The Rural Cellular Association panned the FCC universal service overhaul (CD Nov 19 Bulletin). “I appreciate the FCC’s work to modernize USF, but unfortunately the Order confirms our previous concerns that wireless services are significantly underfunded,” RCA President Steve Berry said. “Adequately funding wireless services would have encouraged competitive carriers to participate -- needless to say, this was a missed opportunity for the FCC to promote industry competition and the build-out of advanced high-speed mobile services."

The extent TV stations can share newsrooms and other functions without being considered commonly owned is at play in the FCC’s media ownership review. Some at the FCC are considering whether to seek changes to a draft notice of proposed rulemaking on the quadrennial review that would probe further into shared services agreements, local marketing agreements and other deals that let separately owned stations in the same market share some operations. SSAs and LMAs aren’t attributable for ownership reasons, so two Big Four broadcast network affiliates can share operations without running afoul of local ownership limits. That’s all according to agency and industry officials.

Congress could still find a way to pass spectrum legislation this year without the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, telecom industry lobbyists said. The super committee’s co-chairs said late Monday that the panel had failed to reach a deal. The House and Senate have signaled that they hope to push spectrum auction legislation forward in December through regular order or by attaching it to a must-pass vehicle like an omnibus appropriations bill. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said he'll press to get spectrum legislation passed. “Winning ideas like S.911 cannot keep falling victim to this partisan stubbornness,” he said Monday evening. “I will continue to pursue all avenues to get S.911 enacted this year."

Emails among White House officials released late Friday (CD Nov 21 p1) reflect the gradual dimming of LightSquared’s prospects following the FCC’s conditional waiver grant to the company and accompanying political scrutiny. While initially discussed with optimism at the White House a year ago, as recently as September an Office of Science and Technology Policy official asked a Harbinger Capital Partners representative to stop communicating on the matter, the emails show. The emails were obtained by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington through the Freedom of Information Act (http://xrl.us/bmi7o2). The emails also show the GPS industry working hard to convince the White House of interference issues. The White House didn’t comment.

TAIPEI -- IPv6 will mean no real changes regarding privacy, experts said at the Internet Engineering Task Force last week. The new generation of Internet addresses would be as traceable as the existing IPv4 addresses. Despite that, there is a feverish production of new draft Internet proposals for source address validation, many of them being produced by Chinese experts.

A report by the FCC’s Emergency Access Advisory Committee (EAAC) won’t offer the agency advice on how to migrate to a next-generation 911 system capable of better handling the needs of the handicapped, members of the committee agreed Friday. The EAAC also won’t offer any conclusions on whether emergency callers using a video phone should be able to see the call taker or will just see a blank screen.

The Senate is on track to finish confirmations of FCC nominees by the end of the year, multiple Senate aides and industry officials said. The Commerce Committee on Friday announced a Nov. 30 hearing for FCC nominees Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai. That’s the same day as the next FCC meeting. The hearing is at 2:30 p.m in Room 253, Russell Senate Office Building. While the nominees are thought to be uncontroversial, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has threatened to derail their confirmation over an unrelated dispute with the FCC.

Major cable operators plan to deploy more energy-efficient set-top boxes than those widely in use now. The U.S.’s six biggest cable operators plan to have at least 90 percent of all new set-tops they buy and deploy by the end of 2013 be Energy Star 3.0-compliant, NCTA executives said Friday. The association and CableLabs are setting up an energy lab to develop electricity-efficient set-tops and other gear used by consumers, and equipment used by cable companies’ networks. A CEA executive said such efforts may reduce power usage and costs, the Environmental Protection Agency said it’s a good move, and environmental groups backed it while saying more must be done by cable operators to use less power.

Traditional TV distribution business models, content discovery and reaching “cord never-havers” are challenges facing the digital video distribution world, said panelists at the Future of Television conference in New York Friday. “The demographics of people signing up for cable and satellite service is changing a lot,” said Jeff Harris, senior product manager-new product development for Verizon’s FiOS. Teenagers watch more video on computers than on TVs, he said, and that trend won’t change. “You can’t fight it, so the best thing to do is innovate and adapt” by extending TV services to as many screens as possible, he said. “Portability is a big driver,” he said. Service providers need to be prepared for the changing environment and “be where the eyeballs are migrating,” he said.

ATLANTA -- Despite fear about the new competitive threats posed by over-the-top (OTT) video, four big cable operators still see plenty of opportunities to expand cable’s traditional video business, as well as branch out into numerous new areas.