FCC and industry officials said they expect few changes to a draft that would allow the commission’s must-carry DTV viewability rules to partially sunset (CD May 25 p5) before the order’s adopted. Parties are continuing to meet with commission staff to push their arguments. Ex parte notices filed in docket 98-120 show a steady stream of visits to the commission from cable industry lawyers and executives. Much of the lobbying has focused on the two newest commissioners’ offices, filings show.

GENEVA -- Initial talks to expand the World Trade Organization (WTO) Information Technology Agreement (ITA) made a first screening of six lists of products proposed for inclusion, went through different products and discussed how to render them into a common list, sources said during technical meetings Friday. The meeting was very technical, a source said. The information technology (IT) aspect is not obvious for some products floated for inclusion, he said, referring to electric hair clippers.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in a number of recent speeches, has drawn a connection between broadband expansion and jobs. Some longtime observers view his recurring remarks on job growth as surprisingly political for an FCC chairman, even in an election year, especially since jobs are likely to be a key area of conflict between President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the presidential campaign. Other observers say the connection between broadband and jobs has always been tough to quantify.

Senior engineers from cable’s three largest equipment suppliers, in a highly unusual move for the rivals, are banding together to update the industry’s broadband platform, so it can produce much higher data speeds than current DOCSIS 3.0 technology can support. Executives from Arris, Cisco and Google’s Motorola Mobility say they're jointly promoting upgrades to the DOCSIS protocol and related areas that could enable cable operators to deliver broadband speeds as high as 10 Gbps downstream and 2 Gbps up. That would be about 100 times faster than what most operators can deliver now over DOCSIS 3.0 networks.

Cybersecurity is yet to catch on as an issue for the November elections, but it could by being tied to economic growth, job creation and national defense, said industry groups and congressional aides. Industry and consumer groups we spoke to were unaware of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s positions on cybersecurity issues, though he lists a few general defense-related cybersecurity priorities on his campaign website.

The FCC Wireline Bureau Thursday granted four petitions seeking temporary waivers of a June 1 deadline to implement new Lifeline eligibility rules (http://xrl.us/bm9yxb). The bureau gave USTelecom a six-month extension for 13 of the states indicated in its petition, as well as the eligible telecom carriers in those states that rely on the state to sign someone up for Lifeline. It also granted extensions for California to transition to a new third-party vendor and enable collection of partial Social Security information and dates of birth; and to Oregon and Colorado, which need to change their state laws to reflect new federal rules.

Motorola Solutions disagrees with NTIA’s recent decision to suspend Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) and waiver jurisdiction public safety projects and urged the agency to reconsider its suspension. The request came from CEO Greg Brown in a recent letter to the agency’s administrator Larry Strickling. Though the decision would slow down local public safety buildout, some state public safety officials saw NTIA’s action as prudent, they told us. NTIA recently suspended seven public safety grants due to concerns like potential interferences with the planned nationwide FirstNet system (CD May 14, p9).

TiVo’s isn’t spending a “ton of time” chasing Comcast-like deals, having gained its “most significant traction” with small- and medium-size U.S. cable operators, Naveen Chopra, TiVo senior vice president of corporate development and strategy, said on an earnings call. While Comcast launched TiVo Premiere DVRs last year at retail in San Francisco loaded with its Xfinity on Demand, the service has been slow to expand. The Comcast-related Premiere is due in additional markets this year, but it also was supposed to expand distribution last fall.

T-Mobile USA continued its war against Verizon Wireless’s planned purchase of advanced wireless services spectrum from four cable operators. The smaller carrier said in FCC filings and a conference call that Verizon Wireless is the least efficient of all the major wireless carriers in its use of spectrum. T-Mobile cited a study it commissioned from Roberson and Associates to dispute Verizon Wireless’s claim of superior efficiency. Verizon Wireless’s “spectral efficiency analysis” is “fundamentally and fatally flawed,” T-Mobile said. When the flaws are corrected to account for smartphone usage and compare Verizon Wireless against additional carriers, “Verizon Wireless’ spectrum efficiency is seen to lag behind that of the rest of the industry, in many cases by a wide margin” (http://xrl.us/bm9ymi), T-Mobile said.

Republican and Democratic members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security disagreed sharply Thursday on whether the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008 adequately protects U.S. citizens from federal wiretap surveillance of their email and other electronic communications. The subcommittee got very different views of the act and the protections it offers from experts called in to testify. The 2008 amendments are set to expire at the end of the year if there is no action by Congress.