The FCC will likely act this year on rules for sending text messages to 911 call centers, Public Safety Bureau Deputy Chief David Furth said Thursday during an FCC state and local government webinar. He also acknowledged there is strong concern in the bureau about the number of UHF and VHF licensees that will not meet the commission’s Jan. 1 narrowbanding deadline.

Budget constraints, the threat of spending sequestration and better efficiency are driving the need for expanded deployment of hosted payloads for government use, satellite industry officials said Thursday at the Hosted Payload Summit in Washington. The U.S. and foreign governments are realizing that hosted payload capabilities can meet their requirements for different missions, they said. Challenges, like export restrictions and spectrum approvals, are still impacting progress, they said.

Conventional wisdom about the planned FCC voluntary incentive spectrum auction holds that only the weakest broadcasters will participate. The thinking goes that stations with strong local news operations and a major network affiliation will avoid the auction while weaker full-power and Class A stations -- independents, home-shopping and religious stations -- will attempt to cash out (CD Sept 18 p1). But that overlooks two groups of TV stations that may have good reasons to consider selling their spectrum licenses at auction: Stations in actual or virtual duopolies, and the stations owned by the major broadcast networks, often referred to as owned and operated stations, or O&Os. The commission is set to approve a notice of proposed rulemaking Friday to begin setting up the auction.

Europe needs its own cloud computing strategy if it’s to lead the rest of the world as it did with GSM, Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes said Thursday. Her plan to unleash the potential of the cloud won’t affect relations with the U.S., where many key cloud services providers are located, but will give European companies the chance to compete more fairly, she said at a press briefing. Small and mid-sized businesses applauded the move, but cloud computing companies and consumers voiced concerns.

Legislative experts said minority media groups will have opportunities to advance their legislative and regulatory priorities in 2013, during a panel Wednesday hosted by the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters. Tim Johnson, legislative director for Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said next year he expects lawmakers to be active on the issues of video regulation, privacy and cybersecurity. “The business models of video providers suggest you will see a lot of evolution in the business of how video gets transmitted and who pays for it,” Johnson said.

AT&T said the FCC should reject CLEC proposals to adopt a de minimis exemption to the upcoming mandatory data request on the special access market (http://xrl.us/bnrhym). The proposals would exempt providers with less than a certain number of facilities-based building connections in a market from having to provide data. Several CLECs had made the requests, arguing an exemption could ease the burden on small companies whose data would be of little use to the commission’s analysis.

The media ownership order the FCC is drafting likely will stick with the provisions outlined in last year’s notice of proposed rulemaking for that quadrennial review, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn predicted Wednesday. With the caveat that she has not seen the draft, and none is circulating for a vote, she speculated at a conference that it won’t likely propose more deregulation than the NPRM. “It will probably retain many of the existing media ownership rules” including a ban on one company owning more than one broadcast network and existing limits on how many radio stations can be commonly owned in a market, Clyburn said. There may be “a minor modification or two” to existing rules, she said.

Federal officials ventured to Colorado in mid-September after allegations of overbuilt fiber and federal stimulus gone wrong. The concern was EAGLE-Net, a Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grantee that got $100.6 million to address what NTIA called “lack of affordable high-capacity broadband access at many rural and underserved school districts and educational institutions” (http://xrl.us/bnq84g). But the intergovernmental entity has critics who told us the grant winner overbuilt into private providers’ territory, displaying a shifting agenda and a deficit of collaboration that has left them worried. EAGLE-Net didn’t overbuild, its executives said.

LAS VEGAS -- Congress likely will take a hard look at a Telecom Act rewrite next year, Competitive Carriers Association President Steve Berry said Wednesday at the close of the association’s convention. CCA closed with a panel of carrier executives who discussed the outlook for a rewrite.

LAS VEGAS -- Competitive Carriers Association officials warn that unless the FCC approves a mandate requiring that all devices built for lower 700 MHz spectrum work across the band, CCA members are unlikely to make much of a play in the upcoming incentive auction of broadcast spectrum. CCA officials cite what they say is a statistic that shows why an interoperability mandate is critical -- members of the group invested some $2 billion in the 700 MHz auction and most to date have been unable to roll out service.