FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed a new plan to support small business cybersecurity efforts, during a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Monday. The Small Business Cyber Planner is a free online tool to help U.S. small businesses increase their cybersecurity awareness and protections, and will be available on the FCC website in “a few weeks,” Genachowski said. The Department of Homeland Security endorsed the plan and encouraged small business owners to implement strong cybersecurity policies.

Chris Pearson, president of 4G Americas said the wireless industry must keep up pressure on the government to make the 1755-1780 MHz band available for wireless broadband. Unless the U.S. makes that band and other spectrum available, the country faces a “stop sign” that will halt the wireless growth the public has come to expect, he said in an interview.

AT&T accused Comcast of hypocrisy. The cable company had asked the FCC to eliminate special access rules, so competitive telcos can charge the same access rates as incumbents’ plain old telephone service terminations use, as long the CLEC provides a phone number from the number portability database. “The implication of this proposal is that as long as a CLEC provides the telephone number, it’s safe to conclude that the CLEC provides a service equivalent to all of the other functions -- and the associated costs -- included in access charges,” AT&T Vice President Hank Hultquist said on his company’s website Friday.

The AT&T/T-Mobile deal, spectrum bills and controversy over possible GPS interference drove communications industry lobbying in Q3, said quarterly lobbying disclosure reports due Thursday. Most telecom, cable and Internet companies increased their spending from Q3 2011. Public safety continued its high level of spending as Congress moved closer to decide on providing money and possibly spectrum for a national network. Google continued to increase its Washington presence, spending more than T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel combined last quarter.

Wireless carriers pushing for a bigger piece of the Universal Service Fund pie through a larger Mobility Fund still likely face an uphill fight, despite advocacy by Commissioner Mignon Clyburn (CD Oct 21 p1). With several parts of the USF/intercarrier compensation order in flux, wireless industry officials said Friday the three Democratic commissioners are not united in agreeing that more money should be added to the wireless fund. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., on Friday separately voiced a number of objections to USF reform proposals before the FCC.

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch defended the company’s performance and its employees at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Los Angeles Friday. The recent closure of its News of the World newspaper following allegations of cellphone voicemail hacking in the U.K. prompted some shareholders to seek changes to the company’s governance structure. Other shareholders attended the meeting to voice their general displeasure with Murdoch’s leadership and the company’s share price performance over the past decade.

Helped by solid wireless growth, Verizon posted Q3 profit of $3.5 billion, up 31 percent year-over-year. The revamp on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation would benefit some of the company’s business, but it’s still too early to tell the impact on each business unit, Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said Friday. Meanwhile, union workers at Verizon joined the Occupy Wall Street protest Friday over “Verizon’s corporate greed,” a move that Verizon called “misdirected outreach."

Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is pressing other FCC members to look more closely at the appropriate size of a proposed Mobility Fund as the agency completes its Universal Service Fund proceeding, her wireless aide, Louis Peraertz, told a Federal Communications Bar Association lunch Thursday. Elsewhere, aides to the four commissioners mostly talked about spectrum, with several conceding that spectrum sharing will be the trend of the future.

Telecom and consumer and states’ rights advocates were making final efforts to blunt the impact of the pending Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation system reforms on their interests. The FCC extended the open lobbying period to the close of business Friday. More than one critic accused FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski of being unnecessarily opaque with his intentions. “I think a lot of things are still in flux,” Free Press Political Adviser Joel Kelsey said Thursday. “The details are moving targets.” The proposed USF order is on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting.

A nascent proposal for TV stations to act as broadband content delivery mechanisms (CD Oct 14 p14) for Internet Protocol traffic drew skepticism on technical and policy grounds from some industries whose support may be necessary for the proposal to succeed. Wireless companies, who want the FCC to voluntarily auction some broadcaster spectrum to free up frequencies for mobile broadband, declined to back the parts of the plan unveiled Thursday (http://xrl.us/bmgm8e) by the Coalition for Free TV and Broadband. An engineer who has worked for carriers and TV stations and a lawyer for full-power TV broadcasters told us the plan may face economic and equipment hurdles. Proponents said the economic analysis they paid for to show their plan would raise more money for the U.S. than an auction will be complete in a week, and standards for carriers to send traffic broadcasters’ way don’t fully exist.