Content groups offered an olive branch to the technology community Friday, after Congressional leaders slammed the brakes on anti-piracy legislation in the House and Senate. Film and music groups begrudgingly acknowledged the impact of Wednesday’s Web protest to the PROTECT IP and the Stop Online Piracy Acts and urged the technology community to help develop a meaningful solution to the theft of their members’ works.

The latest numbers emerging as the FCC pushes forward on an order addressing Lifeline funding reveal sharp growth in the cost of the Universal Service Fund program. Lifeline spending was up sharply in Q4 2011, ending in September, to $525 million, but it remains unclear whether that number is an anomaly or means real, across the board growth in the Lifeline program. Meanwhile, a senior FCC official said Chairman Julius Genachowski is committed to putting in place significant controls on the size of Lifeline program, which are projected to save $2 billion over a period of years versus the status quo.

Almost three months after the FCC approved a Universal Service Fund/intercarrier compensation reform plan, major industry players continue to seek significant changes. Comments were due last week on a further rulemaking notice approved as part of the order. How USF dollars ultimately will be divided as the fund is reconfigured to primarily pay for broadband is the key question addressed in most filings. They show that the FCC still has a huge job ahead as it continues to tackle changes to the USF. Numerous petitions for reconsideration have been filed in response to the Oct. 27 order. A second round of comments focusing on intercarrier compensation issues is due Feb. 24. Next week, the commission will begin to tackle Lifeline reform. Also looming are likely changes to the contribution side of USF.

GENEVA -- Administrations at the Radiocommunication Assembly geared up for the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference starting Jan. 23 by approving supporting ITU-R recommendations on various needed technical, operational and regulatory aspects, officials said at a press conference after the assembly, which ended Friday. Assembly agreement on studies for cognitive radio systems “excludes” regulatory matters, an executive said, but the systems will be considered under a WRC-12 agenda item. WRC-12 work on use of orbit and associated spectrum resources and a future conference agenda item on more spectrum for mobile broadband will be some of the “more difficult” WRC agenda items, said Francois Rancy, director of the Radiocommunication Bureau.

U.S. carriers are expected to replace their LTE technologies with LTE-Advanced starting 2013, standards experts told us. The enhancement of LTE technology was approved by the ITU Wednesday as an International Mobile Telecom-Advanced (IMT-Advanced) technology. The new specification is expected to bring better speeds, power consumption, capacity and spectrum efficiency. According to ITU, the target rates for IMT-Advanced were set at 100 Mbps when used in a high mobility environment, and 1 Gbps in a stationary environment.

Verizon Wireless and the cable companies behind SpectrumCo on Thursday voluntarily offered more details on their proposed deal, expected to be the subject of an intensive examination by the FCC (CD Jan 19 p1). SpectrumCo agreed in December to sell 133 AWS licenses to Verizon for $3.6 billion. Verizon is also buying several dozen AWS licenses from Cox. All the companies also announced various commercial agreements between the cable operators and Verizon Wireless, under which they would sell each others’ products. That part of the agreement has led to additional controversy.

The author of the PROTECT IP Act, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is considering substantial changes to the legislation, Senate staffers told us. Most of the remaining PROTECT IP cosponsors said they were still supporting the bill, but urged leadership to slow its pace and consider modifications to mollify the concerns of the technology sector. The chamber is still planning to take a cloture vote on the bill on Tuesday around 2:15 p.m., a Judiciary spokeswoman said.

The FCC may not deviate much in eventual draft media ownership rules from what the agency proposed last month (CD Dec 23 p1), fans and foes of broadcaster consolidation predicted. Chairman Julius Genachowski likely won’t circulate any draft quadrennial review order until late this year or early next, said industry, nonprofit group and commission officials. They said it appears Genachowski has an open mind on what final rules he'll seek, and the comment cycle on the rulemaking ends April 3. He seems inclined to stick closely to December’s rulemaking notice, which strikes a balance of sorts between what industry and nonprofits want, officials said.

Hosted payloads seem unlikely to become the norm in the satellite industry in the near future and the lack of government involvement is worrisome, Iridium CEO Matt Desch told the Washington Space Business Roundtable. While there’s hope for the hosted payloads in the future, the idea remains very much nascent, he said Thursday. Iridium, which had advertised a significant amount of space on its coming IridiumNEXT constellation but has so far been unable to fill it, likely has found a solution, he said. Iridium and the mobile satellite service (MSS) industry is fraught with misperceptions, he said.

A Washington state bill designed to allow public utility districts and rural port districts in areas with underserved areas to offer retail broadband services faced strong opposition from lawmakers and some private providers. As a result, a revision that would include the FCC’s definition of unserved and underserved is expected before a committee vote next week, bill sponsor state Rep. John McCoy (D) told us.