A squabble between the Senate and the White House over the status of a piece of legislation has brought to a screeching halt Robert McDowell's nomination to be an FCC commissioner.

The legislation in question concerns more than $400 million in funding requests from schools and libraries--money that comes out of the Universal Service Fund, which is overseen by the FCC. The problem, according to Senate staffers, is that FCC accounting rules "drastically limited the amount of funding for these programs."

Link By Tony Sanders, Billboard Radio Monitor

In a modest victory for broadband providers, a highly anticipated bill in the U.S. Congress does not include specific rules saying that some Internet sites must not be favored over others.

Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who heads the committee responsible for telecommunications legislation, released the text Monday and said that a hearing had been scheduled for Thursday at 10 am ET.

Link By: Declan McCullagh, Anne Broache, CNET News.com

Phone companies would be granted 10-year national video franchises with automatic renewal under a House bill released Monday afternoon by Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas).

The release of the bill sets the stage for a hearing Thursday and a possible vote next week by the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.

Reflecting changes sought by the cable industry, the 34-page bill would allow incumbent cable operators to escape local franchising in communities where phone companies are providing pay TV service or when their existing franchises are "no longer in effect."

Link By: Ted Hearn, Multichannel News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. House Republicans on Monday offered legislation aimed at easing the path for telephone carriers like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications to enter the subscription television business.

Link By: Jeremy Pelofsky, Reuters via Yahoo! News

This is an audio file of a show on Net Neutrality featuring, among others, PK's Art Brodsky and Dave McClure of the U.S. Internet Industry Association.

Link By: Margot Adler, host, Justice Talking

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) -- Telecommunications providers like AT&T Inc. intensified their efforts this week to persuade US policymakers to avoid imposing regulations on the Internet for services like streaming movies and unfettered Web access.

The "network neutrality" battle in Washington pits high-speed Internet operators against content and application providers. Network owners want to sell tiers of service to reflect bandwidth usage, while the content companies fear they will be shunted to the slow lane of the Internet or shut out unless they pay more for dedicated network service.

Link By: Jeremy Pelofsky and Robert MacMillan, Reuters via Yahoo! News

The hot debate over "Net neutrality" has spilled beyond Internet chat rooms and into Congress. The concept that those who own the "pipes" can't dictate what goes through them has made the Internet an engine for individual and economic growth. An Internet with gatekeepers threatens the Net's creative soul.

Link The Christian Science Monitor

LAS VEGAS--Executives from the two largest phone companies in the U.S. have tried to set the record straight on Net neutrality by explaining the kinds of service their companies would like to offer content providers.

Tom Tauke, executive vice president for public affairs for Verizon Communications, and Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president for AT&T, said at the TelecomNext trade show here on Wednesday that their companies have no intention of degrading or blocking other companies' traffic that rides over the public Internet.

Link By: Marguerite Reardon, CNET News.com

The Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro writes his take on the CEA debates in which Gigi participated. It's the middle section of the column. He criticizes the "total lack of understanding" by David Israelite of the National Music Publishers Association of copyright law.

Link By: Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post

LAS VEGAS--AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre, whose comments initially ignited the debate over whether new laws were needed to preserve network neutrality, said here on Tuesday that fears his company and other big network providers would block traffic on their networks are overblown.

"Any provider that blocks access to content is inviting customers to find another provider," he said. "And that's just bad business."

Link By: Marguerite Reardon, CNET News.com