Some fines issued by the FCC to college-owned stations for compliance violations could hurt student-run stations, college radio professionals and students said. Recently proposed fines of $10,000 each to Toccoa Falls College in Georgia and Rollins College in Florida were issued after the FCC found that their stations violated rules on properly maintaining public inspection files. The fines are too harsh a penalty for stations that are managed by students and funded by educational institutions, and go against the educational goal of having a station at those institutions, said attorneys representing such stations.

The FCC’s World Radiocommunication Conference Advisory Committee (WAC) formally got to work Thursday, with its first meeting at commission headquarters. WAC Chairman Scott Blake Harris told members the work they do will be critical. That point was underscored by Commissioner Ajit Pai, who opened the meeting. The WAC represents commercial interests as the administration prepares unified U.S. positions prior to the next WRC in 2015.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The robust Supreme Court jurisprudence on First Amendment law doesn’t seem to favor San Francisco’s case defending its law requiring retailers to provide information about potentially harmful effects of cellphone use at the point of sale, a judge hearing the case said during oral argument Thursday. CTIA and the city and county of San Francisco each appealed aspects of a U.S. District Court’s ruling on the law (CD Oct 31 p7), which CTIA says violates the industry’s First Amendment rights. The argument Thursday was over whether a preliminary injunction against the city from enforcing its new law should be lifted. “Let’s assume this case is going to go the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Consuelo Callahan, judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. “Tell me how you're going to get upheld there,” she asked a lawyer from San Francisco’s City Attorney’s office.

VoIP deregulation took another step forward at Wednesday hearing when the California Assembly Appropriations Committee voted 16-1 to approve SB-1161. The bill bans the California Public Utilities Commission from regulating VoIP service for the next eight years unless state statute permits it. It will now be considered by the full Assembly, after receiving Senate approval in late May and, in amended form, Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce approval in late June.

FTC commissioners failed to reach unanimity in approving a settlement with Google for alleged privacy violations concerning its placement of cookies on Apple’s Safari browser, used on both its desktop and mobile devices. They voted 4-1 -- a rare occurrence at the agency -- to approve the $22.5 million settlement with Google, with Commissioner Thomas Rosch arguing in a dissent that the pact wasn’t in the “public interest” if Google continued to deny liability. Free-market advocates carpet-bombed the FTC’s Twitter feed in an agency Q-and-A, accusing it of barebones analysis in the settlement and discouraging companies from better explaining their privacy policies.

An audit of the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA) has stirred up local officials. Critics fear a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars invested over the last 10 years in the government-run 11-city fiber project. UTOPIA Executive Director Todd Marriott said the political influence of CenturyLink and Comcast is distorting everything, from a newspaper’s editorial board to the vocal state taxpayers association to the audit itself. The audit is “more than biased,” he told us.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A review of the first wireless mobile DTV service affiliated with the Dyle group of TV stations found it was easy to set up the Samsung phone getting MetroPCS service, though there were some reception issues. The prepaid carrier Friday began selling the new Samsung smartphone, the first on the market equipped with a mobile DTV receiver capable of picking up TV station signals using the Advanced Television Systems Committee M/H standard (CD Aug 6 p17). A handful of stations in major U.S. markets are broadcasting in that format and Communications Daily purchased a phone Friday to test the service around the San Francisco-Oakland market.

As the FCC’s Broadband Measurement Group met Wednesday to plan the production of their next annual broadband speed measurement report, the commission made clear the group will produce the next report under the same data collection process that was used the first two times. “We have some disputes, some issues, between the people here in terms of the process and the policies,” said Walter Johnston, chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology’s Electromagnetic Compatibility Division. “We're not going to let that get in the way of the next report,” he said.

With a decision by federal regulators expected over the next few weeks, Verizon Wireless’s buy of AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox has faced an onslaught of “grassroots” filings in recent days, most a sentence or two in length. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless and its partners in various proposed spectrum transactions fired back at the Rural Telecommunications Group, which last week asked for a timeout on the FCC’s review of the various deals (CD Aug 6 p1). Several critics of the deal told us Wednesday FCC staff signaled recently that with a decision on the transactions near, they should get any filings with proposed transaction conditions into the record.

The president could issue an executive order on cybersecurity, an aide said Wednesday. Also that day, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., asked President Barack Obama to issue an order to secure the electrical power system from cyberattacks. John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, suggested that the White House was considering such an option. The Senate last week failed to vote on the Cybersecurity Act (S-3414). Republicans filibustered against it on GOP and business concerns it would give the federal government too much control through the Department of Homeland Security over what companies could do to protect computers and networks (CD Aug 2 p4).