics of Internet regulation called the FTC’s hiring of Tim Wu (CD Feb 9 p12), credited with coining the expression “net neutrality,” an especially untimely signal that the commission will deepen its intervention in online matters. The FTC’s ability to attract prominent academics such as Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School in New York, and Chief Technology Officer Edward Felten, a Princeton University professor of computer science and public affairs, reflects that the commission “is able to take more political risks than the FCC is at this point,” said Prof. Susan Crawford of Cardozo Law School in New York, who led the transition review of the FCC in 2008 and was a White House technology adviser the next year.

The FCC took its first steps toward remaking the Universal Service Fund and the intercarrier compensation system Tuesday with a 5-0 vote in favor of a broadly worded rulemaking notice. The commission also voted to adopt a notice for a separate rulemaking that commission officials said will “streamline its data collection program” and eliminate “unneeded data collections that impose unnecessary burdens on filers.”