"We are at a key moment on addressing the spectrum crunch and now is a key time,” said John Leibovitz, deputy chief of the FCC Wireless Bureau. Capitol Hill aides and an NTIA representative also speaking at an event Tuesday hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation made their case as to the need for a comprehensive spectrum inventory and greater commercial/federal sharing of spectrum. The next frontier of the commission’s approach to spectrum will include more testing of band sharing, small cell use and receiver performance, Leibovitz said. The FCC is particularly eager to “move the ball” on the federal sharing of the 1755-1780 MHz band, he said.

GENEVA -- The idea of new negotiations on expanding the WTO Information Technology Agreement (ITA) to eliminate tariffs on new products won strong support during a two-day seminar and a meeting of the committee that deals with the agreement, officials said. Work on setting up a framework to best reach agreement on ITA expansion focuses in part on ironing out differences over, if and how the negotiations should address non-tariff measures (NTMs), participants said.

The full FCC put on hold implementation of an administrative law judge’s December decision requiring Comcast to carry the Tennis Channel as widely as sports networks owned by the cable operator. The new decision largely reflects an Office of General Counsel order earlier this month staying implementation of the ALJ decision in the program carriage complaint where the independent channel alleged Comcast discriminated against it (CD May 5 p3). The new stay said it “will preserve the status quo while the Commission has an adequate opportunity to examine the record and the ALJ’s disposition of each issue closely.” The cable operator challenged Chief FCC ALJ Richard Sippel’s decision, while the indie sought an order requiring the wider carriage.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google and Viacom lawyers took their epic copyright fight outside the courtroom, in a debate over putting the burden of reducing infringement over the Web on each other’s industry. Viacom’s associate general counsel for intellectual property and content protection, Stanley Pierre-Louis, proposed expansion of content filtering beyond user-generated material and of what are called graduated-response alerts by ISPs to subscribers accused of infringement. Oliver Metzger, a senior copyright counsel at Google, replied that the solution lies in attacking the demand for unauthorized content, not the supply. At the State Bar of California’s annual program “The Copyright Office Comes to California,” he proposed late Monday that all media be made available on the Web immediately on release, without sequenced windows and through at least three sale and rental mechanisms. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month reinstated a blockbuster Viacom copyright lawsuit against Google’s YouTube (CD April 6 p2).

Administrator Larry Strickling said the NTIA is requesting information on the distribution of state and local public safety implementation grants. States and localities should work on governance, regional collaboration, procurement and adoption as they provide input to FirstNet in the development of requests for proposals, state and local officials said Monday at the National Broadband Summit & Expo, where Strickling also spoke.

Citing overlapping interests, several critics of the proposed AWS license transfer from cable operators to Verizon Wireless said they're joining forces to raise the profile of the arguments against the deal . T-Mobile, Sprint, Public Knowledge and RCA are members of the new Alliance for Broadband Competition. They discussed on a teleconference with reporters Monday their concerns about the deal and the joint-marketing agreements and technology joint-venture that go with it.

The Distributed Computing Industry Association and Level 3 share Netflix’s concerns over ISPs that exclude from data caps traffic not sent on the public Internet, such as streaming video to Xbox 360 videogame consoles. The association for cloud-computing providers and Level 3, which speeds delivery of content including Netflix to broadband subscribers of companies like Comcast, were the only two entities in the Internet content realm to tell us they take issue with exceptions to data caps.

Two-thirds of consumers who watch TV are multi-tasking with other CE devices, according to a recent study by CEA. Among consumers aged 18-24 the number of viewers interacting with electronic devices jumps to 85 percent, CEA said. U.S. adults online report watching some type of video content an average of 3.2 hours a day, five days per week, CEA said, and 34 percent of U.S. adults online report watching more video content today than they did a year ago.

Facing several challenges, Verizon withdrew its petition for an increase in special access rates late Friday. Verizon’s rate increases, which foes say would have increased their rates by up to 8 percent in some areas, were scheduled to take effect Tuesday at midnight unless the FCC filed a suspension order (CD May 11 p7). “Verizon decided to withdraw its tariff filing prior to the filing becoming effective in order to focus our resources and the debate on the broader issues in the special access rulemaking proceeding,” a Verizon spokesman told us. “Those issues include continuing to demonstrate that the high-capacity marketplace is highly competitive and no additional regulations are necessary.”

The FTC’s privacy report isn’t a set of “quasi-legislative principles” that the commission can use to enforce the FTC Act, an FTC official said Monday. “Unless Congress enacts legislation, these principles are merely best practices for industry,” said Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the FTC’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection. “It’s not going to be a template for FTC enforcement.” Mithal said at a Washington event hosted by the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee that she “often gets asked” whether the “principles” enumerated in the report have quasi-legislative force.