USF Reform, DTV Oversight Hearing On House Docket

House Communications, Tech & Internet Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher announced Tuesday that the panel's next hearing will on universal service reform (on March 12). Chairman Boucher said he hoped to have a bill reforming universal service done in the next several months. Also on the agenda will be a hearing on the digital television transition (sometime in the Spring before the June 12 deadline for analog). Chairman Boucher said the reason DTV was not "the most immediate" thing on the agenda was that he wanted to wait until the $650 in the economic stimulus package to jump start the converter box coupon program had been freed up and the program "reenergized."