Two Senate Republicans want the FCC to move forward on the USF’s $100 million Remote Areas Fund. Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire wrote a letter, dated Thursday, to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, saying: “If implemented correctly, RAF could potentially provide the most rural areas of the country, including the most rural parts of New Hampshire and Missouri, with access to advanced broadband services” (http://1.usa.gov/1fAJvU9). “We are encouraged that the Commission’s recent IP transitions item included a commitment to address the challenges of providing service to the most remote, unserved areas of the country by the end of 2014,” wrote Ayotte and Blunt. “Please provide us an update as to how the Commission plans to implement the $100 million annual RAF portion within the Universal Service Fund this year."

A bill to “strengthen privacy and data security” (HR-4215) was introduced by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., Wednesday, according to Congress.gov (http://1.usa.gov/1fAQWKY). The bill’s summary is “in progress” and the text hadn’t been received as of Thursday, it said. We couldn’t immediately reach Connolly’s office Thursday for the bill text.

The Senate Judiciary Committee plans a hearing on the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization March 26 at 10 a.m. in 226 Dirksen, it said Wednesday. The committee also confirmed, as expected, that it will postpone an oversight hearing on Comcast’s planned buy of Time Warner Cable initially planned for that day. That hearing will now be a week later, on April 2 at 10 a.m. in 226 Dirksen. Witnesses haven’t been announced for the hearings.

A key member of the House Intelligence Committee reversed course on phone surveillance. Ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., no longer wants the government to collect phone metadata in bulk, as it currently does. “We should end the government’s bulk collection of telephone metadata, but preserve the important capability the intelligence community needs to keep us safe,” Ruppersberger said in a statement. “We must design a targeted and closely overseen way to find the early indicators of domestic terrorism. We must have mandatory judicial review, we must ensure that telecommunication providers are legally required to turn over their relevant records, and we must not require them to hold their data any longer than they normally do.” The process “efficiently and effectively gets the Intelligence Community the information it needs to protect our country and her people,” he added. Ruppersberger’s advocacy is “not yet legislation” so much as “just proposed changes for the time being,” his spokeswoman told us. Ruppersberger had previously spoken publicly about crafting a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act revamp bill with committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., legislation widely expected to codify the phone surveillance practices that exist now. They both described working on that for months, up through December. That legislation has never been introduced, and one committee Democrat, Jim Himes of Connecticut, has told us it is stalled for good (CD Dec 30 p4).

The Senate Judiciary Committee bumped back its oversight hearing on the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal, an industry source told us. The committee initially planned for a hearing at the end of March, but now it will be April 2, the source said. A spokeswoman for Judiciary did not confirm whether the hearing was moved to the later date. The committee website also does not yet list the hearing on either date -- the March hearing date was first mentioned in a committee news release.

The Senate must act on the FCC Process Reform Act, said Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev. It passed the House by voice vote Tuesday. Heller introduced companion legislation to that bipartisan compromise bill earlier this year. “The Administration and the House of Representatives have weighed in on the issue of process reform,” he said, pointing to “growing momentum” for the legislation. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai also backs this bill and the FCC Consolidated Reporting Act, which the House unanimously passed last fall. “Together, these bills recognize the need to modernize the FCC to reflect our dynamic, converged communications marketplace,” Pai said. “And they would eliminate outdated mandates on the agency, streamline its operations, and make it more accountable to the public.” The FCC Process Reform Act “furthers the important objective of encouraging greater transparency and predictability in FCC decision making, and ensures that business can continue to invest and innovate with more consistent federal oversight,” NCTA said in a statement. “While agency process has improved under recent chairmen, this legislation will ensure that reforms remain in place from one administration to the next,” House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said in a statement after the bill’s passage. Consumers “deserve a transparent and responsive” FCC, Walden said on the House floor Tuesday night. He mentioned “dangerous outcomes” that can occur otherwise, bringing up the FCC’s canceled Critical Information Needs study -- a high point of controversy drawing heavy Republican criticism in recent months. The bill is widely expected to stall in the Senate.

The House Communications Subcommittee has not typically weighed in on such big deals as the proposed combination of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the panel’s Republican leader said Wednesday. “I'm going to let the experts in the agencies do their evaluation going forward,” Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., told reporters after a subcommittee hearing. “We have not generally done hearings on specific deals because we have experts in the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice and the FCC who are fully capable and competent at working through these.” But the issues of mergers and the video marketplace “may well be a topic” in the subcommittee’s Communications Act overhaul, he said. He declined to rule out a subcommittee hearing. The subcommittee had held one on the deal between Comcast and NBCUniversal.

The Telecommunications Industry Association underscored the necessity of passing the FCC Process Reform Act (HR-3675) into law, and praised the House for its scheduled floor vote Tuesday.

The potential next head of the National Security Agency is open to shifting a key U.S. phone surveillance program, as the administration and some members of Congress have indicated they want to do. “I believe, sir, with the right construct we could make that work,” Vice Admiral Michael Rogers, nominated to be the next NSA director and head of U.S. Cyber Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday at a hearing, speaking of how the government could shift possession of phone metadata collected in bulk to a third party or to service providers. He declined to weigh in on the Patriot Act Section 215 phone surveillance program’s value or effectiveness. He stressed that the program should retain “speed” and the ability to access the intelligence information “in a timely manner.” The administration should give Rogers “more support in explaining these [surveillance] programs” than before, said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., top Republican on the Intelligence Committee. Chambliss added he has some “confidence” the administration will. Chambliss also said during the hearing he is “very close” to reaching a deal with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to introduce the committee’s cybersecurity bill. Cybersecurity observers have long anticipated the committee’s bill, which they believe would most closely mirror the House-passed Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (HR-624). The “last remaining obstacle” Chambliss and Feinstein are working on deals with one of the Senate bill’s key provisions, which deals with liability protections, Chambliss said during the hearing. A Senate Intelligence bill on cybersecurity would be a “step in the right direction,” Rogers said. But, the “right answer” on cybersecurity probably will need to include improved information sharing between the federal government and critical infrastructure companies, he said.

A White House report to Congress emphasized the importance of broadband stimulus investment. “The Economic Report of the President,” as it’s titled, said one trend “that presents a major opportunity for long-term growth is the rapid advance in telecommunications technology, particularly in fast and widely available wired and wireless broadband networks, and in their capacity to allow mobile devices to take advantage of cloud computing,” it said (http://1.usa.gov/OdLAdJ). “From 2009 to 2012, annual investment in U.S. wireless networks grew more than 40 percent from $21 billion to $30 billion, and the United States now leads the world in the availability of advanced 4G wireless broadband Internet services. This infrastructure is at the center of a vibrant ecosystem that includes smartphone design, mobile app development, and the deployment of these technologies in sectors like business, health care, education, public safety, entertainment, and more.” It pointed to broadband stimulus grants that yielded more than 110,000 miles of infrastructure added or improved as well as high-speed connections made available to 20,000 community anchor institutions. The report emphasized the role of spectrum and called for “new advances in the sharing of spectrum between different users, particularly between government and private users.” It also emphasized the importance of the White House’s ConnectED initiative and attention to patents.