Pay-TV providers wanting to carry networks owned by cable operators that aren’t being licensed to competitors may still bring complaints to the FCC after Oct. 5, when the agency’s ban on exclusive contracts among vertically integrated cable programmers expires, industry and commission officials said Monday. They said a draft order allowing the ban to sunset that circulated last week (CD Sept 17 p2) lays out a way, similar to the FCC’s 2010 “terrestrial loophole” order, which would let aggrieved distributors bring complaints to the commission under Section 628(b) of the Communications Act. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.

The FCC will forbear from applying Section 652(b) of the Telecom Act to cable acquisitions of CLECs, it said in an order Monday (http://xrl.us/bnp6sw). As expected, the order was unanimously approved (CD Sept 6 p4). “By granting limited forbearance from section 652(b), we harmonize the rules that apply to transactions between competitive LECs and cable operators regardless of which entity acquires the other,” the order said. The section prohibited cable operators from acquiring more than a 10 percent interest in CLECs in the same region. NCTA had sought the forbearance, which local franchise authority (LFA) representatives opposed because it would limit their role in cable/CLEC deals.

Common misconceptions and “paranoia” on how the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications could affect the scope of Internet governance and censorship have distracted from important telecom issues that delegates to the WCIT will deal with when it meets in December, ITU officials said Monday. They called a news conference in Geneva with accompanying videoconference to “dispel the myths” about WCIT and proposed revisions to the treaty-level International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs).

With TV stations expected to bring in record political ad revenue this year, broadcasters’ windfall could limit participation in the upcoming incentive auction of broadcast licenses, industry and government sources warn. The political ad windfall could be nearly $3 billion, with both presidential campaigns eschewing spending limits and in the aftermath of a 2010 decision by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC, in which the court said the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions. But several broadcast industry experts said these fears may not come to pass.

The FTC shouldn’t find Google guilty of antitrust law violations, the company and its supporters said after an event last week organized by opponents of the company. Panelists there said Google violates antitrust laws and should face government intervention as a result of the FTC investigation.

Cable operators are preparing to test and deploy the industry’s next-generation access architecture, as their technology vendors start to churn out the necessary equipment for the converged cable access platform (CCAP). In recent interviews and webinars, cable executives said they're getting ready to try out CCAP technology in labs and in small field trials. Others said they've already started testing the new advanced technology for broadband and video service delivery, targeting commercial deployments by the end of this year or the beginning of next. Tech vendors are producing new CCAP equipment, and plan to demonstrate their gear at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers show in Orlando, Fla., next month.

A draft FCC order doesn’t extend a prohibition on exclusive deals for carriage of channels that are affiliated with cable operators beyond the current Oct. 5 sunset, agency officials said. A program access order addressing the sunset circulated late Friday, the officials said. Industry officials had said they expected the office of Chairman Julius Genachowski would circulate a draft Friday, three weeks before the rules expire.

The post-derecho 911 outages in northern Virginia were “very serious” and bordered on “catastrophic,” the Virginia State Corporation Commission wrote in an interim report Friday (http://xrl.us/bnpspc). The SCC, along with the FCC and other entities, have been investigating the outages since they occurred over a few days starting June 29.

Neutrality in local number portability administration is crucial to ensure the integrity of the porting process, telecom officials agreed in documents posted Friday in response to the FCC’s request for comment on the procurement documents submitted for the LNP database platforms and services. Most commenters encouraged quick approval of the documents submitted by the North American Portability Management’s “Future of Number Portability Administration Center Subcommittee” (FoNPAC). But Comcast asked for a revision to enable more competition on the regional level, and Telcordia Technologies said it wanted more guidance on how the neutrality provisions would be applied.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai blamed regulatory uncertainty for a sluggish economy and slow job growth, in remarks Friday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Pai, a Republican, presented a counter argument to Chairman Julius Genachowski, who has linked broadband expansion and job growth in numerous speeches over the last year (CD June 4 p1).