Senate Indian Affairs Committee members urged FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn to consider how proposed reforms of the Universal Service Fund could negatively affect rural and native communities, during a hearing Thursday. In particular, lawmakers took issue with the hurdles and cost of the FCC’s waiver process for telecommunications companies that cannot adjust to the USF reforms.

NAPA, Calif. -- A December ITU conference could lay the groundwork for far-reaching regulation of the Internet by treaty, though it probably won’t be any “absolute catastrophe” in its concrete results, said Ed Black, Computer & Communications Industry Association president, Thursday. The one-country, one-vote World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai takes international pro-regulatory discussions of recent years “to a whole new level” because it’s dealing with proposals for binding obligations, said Sally Wentworth, Internet Society senior manager-public policy. They spoke at the Tech Policy Summit.

DALLAS -- The FCC should do more to encourage secondary markets for spectrum, Commissioner Robert McDowell told the Telecommunications Industry Association conference. In a speech where he discussed a spectrum policy to promote U.S. growth and make the economy more “reliably business friendly,” he revisited critiques of the FCC for taking too long to review deals and discussed ways frequencies can be used more efficiently. Over the past decade, major transactions have taken an average of 321 days to get approved, and the commission’s voluntary 180-day clock to review deals means little when commission staff frequently stop it at will, McDowell said.

Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., said spectrum is the “big issue” facing the House Communications Subcommittee. “We know there is not enough spectrum,” the vice chairman said Wednesday night at a Phoenix Center event. Consumer preferences toward streaming video and audio are changing rapidly and “none of that happens without spectrum,” he said.

IPv6 has been “proven ready for business” after more than 3,000 websites, 60 access providers and five home router vendors moved permanently to it for the Internet Society world launch Wednesday, ISOC Chief Internet Technology Officer Leslie Daigle told a news briefing Thursday. “There are no more excuses” for not running IPv6 alongside IPv4, said Google Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf. Companies that aren’t capable of doing so must “get going,” he said. While it will take time for the technology to spread to all networks, websites and consumer equipment, some players are already looking ahead to its uses in emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), smart grids and cloud computing, they said. There’s a much larger supply of IPv6 addresses, vs. a dwindling supply of IPv4 Internet Protocol addresses.

The FTC said International Trade Commission exclusion orders in favor of a standard essential patent (SEP) holder, where infringement is based on implementation of standardized technology, “has the potential to cause substantial harm to U.S. competition, consumers and innovation.” It made the statement in response to an ITC request for comments in Investigation Nos. 337-TA-745 and 337-TA-752. The cases involve products such as iPhones and Xbox 360s.

A draft order circulated by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski earlier this week freezing further grants of pricing flexibility as the agency seeks more data on special access pricing looks likely to be the first contested order before the newly reconstituted FCC, complete with a first “no” vote from new Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai.

DALLAS -- The FCC didn’t go far enough when it started an initiative for a voluntary anti-bot code of conduct for ISPs and domain name system best practices, said Jeff Goldthorp, associate Public Safety Bureau chief for cybersecurity and communications reliability. “We were singlemindedly focused more on the tethered environment, less on the tetherless environment,” he said on a panel at the Telecommunications Industry Association conference on Wednesday.

The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council approved a report Wednesday recommending a testbed to collect data on 911 location accuracy when calls are made inside a building. A CSRIC working group on E-911 location accuracy had been asked to prepare a report by the FCC answering eight questions on indoor location accuracy. The group decided more data must be collected first to get a better handle on the topic, even as more people are using cellphones to call 911, in and out of their homes.

The draft version of the future International Telecommunication Regulations includes “this fuzzy boundary between ’telecom’ and ‘Internet,'” said Syracuse University Professor Milton Mueller, a day after he urged the U.S. government to provide access to the draft. The draft of the document, called TD64, was sent to him in a “mysterious email,” Mueller wrote, and it was posted on the website of the Internet Governance Project (http://xrl.us/bnava8). The ITU secretariat said it did not see a problem with the publication/leak.