GENEVA -- Talks stymied at the World Radiocommunication Conference, on how to handle concerns with use of cognitive radio systems (CRS) raised by Russia and certain other countries, will focus on a compromise approach that doesn’t include a conference resolution, officials said. Discussions are continuing, the chairwoman of the sub-working group on the agenda item told us.

The FCC and LightSquared drew the ire of government and industry officials Wednesday during a House Aviation Subcommittee hearing on protecting GPS. Several at the hearing pointed their fingers at LightSquared and the FCC over the issue. Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari reiterated his strong concerns about a LightSquared network and its effect on GPS systems. Industry witnesses described the predicament as a failure of regulators, especially the FCC. LightSquared and the FCC didn’t testify.

A presentation by Boxee about the utility of keeping unencrypted digital cable signals available to consumers could slow the adoption of a waiver to the FCC’s basic tier encryption rules sought by the cable industry, industry and FCC sources said. Media Bureau staff was said to be finalizing work on a draft order last month (CD Jan 25 p3).

The universal service contribution base has long been broken, and will be insufficient to deploy ubiquitous broadband service unless major reforms are made. That was the consensus among industry panelists at NARUC Tuesday. But there was no agreement on how to draw funds from a system in which some customers pay for telecommunication services and some pay for information services, and panelists said figuring out interstate retail revenue is complicated.

Four public interest groups Tuesday urged the FCC to release unredacted versions of marketing agreements between Verizon, SpectrumCo and Cox filed at the FCC, as the commission examines a series of AWS license sales. The companies last month filed the agreements voluntarily (CD Jan 20 p1). But Free Press, the Media Access Project, Public Knowledge and the Greenlining Institute said the redacted filings are so full of holes they're nearly unintelligible.

The FCC issued a request for quotations (http://xrl.us/bmra7g) on a study examining how Americans meet their information needs, how the media addresses those needs and what barriers exist to providing content and services to address those needs, a Monday public notice said. The commission is asking for an analysis of the existing research to determine the utility of existing data, the notice said. “It is first necessary to examine what prior research has been conducted,” the notice said. The FCC also asked for suggestions by Feb. 27 on additional studies it should commission.

The FCC’s Lifeline reform order, released Monday, lays out in detail the mechanism the FCC has put in place to impose controls on the program. The order asserts the reforms will save “an estimated $2 billion over the next three years” but also acknowledges that without changes, the size of the program would likely soar to $2.4 billion in 2012 and $3.3 billion in 2014, from $1.7 billion last year. But the order makes clear that the commission’s overarching ambition is to expand the Lifeline program to cover broadband. The FCC also released a further rulemaking notice asking more questions.

A rulemaking notice circulated among FCC commissioners last month will seek comment on whether the commission should extend rules that require cable operators to deliver the signals of must-carry broadcast stations in both analog and digital formats, industry and FCC officials said. The rules, which the broadcast industry termed “viewability” and the cable industry “dual-carriage,” are set to expire in June, three years after the analog cutoff of 2009.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., is “optimistic” that the latest cybersecurity bill will be introduced as early as Thursday, he told us Tuesday before the Senate policy lunches. “We're moving. We will probably file it by the end of the week,” he said. Then “we are going to hold a hearing on the new bill just to give it a public airing next week.”

GENEVA -- Administrations in a sub-regional African group have “diverse positions” on the need to allocate frequencies below 790 MHz to spur mobile broadband, this month at the World Radiocommunication Conference, said a regulator who supports a cautious approach by including the possible allocations on the agenda of the 2015 conference. The 2006 regional agreement for digital broadcasting in 120 countries in Europe, Africa, parts of the Middle East and ex-Soviet states would need to be revisited, participants said.