Wi-Fi, including that available from cable operators, isn’t competitive yet with wireless carriers’ offerings, FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Rick Kaplan said Monday. Unlicensed broadband could yet pose a competitive threat, and shows there are ways to offload traffic onto other networks, he said at a Practising Law Institute seminar in New York. But the current state of the technology’s deployment in the U.S. means the frequencies it uses are not suitable to be included in the spectrum screen the FCC uses to review deals, Kaplan said.

A serious cyberattack on the U.S. is “imminent,” said Bob Lentz, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber, identity and information assurance (CIIA). Now the president of Cyber Security Strategies, he said Monday that industrial supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are particularly vulnerable to attack. “We have reached the point where we have a clear and present and serious situation developing,” he told an event in Washington hosted by McAfee.

Wireless companies would have to disclose monitoring software installed on mobile devices under draft legislation released Monday by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. The Mobile Device Privacy Act reacts to software from Carrier IQ used by carriers to collect certain user data from cellphones, including dialed phone numbers and visited URLs. While carriers say the data collection is for customer support, the controversy has resulted in more than 50 class-action lawsuits in courts across the country. Privacy advocates celebrated the Markey bill while the wireless industry was silent.

The federal communications and copyright laws should be merged because the subjects are inseparable, a U.S. Copyright Office lawyer said Monday. The U.S. “needs to get rid of all the silos and reinvent the Communications Act,” said Ben Golant, the office’s assistant general counsel. The laws could be combined in a new title of the U.S. Code that also could cover consumer protection, privacy, cybersecurity and competition, he said at a webcast Practising Law Institute seminar in New York. “This is a dream and may never happen,” Golant conceded. It might be possible politically in 2025, he said.

The FCC’s net neutrality order has become “the hotel Sunday brunch of administrative procedure,” with the reconsideration petitions and rounds of court appeals, said Austin Schlick, FCC general counsel. Verizon offered a “very creative theory” that it could file an early challenge -- and it had to go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit -- because the order amounted to a licensing decision, he said Monday at a webcast Practising Law Institute seminar in New York. With the court’s dismissal of a filing by the carrier before the order was final, “the legal aphorism ‘Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered'” applies, Schlick said. But the punchline is that a court lottery held after timely appeals were filed in several circuits determined that “the case goes where Verizon wants it to go,” he said: the D.C. Circuit, which had ruled against the FCC on closely related issues in the Comcast case.

Some members of the Senate said they're confident there’s more agreement on cybersecurity throughout the chamber, which puts the Senate in a position to bring forth legislation soon. Some members of the technology industry agreed there seems to be less tension around issues, like information sharing and Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) reform, but other components must be ironed out.

Broadband pilots, proposed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski as part of a revamped Lifeline program, have emerged as a likely bone of contention at the agency as work on the order continues prior to a vote Tuesday. The amount proposed by Genachowski is small -- in the $20 million range -- to be paid for by savings as the FCC clamps down on abuse, agency officials said. But some industry and FCC officials question the wisdom of looking at ways of expanding a program that is already getting bigger just paying for traditional phone service.

Work at the FCC is intensifying on changing the Lifeline program that funds phone service for poor people, commissioners from both parties said Friday. A new draft of the Lifeline order circulated Tuesday night, prompting Commissioner Robert McDowell to return to Washington from a World Radiocommunications Conference in Geneva, he noted. Both McDowell and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn told a panel at the Minority Media and Telecom Council conference that the order tries to address waste and other inefficiencies in the subsidy program. Clyburn voiced support for the idea of broadband pilot tests, while McDowell said increases in one part of the Universal Service Fund mean all phone customers must pay more in USF fees unless there are other cuts.

Hosted payloads, where commercial satellites carry other payloads in addition to the primary payload, may not be fully developed, but there are encouraging signs that the practice will become increasingly popular, said satellite industry executives. CEO Matt Desch of Iridium, whose coming 81-satellite IridiumNEXT constellation includes a large chunk of reserved space for hosted payloads, voiced recently some disappointment with how slow adoption has been (CD Jan 20 p6). The variance in opinions may be due in part to the difference between geostationary and low-earth orbit offerings, said an executive.

Cuts in government appropriations have stalled some projects at public radio stations. The loss of the Public Telecom Facilities Program (PTFP) last year and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting digital appropriation in the current fiscal-year budget challenged stations to find other ways to continue serving their communities and expand their reach, officials said.