The Senate voted late Friday to approve a budget amendment that would allow states to collect e-commerce sales taxes on in-state purchases from companies that do not have a physical presence in those states. The amendment, approved 75-24, was offered by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.

Don Lewis has spent 23 years as prisoner number 1049536, held by the Virginia Department of Corrections. Phone calls used to be inexpensive, Lewis wrote in careful cursive to the FCC. Not anymore. Lewis has watched as the price of calls increased to $7 for just 20 minutes, beset by a bevy of fees and surcharges. Given the current state of technology, why can’t inmates Skype with family members, he wonders? Why can’t they text? “The state should be encouraging stronger family ties, instead of focusing on the money they make from the misfortunes of others,” he said. “It’s not a lesson you'd want to teach your children."

Otelco, a wireline provider for several states, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware Sunday, in order to restructure. The company, which is incorporated in Delaware, has $168.5 million in assets and $310.06 million in total debt, according to documents filed at the Wilmington, Del., bankruptcy court. Otelco operates 11 RLECs throughout Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Vermont and West Virginia as well as two CLECs providing telecom service in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts and is “the sole wireline telephone services provider for many of the rural communities it serves,” the documents said.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Friday he will leave the FCC in a matter of weeks. Industry officials told us they expect an announcement from the White House as early as this week on a replacement, with former CTIA and NCTA President Tom Wheeler still considered the likely front runner. In the interim, industry and government officials expect the White House to designate Commissioner Mignon Clyburn as the first woman to chair the commission, until a new permanent chairman is confirmed and in place.

Susan Crawford remained positive when discussing the exit of the FCC chairman on the morning he announced his departure. (See separate report in this issue.) “Julius Genachowski is an unfailingly gracious, kind man,” she said on stage after her Friday keynote at the SouthEast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors meeting in Charlotte, N.C. “He catered to a situation in which he felt his freedom of action was quite strained.”

Republican Senate Commerce Committee members want new FCC leaders that will keep the U.S. telecom marketplace competitive and ensure the reallocation of more spectrum for commercial wireless use, they said in separate interviews Friday. Their comments followed the announcements last week that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Commissioner Robert McDowell plan to depart the agency in the coming weeks (see separate report in this issue). President Barack Obama did not announce Friday his nomination to succeed Genachowski, but former CTIA and NCTA President Tom Wheeler remains the front runner for chairman, industry officials and Hill aides said Friday.

Broadcasters and their consulting engineers clashed with the consumer electronics and wireless industries over the merits and legality of updating the FCC’s DTV interference software for the purposes of calculating interference between stations after the planned spectrum incentive auction. The commission released an updated version of its interference prediction software described in the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology Bulletin 69 (OET-69) called TVStudy last month and asked for feedback on it (CD Feb 6 p10). CEA and CTIA each urged the agency to use the proposed changes, which they say will make the software more accurate.

The FCC declined to conclude for the third consecutive Mobile Wireless Competition Report that the wireless industry is effectively competitive. The report to Congress did say even in rural areas 65.4 percent of the population has access to at least three carriers. In non-rural areas, 92.4 percent can choose from four or more carriers and 81.3 percent from five or more.

Broadband is the fastest-growing segment of Comcast’s business, but innovation will change Comcast’s traditional cable base “more in the next five years than it has in the past 50,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told the Washington Economic Club Thursday. When Microsoft invested $1 billion in Comcast in 1997, Roberts said Bill Gates told him then that Comcast’s business would expand far beyond delivering TV service. That prediction has held true, Roberts said. Comcast has about 22 million video customers and 20 million broadband customers, he said. “Those lines will cross some time in the next couple of years and we will have just as many -- if not more -- broadband customers than we have video customers,” he said. Comcast faces a “different broadband every year,” he said. “We change the speeds, the nature of it, so Wi-Fi is now … part of our definition of broadband. So we want to have the fastest Wi-Fi as well as the fastest pipe. We want to offer you access outside of your home."

Regulators need to be patient as the burgeoning real-time IP-to-IP communication markets sort themselves out, FCC commissioners and telco executives said Thursday at the Free State Foundation conference. Outgoing Commissioner Robert McDowell threw his support behind AT&T’s proposed deregulatory trials in some wire centers, and cautioned against well-intentioned regulations that stop innovation in its tracks. Pai denounced the Open Internet order, questioning the commission’s legal authority to act.