Public Knowledge took to The Hill op-ed pages to argue that Congress should broadly update video marketplace rules. “The existing rules are slanted too far in favor of broadcasters,” Public Knowledge Staff Attorney John Bergmayer said (http://bit.ly/1eYgNIe). “Congress should fix this, not to benefit any one industry, but to help viewers.” He called retransmission consent rules “one piece of the puzzle” but also cited several lawmakers who have focused on different aspects of the video marketplace in need of change. He backs the elimination of “basic tier buy-through,” he said: “Under this policy, which is rooted in both statute and FCC regulation, all pay-TV customers are required to buy cable packages that include a complete broadcast lineup.” There are many “negative effects,” such as a tilting of negotiation power in favor of broadcasters and against cable companies, Bergmayer said. “It’s curious that Public Knowledge, a purported public interest group, supports eliminating the tier of channels that provides by far the most popular content and lifeline service at the lowest possible price,” NAB Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton told us. “That may be pro-Big Cable, but it’s hardly pro-consumer."

President Barack Obama signed HR-2642, known as the farm bill, into law Friday. “This bill helps rural communities by investing in hospitals and schools, affordable housing, broadband infrastructure -- all the things that help attract more businesses and make life easier for working families,” Obama said at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

The House Communications Subcommittee postponed its hearing on broadband stimulus projects, initially set for Tuesday. The subcommittee didn’t reschedule the hearing.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is expected to address the House’s rural telecom working group at the end of the month, a Hill staffer told the NARUC subcommittee in Washington Friday. Reps. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, and Peter Welch, D-Vt., announced the creation of the working group last spring. Patrick Satalin, an aide to Welch, said Wheeler would be addressing the working group. Any Communications Act overhaul will be “front and center” and leave other items “overshadowed,” said Olivia Trusty, an aide to Latta. She expects the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization process, E-rate expansion, spectrum auctions and FirstNet to be major topics in 2014. She anticipates a Communications Act revamp white paper on public safety later this year, among the others that House Republicans have promised as part of updating the Communications Act. Trusty mentioned the Republican Commerce Committee leadership request that the FCC refer any E-rate expansion to the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service and called that “a good recommendation.” Welch is focused on the potential benefits of smaller spectrum license sizes and call completion problems, which the FCC is looking at, Satalin said: “Hopefully they continue to beat the drum there.” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., sees E-rate expansion as “extremely important,” Markey Senior Policy Adviser Joey Wender said. “The next step is increasing the speed and making sure there’s access throughout buildings.” Wender mentioned the IP transition and privacy as major issues on Markey’s agenda. Josh Lynch, aide to Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., said data security and the questions on the Target breach are important. Lynch sees potential for “bipartisan consensus,” referring to the FCC Process Reform Act that cleared the House Commerce Committee in December and was introduced in the Senate last week. Those in the Senate perhaps do “need to take a look at the bill,” Wender said.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., tore into the idea of allowing a third party to hold phone metadata for surveillance rather than the government. He has already criticized the idea of phone companies holding the metadata, as some have proposed. President Barack Obama has said the government should transition away from holding the metadata, if possible. “One of the most remarkable things in my lifetime is the ignorance of people who should know better, very much including the press,” Rockefeller said Thursday during a summit on distracted driving, mentioning the third-party idea. “That would take 30 years to get people trained to the point where they're the absolute and total experts. … Nobody understands that, nobody wants to take the time to understand that, which is depressing, because it’s a very large fact, so people don’t pay attention.”

Congress must extend the bonus depreciation provision of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, CenturyLink said Thursday (http://bit.ly/1eBKtyc). The provision expired Dec. 31, and USTelecom, CTIA, NCTA, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association, Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, Telecommunications Industry Association and PCIA-The Wireless Infrastructure Association said last month it should be extended. “Bonus depreciation provides tax incentives to companies that continue to invest, or expand their investments, in a slow economy,” CenturyLink said in a post on its policy blog. “Such investments include infrastructure improvements that create new jobs and lead to increased productivity. Extending the bonus depreciation provision will provide companies with the certainty they need to make investments that will improve our global competitiveness and help drive our economy forward.” Opponents said extending the provision would be a costly, poor policy decision.

Common Cause praised the net neutrality legislation introduced by Democrats this week (http://bit.ly/1c7BYqr). Democrats introduced the bill to restore net neutrality rules vacated by a January ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “Everyone concerned about the future of our communications owes these Hill leaders a huge debt of gratitude,” said Michael Copps, special adviser to Common Cause’s Media and Democracy Reform Initiative, and a former FCC commissioner, in a statement. “Now it’s time for the FCC to seize this opportunity to guarantee an Open Internet -- not by half measures and baby steps, but by exercising the authority Congress and the Circuit Court have provided them.” Common Cause backs reclassification of broadband as a Title II telecom service. Lobbyists have told us the bill is unlikely to move in Congress but may act as a signal to the FCC.

Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., committed to “curtailing government surveillance overreach” as the new ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee’s Constitution Subcommittee, he said in a statement (http://1.usa.gov/1ixnbtC). Cohen was also named as a member of House Judiciary’s Intellectual Property Subcommittee.

CEA plans to talk about its Innovating Safety public education campaign at a Senate distracted driving summit Thursday, it said in a press release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1bvOD9y). Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is leading the summit on “Technological Solutions to Distracted Driving,” with plans for three panels in 253 Russell, the first at 10 a.m. and the last at 2:30 p.m. “We will also detail the work our association is doing as part of our Driver Device Interface Working Group, created to develop best practices for designing products that help maximize the driver’s ability to safely use consumer technologies in the car,” said CEA Vice President-Congressional Affairs Veronica O'Connell in a statement.

Avoid applying needless regulation in any Communications Act update, three Republican members of the Senate Commerce Committee wrote in a joint op-ed for The Hill (http://bit.ly/1lB613u). House Republicans announced their intent to overhaul the landmark Telecom Act of 1996 in December, with action planned for 2014 and 2015. “Unfortunately, some would still have people believe that the only way to provide real consumer choice is to have the federal government dictating how consumers are offered services and what those services might be,” said Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. “This approach is born from the mindset that regulations beget innovation and that bureaucrats in the government, not entrepreneurship, create competition.” They decried “knee-jerk regulatory prescription” and instead suggested empowering consumers through the promotion of competition. They said they welcome a rewrite of the act and emphasized the technology changes that have happened since 1996.