By Adrianne Kroepsch, CQ Staff

Communications and technology topics will be the focus of a new Senate subcommittee, Commerce, Science and Transportation Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV announced Thursday.

Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is restoring the communications and technology portfolio to subcommittee status after a four-year stint at the full-committee level under previous chairmen Daniel K. Inouye , D-Hawaii, and Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

John Kerry , D-Mass., will lead the subcommittee. John Ensign of Nevada will serve as its ranking Republican.

Rockefeller is expected to handle some telecommunications topics at the full committee level, however — particularly subjects in which he is an activist, such as rural broadband deployment and oversight of the multibillion-dollar Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes rural telephone lines.

Kerry said he is eager to get to work on the digital television transition, now scheduled for June 12, as well as promote diversity in media ownership and improve communications networks for first-responders. “There’s a huge agenda on our plates,” he said.

Aides said they expect the procedural move’s effect on communications policy to be neutral.

The panel’s structure now mirrors that at its sister committee in the House, the Energy and Commerce panel, which long has had a Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet.

The Senate subcommittee will have jurisdiction over the Federal Communications Commission, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

In 2005, Stevens made communications and technology a full-committee priority as part of his unsuccessful attempt to rewrite the 1996 Telecommunications Act (PL 104-104).

Stevens also didn’t want to give the communications subcommittee gavel to former full-panel chairman John McCain , R-Ariz. The two often tangled on spending issues and did not get along.

Prior to that, the Senate Commerce panel had maintained a communications subcommittee for many Congresses.

Ensign is expected to bring a deregulatory philosophy as the ranking Republican.

One telecommunications topic is infamous for sparking disagreement across the aisle: network neutrality, or the concept of regulating Internet service providers to prevent them from discriminating against certain traffic on Internet networks. Ensign and Kerry are likely to clash on that topic, aides said.