The NAB cautioned Friday that figuring out the repacking process and international coordination issues raised by an incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum will be a huge undertaking and an auction is unlikely to start by the FCC’s 2014 target date. NAB officials called a news conference to discuss the group’s filing. Meanwhile other comments, all due Friday, were in and posted by the FCC. Officials on the eighth floor of the FCC told us last week they are anxiously awaiting the industry comments. Agency officials said they have had relatively few meetings to discuss industry concerns and most of the presentations have been relatively shallow.

Telcos and cable companies said there wasn’t enough time to sift through the hundreds of thousands of National Broadband Map (NBM) challenges by the filing deadline for reply comments in docket 10-90 Thursday. The proceeding seeks input on the process of challenging the map’s designations. The cable and phone companies agreed a new, more formal challenge method was needed, but disagreed on the specifics. In comments earlier this month, cable companies and price-cap carriers criticized the NBM as “grossly” overinclusive and underinclusive depending on where one looks (CD Jan 11 p7). The map is used to determine where Connect America Fund Phase I money can be distributed. Price-cap carriers get access to the money to help fund broadband buildout in areas the map lists as unserved.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., introduced a bill last week to authorize a study of the impact that violent videogames and video programming have on children (http://xrl.us/bocbd8). If enacted, the Violent Content Research Act would direct the FTC and the FCC to work with the National Academy of Sciences to determine if violent programming and videogames have any harmful effects on children. NCTA said it supported the bill. NAB, MPAA, and the Entertainment Software Association did not comment.

The NTIA concluded Friday that more work must be done to understand the challenges to federal agencies with operations in the 5350-5470 MHz and 5850-5925 MHz bands before the agency can conclude that they can be safely reallocated for Wi-Fi or other unlicensed use. The NTIA report comes after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced plans at CES for a proceeding on the two bands (http://xrl.us/bn953e). NTIA had no comment beyond the report.

AT&T is buying 39 of Verizon Wireless’s lower 700 MHz B-block licenses for $1.9 billion cash and the transfer of several AWS licenses. The announcement quickly drew criticism from groups advocating for public interest concerns and the interest of smaller carriers. The AWS licenses that Verizon Wireless will receive in the deal cover western markets, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, Fresno and Portland, both carriers said. The two carriers are also pursuing related spectrum agreements through private equity firm Grain Management. AT&T said it will lease three 700 MHz B-block licenses in North Carolina that Verizon Wireless is selling to Grain for $189 million -- those cover the Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh-Durham markets. AT&T also plans to sell Grain an AWS license covering Dallas, which Verizon Wireless will then lease. The FCC and the Department of Justice will need to clear the transactions covered in the deal; AT&T said it anticipates those transactions will close in the second half of the year (http://xrl.us/bocbhj).

A partisan split among the four regular FCC members on media ownership rules (CD Jan 18 p1), which may be so intractable it can’t be resolved with the unanimity Chairman Julius Genachowski seeks, could be partly addressed by using a Minority Media and Telecommunications Council proposal as the basis for a compromise, commission officials said. They said some at the commission are considering parts of MMTC’s proposal last week as a potential pathway to a compromise on how much to deregulate ownership. A much bigger determinant in the outcome of draft rules first circulated Nov. 14 remains what revisions if any Genachowski makes to the Media Bureau order, agency and industry officials said.

The FCC Friday released model rules for broadband and wireless facility siting aimed at state and local governments. “This provision will accelerate deployment and delivery of high-speed mobile broadband to communities across the nation,” the FCC said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bocbtp). “This action will create greater certainty and predictability for providers that today invest more than $25 billion per year in mobile infrastructure, one of the largest U.S. sectors for private investment.” The commission also launched a proceeding looking at how to expedite the use of temporary cell towers, cells on wheels (COWs) and cells on light trucks (COLTs), to expand cell capacity during big events like the Presidential Inauguration or the Super Bowl.

The government’s need to maintain the integrity of an investigation can outweigh the public’s right to access judicial information, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled(http://xrl.us/bocb3t). It denied an appeal from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU in U.S. v. Appelbaum, the case of three Twitter users who were not notified when the federal government sought information from the social media site in relation to an investigation of WikiLeaks and the unauthorized publishing of classified documents.

State regulators have struggled to come to terms with a problem that more and more have heard about from state residents: call completion issues. They're especially common in rural areas, from what officials can tell, they said in interviews last week. They said the FCC will have to play a key role in solving the problem. On circulation at the commission is a notice of proposed rulemaking (CD Jan 25 p1) that would mandate telcos and carriers collect data so the FCC can compare urban and rural rates of dropped calls and identify where the problem is. Several state commissioners have monitored the issue, some more formally than others, and one state commission is trying to impose penalties in the only way it’s authorized to. NARUC adopted a resolution in the summer calling on the FCC to “expeditiously” identify providers which contribute to call completion problems and take “appropriate and swift action” in penalizing them. State regulators aren’t sure how to approach the problem now, some expressing growing frustration.

A federal appeals court should not block Dish’s Hopper DVR PrimeTime Anytime and AutoHop features, said parties sympathetic to Dish’s arguments, in amicus briefs filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The briefs were filed in response to Fox’s appeal of a U.S. District Court, Los Angeles, decision not to grant Fox’s motion for an injunction. The CEA and Computer Communications Industry Association (CCIA) filed a joint brief supporting Dish. So did the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge and the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW). And a group of law professors also threw their support behind Dish. A Fox spokesman declined to comment.