A handful of early comments mainly support the provision of terrestrial services in spectrum assigned to mobile satellite service in the 2 GHz band. If what the agency proposed in a notice of proposed rulemaking becomes a rule, Dish Network will be allowed to build a wireless network. Comments on the NPRM were due at the end of the day Thursday, and some were available by our deadline in docket 12-70.

Comcast said it will change the way it bills broadband customers who access excessive amounts of data each month. It will test at least two approaches later this year to handle such users, getting rid of the monthly 250 GB cap on data usage it set in 2008, Executive Vice President David Cohen and Cathy Avgiris, general manager of communications and data services, told reporters Thursday. The move placated critics of its broadband policy some, but concerns about how Comcast treats certain Internet Protocol video (CD May 15 p3) traffic remain.

Public broadcasting is continuing to thrive in the changing media landscape as leaders find ways to streamline station operations, create a new business model and maintain partnerships geared toward education and community outreach, said Patrick Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations. APTS also is working to revive momentum in Congress behind support for the federal appropriation for public broadcasting, he said Thursday at a Media Institute luncheon in Washington.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell wants President Barack Obama to make federal agencies give the government more cooperation as the administration, commission and lawmakers want to reallocate public and privately held frequencies for wireless broadband. “I've been disappointed, I think, in the executive branch” for not doing more to encourage government to find frequencies it can move off of in favor of commercial deployment, he said Thursday. He praised the NTIA’s March report pegging at $18 billion what it would cost the government to vacate the 1755-1850 MHz band in a process it said would take 10 years (CD March 28 p1), saying that agency may not have gotten all the cooperation it needed from others. McDowell also said that at initial impression he prefers that telcos contribute to the USF based on a metric related to the amount of phone numbers a company has, he said in a taped interview to be shown this weekend on C-SPAN.

Law enforcement officials agreed on the need for standards on how location information can be collected, but said at a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday that a “probable cause” standard in a measure that Congress is considering would hinder their ability to apprehend murderers and rapists. But civil liberties and industry groups supported the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act (HR-2168) at the hearing of the House Crime Subcommittee, citing geolocation privacy as a civil liberties imperative. The bill by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, sets circumstances under which geolocation information can be obtained by law enforcement and other entities.

Fixed wireless providers need more spectrum to serve the 48 million rural Americans with no access to broadband Internet, representatives of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association told reporters Wednesday. Members of the association, which consists of about 700 small and medium-sized ISPs, were in town to advocate for access to additional spectrum for unlicensed fixed use, and to educate legislators on the value of unlicensed spectrum in bringing fixed wireless broadband to unserved and underserved areas.

The FCC anticipates a complex but efficient process in handling about 6,500 outstanding FM translator applications so that it can move forward with implementation of the Local Community Radio Act, agency officials said. “We're confident we can carry this out, but we are certainly concerned about the level of complexity and our ability to efficiently process remaining applications,” said Peter Doyle, Audio Division chief of the Media Bureau. “The processing rules that will be put in place will be strictly enforced,” he said Wednesday during a forum at the FCC: “Those folks who are seeking waivers and case-by-case determinations are going to face a very difficult path."

Senate Commerce Committee members evaluated the FCC’s positions on wireless competition, the E-rate program, net neutrality, spectrum incentive auctions and broadband deployment, during the agency’s first oversight hearing in three years. The commissioners would not say whether they planned to start an investigation into allegations of News Corp. misconduct, but said they were monitoring the situation. Newly minted FCC commissioners Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel were largely silent at the Wednesday hearing, and primarily deferred to established agency talking points.

TV Everywhere, the theme of the 2011 CES, still has “a long way to go before the vision is realized,” said Jonathan Weitz, partner at IBB Consulting Group, during a panel on the business of TV Everywhere at Streaming Media East in New York Wednesday. Looming issues include working business models to meet the needs of different content providers, a globalization path, and which devices and operating systems to support as disparate cloud-, mobile and traditional viewing devices hit the market.

A battle pitting some hardware and service suppliers against a proposed FCC rule allowing cable operators to encrypt basic-tier programming could be resolved within two months, Andrew Kippen, Boxee vice president of marketing, told us Wednesday at the Streaming Media East conference in New York. The FCC first issued the proposed rule in the fall, and Boxee has been meeting weekly with FCC staff, members of Congress, NCTA and/or cable operators since becoming aware of it in December, Kippen said. Boxee, along with Hauppauge Computer Works and Really Simple Software, has opposed scrambling and sought a compromise (CD Feb 21 p6), Kippen said. Boxee initially expected an FCC decision by February, he said.