Spectrum legislation survived a lengthy House Communications Subcommittee markup in which the political parties squabbled over many details of the complicated bill. The subcommittee voted 17-6 to approve the GOP draft bill with amendments. Every Democrat voted no except Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga. The approved version would authorize voluntary incentive auctions and give public safety the 700 MHz D-block and $6.5 billion for a national wireless broadband network. The draft would not let the FCC provide for unlicensed use spectrum freed up by incentive auctions. States and a private company would play a large role in governance of the public safety network. And the bill would limit FCC authority to make rules in auctions.

Panelists differed on regulatory models for the future federal/state relationship over broadband and, during a conference call by the National Regulatory Research Institute Thursday, saw difficulties for federal regulators in classifying VoIP as a telecom service.

A top AT&T official accused FCC staff in comments released by the company Thursday of not giving the company’s proposed buy of T-Mobile a fair review. The statement by Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi came two days after the FCC released a staff memo on the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, while also allowing AT&T and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom to withdraw their merger application.

The public television system in New York is collaborating on a project that will allow all broadcast signals for 34 channels to come from one facility. This centralcasting initiative is expected to save the nine public TV stations in the state a total of about $25 million over the next 10 years, some station executives said. Other centralcasting projects at public broadcasting stations are pending and reflect efforts in the industry to cut costs.

The rapid and continued growth of Ka-band satellite services has several satellite companies and organizations working to develop rules both at the national level around the world and within the ITU, said industry executives. With numerous satellites already including Ka-band capabilities and many more to come, the companies and groups are working to come up with rules to facilitate Ka-band development, executives say. A Global VSAT Forum (GVF) white paper released Thursday describes some hoped-for rules and a “best practices guide” for national Ka-band regulation.

Don’t let multichannel video programming distributors use the FCC’s review of media ownership rules to “import retransmission consent issues” about MVPDs’ deals to carry TV stations, the NAB said. The association defended shared services agreements, which let separately owned TV stations in the same market share news and other services, against continued MVPD criticism of SSAs as letting broadcasters abuse retrans rules. “Recent filings by representatives of the MVPD industry were blatant attempts to use ownership rules to skew retransmission consent negotiations in their favor,” the NAB said. Cable, DBS and telco-TV companies had visited the eighth floor several times in recent weeks (CD Nov 22 p8) to try to get the quadrennial ownership review to further tackle the issue of SSAs.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- BART unanimously adopted a cell-service interruption policy Thursday, after adding general cautionary provisions at the FCC’s suggestion. The policy (CD Nov 29 p13) passed the Bay Area Rapid Transit board 7-0. Board President Bob Franklin called the policy the first of its kind in the U.S. and said it would be a touchstone as agencies elsewhere inevitably grapple with the issue.

SILICON VALLEY -- The challenges pay-TV distributors face from looming over-the-top competition pale in comparison to the challenge of managing rising programming costs, said Tom Sauer, vice president of corporate strategy at AT&T, speaking on a panel at the ScreenPlays Media Innovations Summit Wednesday. “At the end of the day that’s what’s killing us all,” he said. “These content costs continue to go up. Those are huge challenges, we have to deal with on a daily basis” and only after dealing with them can distributors begin worrying about other problems, he said.

New FCC ex parte rules were violated at least 11 times since taking effect June 1, a Communications Daily review of all filings and the agency’s own checks found. Some filings were made late -- from a day in many instances to a few weeks -- and others didn’t contain enough information on what was discussed during lobbying meetings. The filings were made by companies and associations big and small. They covered proceedings ranging from changing the Universal Service Fund to pay for broadband deployment to retransmission consent, ISP speeds, disabilities access legislation passed in 2010 and getting low-power TV stations to fully vacate the 700 MHz band for wireless broadband in the small portion they occupy.

FCC nominees Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel “will swim right on” through the Senate, Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller said Wednesday as his committee opened the nominees’ first confirmation hearing. Rosenworcel, who would leave Rockefeller’s staff to join the commission, and Pai, a telecom lawyer at Jenner & Block, made their first public appearance together at the hearing. They were received warmly by the committee’s senators. “I'm very pleased that I can heartily support you both,” Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told them in a packed hearing room. He teased Rosenworcel, whom he said is “very difficult to argue with” and said he was gratified that Pai grew up in Parsons, Kan., which means “there’s an automatic rural prejudice built into your DNA.”