FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai wants the agency to communicate more with broadcasters to help eliminate what he said some executives perceive as a regulator disinterested in radio and TV station priorities (CD March 5 p2). In the 25 meetings he’s had in his four months as a commissioner, “I keep hearing the same thing,” he told the NAB radio show in Dallas Wednesday. “Unfortunately, it seems there’s a widespread perception that today’s FCC is largely indifferent to the fate of your business.” As FCC members are preliminarily slated to vote next week on a notice of proposed rulemaking to hold a voluntary incentive auction of TV station frequencies (CD Bulletin, Sept 7) to free up airwaves for mobile broadband, Pai sought deregulation of media ownership and foreign investment rules and an initiative focused on AM.

GENEVA -- Policymaker submissions to an ITU Global Symposium for Regulators consultation on spurring the availability of cloud services internationally echoed the importance of the technology, though policy suggestions, definitions, concerns, and ideas on how best to provide regulatory certainty varied. The consultation to the Oct. 2-4 event in Colombo, Sri Lanka, aimed at identifying approaches that policymakers and regulators can use to spur access to digital opportunities through cloud services, the ITU website said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency plans to update its list of Internet Protocol integrated public alert and warning system (IPAWS) developers (http://xrl.us/bnqhe6) to reflect uncertainty about whether vendors have completed successful tests of the system, a FEMA official said Wednesday on an agency webinar with developers. Currently, the list indicates which vendors have successfully posted a digitally signed IPAWS alert in the test environment FEMA’s set up for the open platform for emergency networks (OPEN) IP system. Because the list was initiated before FEMA began using unique digital certificates for Collaborative Operating Groups (COGs), FEMA can’t confirm whether any individual vendor has actually successfully tested the system, said Neil Graves, a technical requirements manager with FEMA’s IPAWS-OPEN.

Democratic cybersecurity hawks in the Senate renewed their call for President Barack Obama to issue an executive order to secure the nation’s critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., told us Wednesday at the Capitol that “the threat of a cyberattack is so real, we are so vulnerable, that I'm encouraged that the administration is doing work on an executive order and I think they should get it out as soon as it is ready.” John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, confirmed last week the White House is considering an executive order to secure critical infrastructure (CD Sept 18 p13). The White House had no comment Wednesday.

Telco executives and technology researchers expressed enthusiasm with the results of the FCC’s broadband measurement projects, and ticked off their wish lists for experiments to come. Speakers at a Broadband Breakfast Club panel Tuesday morning said they were pleased with the results of the voluntary measuring project, and looked forward to the commission’s new wireless broadband measurement project, set to be explored in a public meeting Friday (CD Sept 6 p3). Panelists also said trust and collegiality between ISPs and Measurement Lab (M-Lab), once strained, has been restored.

Dish Network will launch a branded satellite-based broadband service by Q4, focusing on bundling it with video to avoid competing with EchoStar’s Hughes Communications and ViaSat, said Vivek Khemka, Dish vice president-product management.

Three factors matter in managing cyber risk -- a system’s vulnerability, the likelihood of threats and the attack’s consequences, said Miles Keogh, director of grants and research at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. “Really, cybersecurity is a function of understanding risk,” he said.

Shifting some spectrum Dish wants to use to start a wireless broadband network would cause so much interference from TV station and government use that S-band receivers couldn’t be protected, the company said in a study it commissioned and filed at the FCC. As Wireless Bureau staff work toward an order expected to let Dish use the 40 MHz of mobile satellite services (MSS) spectrum for terrestrial service, moving the uplink part of it up 5 MHz is getting attention at the agency and by industry, satellite officials told us. No order has circulated for a commissioner vote, though one’s still expected to (CD Sept 12 p6) soon, agency and industry officials said Tuesday.

Three public interest groups served notice on AT&T Tuesday that they intend to file a formal complaint charging that AT&T’s decision to block customers from using Apple’s FaceTime application on an AT&T mobile device unless they subscribe to one of its recently launched “Mobile Share” plans is a violation of the FCC’s December 2010 net neutrality order. The complaint is the first major challenge filed since the rules took effect last November, public interest group officials said.

Telecom officials are concerned that sequestration will hamper federal regulatory policy and create marketplace uncertainty, said industry officials and others. Groups denounced the negative effects of an automatic 10-year, $1.2 trillion across-the-board budget cut set to begin on Jan. 2, following the release of an Office of Management and Budget sequestration report last week (CD Sept 17 p4).