Replies in the FCC proceeding on streamlining Part 25 rules for earth and space station licensing showed overall support for the commission’s effort, with some disagreement on operational and technical aspects proposed in original comments (CD Jan 16 p8). Replies in docket 12-267 were due Wednesday on the rulemaking notice approved by the FCC Sept. 28, which proposed changing definitions of terms related to satellites and the equipment on the ground with which they communicate (CD Oct 1 p10). Among the goals is to “remove unnecessary reporting rules” and consolidate “remaining requirements for annual reporting, while improving reporting of emergency contacts,” the item said (http://bit.ly/VXlc5E).

Mobile privacy stakeholders received a proposed updated code of conduct for short-form notices, which would require apps that agree to the voluntary code to disclose to users what information they collect and with which entities they share the information. The code was authored by representatives from the Application Developers Alliance, ACLU, Consumer Federation of America and World Privacy Forum, and is being discussed through a multistakeholder process facilitated by NTIA. The newest version includes shortened “Data Elements Collected” and “Data Shared” lists that must be included in short-form notices telling users if an app collects certain data or shares user data with certain third parties. NTIA Director-Privacy Initiatives John Verdi sent the discussion draft to stakeholders last week (http://xrl.us/bogyqj).

President Barack Obama touted his executive order on cybersecurity during his State of the Union speech Tuesday as a step to “strengthen our cyberdefenses by increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs, and our privacy,” and urged Congress to pass legislation to further the order’s goals. Enemies of the U.S. are “seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems,” he said. “We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy."

AT&T affirmed it will consent to the operation of all signal boosters that meet the technical requirements developed in the compromise between carriers and booster manufacturers last summer, it told aides to FCC commissioners Tuesday. It’s the latest in a string of 8th-floor meetings with carriers and the booster industry as the commission prepares to release a report and order at its Feb. 20 meeting. The circulating order aims to adopt new technical and operational requirements for boosters to “significantly enhance wireless coverage for consumers, while protecting wireless networks from interference,” according to the meeting agenda. Questions remain over whether carriers need to consent before consumers can use the products.

Witnesses representing broadcasters, satellite TV and content owners took varying stances during a hearing Wednesday of the House Communications Subcommittee on how Congress should address broadcast signal delivery rules in the proposed Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA). The existing provisions are set to expire Dec. 31, 2014, and the hearing was to help lawmakers determine whether to reauthorize the provisions or allow them to sunset (CD Feb 13 p3).

The FCC’s November 2011 USF order reflected the goals in President Barack Obama’s Tuesday State of the Union address, said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn at a lunch event Wednesday in Washington. The president’s message, as Clyburn interpreted it, was “we need to do things smarter” and “more with less,” making use of coalitions, partnerships and more, she said. She framed the FCC’s actions in recent years as emblematic of this approach. At the event, hosted by Mobile Future, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and the National Association of Neighborhoods, she spoke alongside several entrepreneurs in a discussion about how to promote innovative technologies and what regulatory structures should oversee them.

A day after Comcast said it had agreed to buy General Electric’s remaining 49 percent of NBCUniversal (CD Feb 13 p9), former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps called the deal “proof positive” that the rationale for media consolidation is to “please Wall Street,” not serve the public. “What’s missing in these deals -- and our regulatory policy -- is a commitment to the public interest, said Copps, now a special adviser to Common Cause: “It’s time we stand up to media monopolies."

The FCC required emergency alert system participants to immediately bar unauthorized use of common alerting protocol-triggered EAS alerts to radio and TV stations and subscription-video providers via the Internet, broadcast industry officials said. They said Tuesday’s FCC advisory came after some stations in Michigan and maybe Montana, too, aired a bogus alert about zombies when their CAP systems had security breached, from what appear to be non-U.S. Internet Protocol addresses. CAP isn’t yet being relied on by federal or state agencies to distribute warnings about bad weather and other hazards, since they also transmit those announcements by broadcasts. All EAS participants are required to be able to get the alerts in that format from a Federal Emergency Management Agency website (CD Sept 17 p6), and industry officials said the unauthorized access is a reminder to take security precautions that the affected stations apparently didn’t.

The FCC should bear down hard on incumbent providers of special access services, said CLECs and purchasers in response to the long-awaited order seeking data on the state of the special access marketplace (CD Dec 19 p1). ILECs have long abused their monopoly positions at the cost of competitive providers and their customers, and now is the chance for the commission to step in and declare invalid the ILECs’ exclusionary contract provisions, CLECs argued. ILECs defended their contracts, and urged the commission to dismiss CLEC arguments over the relevancy of legacy Time-division multiplexing-based services. In any market analysis, the commission must recognize that consumers are moving away from legacy special access services toward IP-based broadband services, they said. “Dial-up era talking points have no place in today’s gigabit-per-second world,” said CenturyLink.

The FirstNet board created a path that would potentially reactivate the seven broadband stimulus grantees that NTIA partially suspended last May. NTIA worried at the time that the seven public safety projects, part of the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), wouldn’t be compatible with the $7 billion public safety network of FirstNet that Congress authorized one year ago this month. On Tuesday, the FirstNet board approved a resolution (http://xrl.us/bogi6k) that kickstarts a two-part process, in which FirstNet will pursue memorandums of agreement with the seven grantees and then, pending NTIA’s approval, move them forward in ways compatible with FirstNet.