Georgia’s House Bill 282 is reigniting controversies and conversation on whether states should limit municipal broadband networks. Other states have debated and sometimes passed such laws in the past. The bill has attracted heavy media attention since it was introduced in early February, and last Friday FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski discouraged state legislators from passing such laws (CD Feb 19 p11). The bill proposes forbidding municipal networks if a region’s residents connect at speeds of 1.5 Mbps, a provision which has attracted intense opposition as well as support.

It’s still too soon to know how the FCC’s planned incentive spectrum auction will affect TV broadcasters, Gray TV President Bob Prather told analysts Wednesday during the company’s Q4 earning teleconference. He was asked if the auction might make the competitive environment better for stations that stay in the business by forcing weaker operators to exit. “It probably would,” he said. But “I think those auctions are still way up in the air and way down the road,” he said. “I don’t think anybody knows what’s going to happen."

Dish Network has “seven years to build out” under the requirements of its 2-GHz wireless spectrum licenses, “and I don’t think the value of our spectrum goes down,” so the company is in no hurry to show its strategic hand, said Chairman Charles Ergen Wednesday on a quarterly earnings call. “The focus of the next year will be to figure out what’s the best path for us, with our preference being to partner with somebody that’s in the business today. We have plenty of time to do that and make the right decisions. The trick is not to lose a lot of money while you're trying to make the long-term strategic call.” Dish sister company EchoStar meanwhile is looking to expand its set-top box business as much as possible in Latin America and it’s also focused on Europe, said EchoStar Technologies President Mark Jackson. The Canadian business is down a little overall, he added on EchoStar’s Q4 conference call.

EU efforts to toughen data privacy protections are being watered down by lawmakers under intense pressure from U.S. Internet companies, public interest groups said Wednesday. Their comments followed a vote in the European Parliament Industry Committee on a report responding to the European Commission proposal for a data protection regulation to replace the existing law. One issue is whether companies should be allowed to process pseudonymous data without obtaining data subjects’ consent. The proposal to require such consent has already been defeated in the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) Committee and also failed in the Industry committee (ITRE), due, some groups say, to lobbying efforts such as a Yahoo document leaked Wednesday.

A key focus for the music video service Vevo is now mobile, especially tablets, Alex Kisch, senior vice president-business development & business affairs, told the Digital Media Wire (DMW) Music Conference in New York Wednesday. “The living room,” in general, is “going to be a big focus for us,” he said.

Unless the U.S. is able to increase the amount of available spectrum, there will be a gap between supply and demand as mobile data use continues to increase, said FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman Tuesday during a Broadband Breakfast event. Today’s smartphone and app economy “simply did not exist” in 2008; between 2009 and 2012, mobile traffic grew by 1,275 percent, and that level of growth will continue through 2017, she said. That demand is being driven by the proliferation of smartphones, and that “necessitates” the need to increase spectrum availability, Milkman said. The federal government has been engaged in a series of efforts to increase spectrum availability, including the FCC’s considerations of the 3.5 GHz and 5 GHz bands and the ongoing evaluation of the 1755-1850 MHz band. Wireless carriers have responded to the spectrum crunch by increasing their use of data caps to curb customers’ data use. While such caps are controversial, industry experts noted that the industry is changing so rapidly that it is not useful to specifically target the use of caps in the midst of larger competition issues.

Discussions were ongoing on the eighth floor of the FCC late Tuesday on a draft report and order on rules for cellphone signal boosters set for a vote at Wednesday’s meeting. A key question is whether the rules would make it easy for people to install boosters or give carriers wide discretion to keep the devices off their networks, agency officials said Tuesday. One official noted that the major carriers have all filed letters at the FCC clarifying that they plan to allow the use of boosters as long as they meet the technical requirements of the order, addressing some concerns that had arisen at the FCC. Another question getting some discussion was when the FCC should impose a deadline for selling boosters that don’t conform to the rules and the penalties for noncompliance.

The Maryland Senate Finance Committee heard arguments Tuesday for and against SB 374. The bill would require websites to label advertisements when dealing with Maryland-based users under the age of 13 and extend protections under the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) to Maryland citizens, allowing COPPA violations to be prosecuted at the state level. The bill has the support of Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler, who also leads the National Association of Attorneys General, and who testified in favor of the bill. A hearing on the House of Delegates’ companion bill took place earlier this month.

State legislators in Kansas are considering a bill on Internet Protocol-enabled services that’s at odds with a January ruling of the Kansas Corporation Commission. The state regulators asserted authority over fixed interconnected VoIP, while sponsors of Kansas’s House Bill 2326 propose, like more than two dozen other states, that state utility commissions should have very limited authority over IP-enabled technology. The Kansas bill attracted initial supporters from the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Voice on the Net Coalition. Other state bills limiting IP regulation are moving forward in Wyoming (CD Feb 1 p7), Arizona and other states.

Demand for Rural Utilities Service loan funds dropped to 37 percent of the total amount of loan funds appropriated by Congress in FY 2012, Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack and Rural Utilities Service Acting Administrator John Padalino told FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Feb. 8, according to a letter sent Friday (http://bit.ly/UEgr4z). Current and prospective borrowers say they're hesitant to increase their outstanding debt and move forward with planned construction due to “the recently implemented reductions in USF support” and intercarrier compensation payments, Vilsack and Padalino said. The FCC must take action “to help restore certainty and stability for rural broadband investment,” they said.