The U.S. will need to make global engagement a priority as it makes its case for its vision on Internet and telecom governance issues following last month’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), said Terry Kramer, head of the U.S.’s WCIT delegation, during a news conference Thursday. Kramer has been in Washington, holding a series of final briefings with government officials and members of the telecom industry on the outcome of WCIT and the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) produced at the conference in Dubai, which ended Dec. 14. Those briefings are Kramer’s last acts as head of the delegation; he said his appointment to the position ends Friday.

Spectrum availability and ensuring that a regulatory framework supports use of broadband will continue to take top priority at the FCC, said commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Ajit Pai Thursday at the Minority Media & Telecom Council conference. They said FCC action from last year helped advance the goal of fostering broadband availability. In 2012, the commission took up universal service reform, Clyburn said, and everyone recognized that the communications ecosystem continues to change at exponential speed and that “we needed a framework that had the capacity to keep up with the times,” she said. Clyburn said she’s proudest of having moved that along on a bipartisan basis.

Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee members are having difficulty wrapping up reports on spectrum sharing, as they continue to encounter difficulty getting the data they need from the Department of Defense and other parts of the federal government, they said. Meanwhile, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said the CSMAC will be reauthorized by the administration for another two years and current members will be asked to stick around for at least another year.

An FCC-created “logo” program that prominently displays ISPs’ speeds and prices would help consumers “make somewhat informed choices” when comparing providers, the Open Internet Advisory Committee’s transparency working group said Thursday. The group recommended that a logo have three numbers: download speed, upload speed, and price. It would be the FCC’s decision whether to make the logo mandatory, said Russell Housley, chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force, who presented the group’s report. Consumers today require a “significant amount of expertise” to compare the different Internet options available to them, Housley said. By creating a logo that encourages disclosures in the same format, it could make an “apples-to-apples comparison” easier, he said. An FCC spokesman said the commission looks forward to reviewing the committee’s recommendations.

Tely Labs hopes to build its customer base using what’s left of the Cisco umi subscriber list, which will be left without video service as of Jan. 31 when Cisco pulls the plug on the ill-fated and pricey umi telepresence service. Cisco’s umi components began at $599 when launched in 2010 and then took a price cut to $499. Amazon was selling the umi unit Thursday for $399. Reports began circulating a year ago that Cisco planned to stop selling the umi system -- comprising an HD webcam, console and remote -- but it was unclear what would happen to existing customers who were still paying the $10 monthly service fee for the HD service.

NTIA mobile privacy stakeholders met Thursday to discuss a voluntary code of conduct regarding how apps inform users what information they collect and how they use and share that information. The voluntary set of best practices, once adopted, would create an obligation for adopters, said John Verdi, NTIA director-privacy initiatives. “Once [apps] adopt, it is enforceable” by regulators including the FTC and state attorneys general, he said. Stakeholders discussed how the draft’s wording affects that obligation: “'Shall’ and must are mandatory. ‘Should’ is recommended,” Verdi summarized.

Differences have emerged between the FCC commissioners that partly follow party lines about whether they'll likely approve deregulation of media ownership in an order that goes further than the Democrats want and falls short of what the Republicans sought, said agency and industry officials Thursday. They said that with Chairman Julius Genachowski in recent days seeking a vote on draft rules he first circulated Nov. 14 (CD Nov 15 p1), without changes to the 2010 quadrennial review draft, one or both other Democratic FCC members may vote no and one or both Republicans could approve with some concerns. Genachowski sought feedback this month on the draft rules, something he didn’t do much before the Media Bureau order circulated, agency officials said.

Smartcomm was among several bidders that completed the process of acquiring a total of 16 licenses in the 700 MHz band last month, according to FCC documents. The parties had been the top bidders in a July 25, 2011, auction, designated Auction 92, which raised nearly $19.8 million. The auction was a re-auction of licenses whose winning bidder defaulted on payments after Auction 73.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell urged the commission to resist calls for limiting the use of joint sales, shared service and local news service agreements. These agreements provide efficiencies that lower operation and production costs for broadcasters, “enabling them to deploy more resources that benefit more consumers,” he said Wednesday at a Minority Media & Telecom Council event. A draft order ending the media ownership review that was due to have been completed in 2010 would attribute TV joint services agreements when to the station brokering more than 15 percent of ads for its JSA partner (CD Dec 27 p1). Companies with stations in JSAs continue lobbying the commission to not deem them attributable under ownership rules. (See separate report below in this issue.)

Cities got their day in court Wednesday in their challenge to a 2009 FCC wireless zoning shot clock order previously upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The major question that came up repeatedly as justices took up Arlington, Texas v. FCC was whether the high court should further add to already complicated case law on when an agency has jurisdiction to issue rules and whether agencies should receive deference when interpreting the scope of their own regulatory authority.