Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., introduced the Mobile Device Privacy Act on Wednesday, aimed at bringing greater transparency to third-party tracking of consumer devices (http://xrl.us/bnpg4t). The legislation follows last year’s revelation that diagnostic analysis providers like Carrier IQ used software to collect certain user data from cellphones, including dialed phone numbers and visited URLs. Privacy groups lauded the bill while carriers and some cellphone manufacturers declined to comment.

An FCC forthcoming order that would alter rules for use of mobile satellite services spectrum in the 2 GHz band may circulate in October, commission officials said. An order in docket 12-70 would allow Dish to use the MSS spectrum for a terrestrial network, they said. The Wireless Bureau may have been aiming for an October date to circulate a waiver order, though it’s unclear if next month will see a draft decision circulate and be voted on by FCC members, an agency official said.

The FCC offers a strong economic defense for its net neutrality rules in a filing at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, made late Monday, countering Verizon and MetroPCS’s legal challenges to the December 2010 rules (CD Sept 11 p1). The FCC’s economic argument is that rather than discourage investment, the rules have had a stimulative effect. The commission also argues that Section 706 of the Communications Act, which directs the FCC to “encourage the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans,” gives the commission authority to pass net neutrality rules. That, along with an order that explicitly tied its authority to specific statutes, make this more than simply a “rerun of Comcast,” the pleading said.

Opponents of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association’s (ETNO) proposed revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR) have misinterpreted the proposal as an attempt to regulate the Internet, said ETNO Chairman Luigi Gambardella in an interview. The U.S. has been one of the most prominent critics of the ETNO proposal in recent months, particularly since it publicly released its own ITR position ahead of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). Delegates to the conference, beginning in Dubai Dec. 3, will seek a consensus on revisions to the treaty-level ITR. Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. delegation to WCIT, has publicly criticized the ETNO proposal and other nations’ proposals that the U.S. claims could wrest control of the Internet from current stakeholders like the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers and give it to the United Nations’ ITU (CD Aug 2 p1). The U.S.’s initial WCIT filing also reflected that position (CD Aug 6 p2).

Online video distributors don’t completely replace multichannel video programming distributor service, MVPDs and a top OVD told the FCC. Both industries outlined product improvements, in comments on a notice of inquiry for an upcoming commission report to Congress on MVPD competition covering the 52 weeks through June 30. Public Knowledge wants the agency to allow OVDs to operate as MVPDs, which some pay-TV companies oppose. The last, 14th MVPD competition report -- covering four years because annual documents weren’t released as the Telecom Act required -- for the first time reviewed OVDs, and the NOI asked questions about it (http://xrl.us/bnpcgy) for the 15th report (CD July 23 p6).

SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel is eager to work with partners to develop new devices and technology platforms that can push personal computing forward, David Perlmutter, the company’s executive vice president and general manager of the architecture group and chief product officer, told the Intel Developer Forum Tuesday. He showed off some new ultrabook form factors from various manufacturers and brought out MasterCard President of Global Products and Solutions Gary Flood to tout new near-field communications (NFC) applications for e-commerce. Perlmutter also gave a preview of Intel’s next generation core processor which the company calls Haswell.

Live TV broadcasts will come to the backseats of cars through a partnership between Voxx International’s Audiovox and the Mobile Content Venture’s (MCV) Dyle Mobile DTV, executives said. “The car is one of the last places where live TV doesn’t currently reach,” said Salil Dalvi, senior vice president-mobile platform development at NBCUniversal Digital Distribution and co-general manager of MCV. “It is a great opportunity for us to extend the reach of our broadcasters to another audience.” MCV includes Fox, Ion, NBCU and a group of TV station affiliates called Pearl LLC that includes Belo, Cox, Scripps, Gannett, Hearst, Media General, Meredith, Post-Newsweek and Raycom.

Domain name registrar and Web host Go Daddy apologized for outages its users experienced Monday and denied that it had been attacked by hackers, in a press release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/QJWMJ6). It said outages -- which affected the email services and websites registered with the Arizona-based provider -- started shortly after 10 a.m. PDT, and service was fully restored by 4 p.m. PDT.

CTIA won another round of its fight against San Francisco’s cellphone labeling law. A panel of three federal appeals judges sided with the association in ruling on the cross appeals of a lower court’s injunction against the ordinance (http://xrl.us/bno8ej). The appeals stemmed from a city ordinance that would require cellphone retailers to provide information about phones’ RF emissions and information about how to limit exposure to such emissions. A lower court had approved a revised version of a fact-sheet the city could require to be distributed where cellphones are sold, but the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals disagreed Monday. The 9th Circuit’s jurists signaled they wouldn’t rule for the city, at oral argument last month (CD Aug 10 p1). A CTIA spokeswoman declined to comment. A spokesman for the San Francisco Mayor’s Office referred our query to the City Attorney’s Office, which did not immediately respond.

Economic and legal thinking on antitrust enforcement and policy concerning most-favored-nation (MFN) clauses continues to evolve at regulatory agencies and in the courts, antitrust attorneys and experts said Monday at a joint FTC-Justice Department workshop on MFNs. The clauses are used in contracts at different levels of distribution and are used in a variety of markets, said Jonathan Baker, an American University law professor. Some telecom and media deals, such as TV carriage contracts, have MFNs.