Sirius XM pays a fair royalty rate based on a situation “entirely different” from that of “pure radio” that’s dependent on the SoundExchange performance rights group, Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei said Wednesday at the company’s investor conference in New York.

As the FCC prepared Wednesday for the next phase of its broadband measurement program focusing on mobile measurement, the agency faced attacks on two fronts. House Republicans criticized the commission for sending stimulus money to a foreign measurement company, SamKnows, and for expanding into wireless testing despite difficult technical challenges. The Competitive Enterprise Institute and a coalition of free market and civil liberties groups warned that consumers who agree to test their broadband connections face “privacy risks” because the commission “appears to be collecting more personal information than necessary."

T-Mobile USA’s proposed merger with MetroPCS is unlikely to have a significant impact on U.S. tower companies if the U.S. government approves the deal as expected (CD Oct 4 p1), industry officials told us. Any carrier consolidation is likely to lead to concerns because the tower companies end up with fewer customers -- but those concerns are mitigated by the carriers’ network build-out plans, Benchmark analyst James Dobson said. “With MetroPCS forming up with T-Mobile, it gives them a stronger parent company, more of solid capital base with which to roll out their next-generation network,” he said. “Everyone’s going to these LTE networks, and if T-Mobile’s going to compete on a national scale, they're going to have to be aggressive in building out their LTE network. That’s going to ensure that the MetroPCS will also build out."

The Department of Defense understands carriers’ needs for spectrum for wireless broadband, but DOD needs certainty on its own spectrum as well, said Maj. Gen. Robert Wheeler at CTIA’s MobileCON show in San Diego Wednesday. That keynote by the DOD deputy chief information officer was a rare appearance by a senior DOD official at a CTIA conference.

GENEVA -- Talks have begun in ITU on a possible update to a patent policy for standard essential patents (SEPs) that is currently shared with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and which could affect licensing policies used by other standards development organizations, participants said after a “patent roundtable.” Industry appeared largely wary of the process, according to submissions. Regulators are “in sync” on the need to bring more clarity to certain aspects, ITU’s senior legal advisor said. A SEP is a patent that is essential to the implementation of a standard, the ITU website said.

SANTA CLARA, Cal.-- Expect a new entrant to the pay-TV industry to bring an over-the-top (OTT) multichannel video programming distributor experience to market soon, SyncTV Chief Technology Officer John Gildred told the TV Next Conference Wednesday. “We're working on that for at least one customer who is very aggressive about that concept” and is in active negotiations with programmers to license the rights to provide live and on-demand TV, he said. “It’s in development and in negotiation today.” Content providers are more open to such arrangements than they have been, even as recently as a year ago, Gildred said.

A proposal for the FCC to handle class action complaints was met with scorn, as commenters called the request “impractical,” “unnecessary,” “unlawful,” “unrealistic,” and “unworkable.” No one spoke in favor of the proposal, made in July by Solvable Frustrations (SFI), a recently formed online social network that collects customer complaints. SFI had said an FCC class complaint procedure could be an “excellent and efficient tool to address unlawful acts by carriers” (http://xrl.us/bntee2).

AT&T wants to be deregulated in more than 60 markets in Texas, it said in a petition the Texas Public Utility Commission is on the verge of approving. Post-hearing documents posted Monday show that PUC staff supports approval of the company’s corrected application to be deregulated in towns with fewer than 100,000 people (http://xrl.us/bntak4), a position the PUC has upheld in the past concerning Verizon. AT&T petitioned Aug. 3, and the PUC held a hearing on the matter in late September and required parties to file briefs by Monday.

The FCC Open Internet Advisory Committee is probing issues raised in complaints last month alleging that changes to AT&T’s policies for subscribers using Apple’s FaceTime application violate the agency’s net neutrality rules, said a presentation Tuesday during a meeting of the group. The carrier faced criticism by three nonprofit groups that its move to block customers from using Apple’s FaceTime application on an AT&T mobile device unless users subscribe to one of the carrier’s recently begun “Mobile Share” plans violated the FCC’s 2010 net neutrality order. The meeting of the advisory committee, at Harvard Law School, was the group’s second public meeting.

SILICON VALLEY -- Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said some cybersecurity legislation may need to eventually pass, even if President Barack Obama issues an executive order. Though the White House appears to be ready to address certain cybersecurity issues through an order, it can’t do it all, she said at a town hall-style event in her district Tuesday. “It would be in the hands of Congress to address liability and funding,” said the ranking member on the House Communications Subcommittee. “I think there was a lot of disappointment that this issue didn’t mature in this Congress.” Administration officials have made similar comments as Eshoo on the need for cybersecurity legislation, after a bill failed to pass late this summer in the Senate because of a threatened filibuster if it was brought to a vote (CD Oct 1 p7).