The World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) should consider a set of “threshold” issues at the start of its upcoming conference -- any changes to the preamble and Article 1 of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), including the definitions used in the ITRs and the agencies the treaty-level document will apply to -- before delegates tackle any other proposed revisions, the U.S. and Canada said in a proposal filed Tuesday with the ITU. “Streamlined and rapid” consideration of changes to the Preamble and Article 1 “will ensure there is consensus from the beginning of the conference on how to proceed with revisions to the ITRs,” the two nations said in the proposal. Addressing those issues at the beginning of the conference would also allow delegates to consider the impact of other ITU meetings, including the outcomes of the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly, the proposal said.

The November 2011 FCC USF order cost a rural Texas telco more than $500,000 in support, the company said. Hill Country Telephone Cooperative asked the Texas Public Utilities Commission for money from the state’s USF this fall to make up for the loss. “I've been in telecom for 34 years, and I find these days the most challenging of my career,” Hill Country General Manager Delbert Wilson told us. “This whole [FCC] transformation order has filled our industry with chaos and uncertainty."

FCC staff delayed by a year and a half the date when cable operators must begin including Internet Protocol outputs on interactive HD set-top boxes they deploy. A Media Bureau order Wednesday partly granted TiVo’s waiver request, as expected (CD Nov 16 p4). The order came three days before an interoperability deadline that makers of consumer electronics, cable operators large and small and Verizon backed extending. The new deadline is June 2, 2014, for all but small operators, which get an additional three months. That was half the extra time the American Cable Association sought, though the ACA said it was happy to get the accommodation.

Collecting mobile broadband data is the easy part; what FCC officials really worry about is cleansing it. As the FCC and measuring firm SamKnows plan to record data on mobile broadband usage, officials are focused on developing privacy policies to protect personal information “without compromising the richness of the data set,” said SamKnows representative Alex Salter in a meeting Wednesday on the nascent mobile measurement program. The U.K.-based firm has a contract to help with data collection through 2013.

Several leading Democrats on the House Judiciary IP Subcommittee questioned in a hearing Wednesday why broadcasters do not compensate performance artists for music played on terrestrial radio broadcasts. Though the hearing focused on the Internet Radio Fairness Act (IRFA) (HR-6480), the Pandora-backed bill aimed at bringing parity to the royalty rates paid by Internet, satellite and cable broadcasters, several members said the legislation fails to address the lack of royalty payments to performance artists whose music is played on broadcast airwaves. Republicans were largely silent on the issue of broadcaster compensation for performance artists, though some said they would like to see a market-based, comprehensive solution for all the stakeholders involved.

Widespread, successful ad-brokerage agreements among separately owned TV stations in the same market are leading some executives to question why the FCC wants to make attributable to the broadcaster controlling the joint sales agreements such JSAs. There are more than 100 stations in such deals, where one often lower-rated and smaller revenue outlet lets a bigger rival sell ads and they share office space and other clerical functions, our survey of brokers, lawyers and executives found. They said JSAs have become more prevalent in recent years, particularly among stations in small and mid-size markets.

Wednesday’s House Intellectual Property Subcommittee hearing on music royalty rates could set the tone for the expected debate in the next Congress over how terrestrial, cable, satellite and Internet radio should pay music royalties to artists and record labels, industry officials predicted. The subject of the hearing will be the Internet Radio Fairness Act (IRFA) (HR-6480), sponsored by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and backed by Pandora.

When AT&T asked the FCC this month to launch a proceeding on the transition from time-division multiplexing to Internet Protocol networks (CD Nov 8 p11), the telco worked “very consciously” to avoid instigating a partisan battle, said James Cicconi, AT&T senior executive vice president, at a Brookings Institution panel Tuesday on broadband as a catalyst for the digital economy (http://xrl.us/bn3r2d). Panelists called for a rethinking of the FCC’s power to review mergers, changes to the USF system, and agency acknowledgment of the legitimacy of wireless service as a substitute for wired broadband.

The Communications Workers of America union wants conditions that assure no jobs will be lost if Deutsche Telekom is allowed to buy MetroPCS, to merge it with DT’s U.S. carrier, T-Mobile. In contrast to other recently proposed mergers, the T-Mobile/MetroPCS deal has seen little official opposition. Petitions to deny were due Monday at the FCC. As of our deadline Tuesday, the only major concerns were expressed by CWA, which has long had a rocky relationship with T-Mobile. But it filed comments rather than a formal petition to deny. CWA sought the same protections for carrier workers in connection with the failed AT&T/T-Mobile deal.

An order circulating at the FCC on rules to give Dish Network authority to deploy a terrestrial service doesn’t include restrictions on selling or leasing AWS-4 spectrum to other entities, and the buildout timeframe and out-of-band emissions (OOBE) limits mainly are in line with what was outlined in the notice of proposed rulemaking, some FCC officials said.