MobiTV took a cautionary tone in filing an IPO seeking to raise $75 million, saying cellular carriers’ moves to end unlimited data plans could “decrease the attractiveness” of its mobile video service, in an SEC filing. “Because our services are data-intensive” ending unlimited data plans could “increase costs to our end-users and decrease the attractiveness of” MobiTV, the company said in SEC documents.

State regulators in California and Hawaii are putting their review of AT&T/T-Mobile on hold in light of the Department of Justice’s complaint against the deal, state officials told us. The potential collapse of the deal could be bad news even for AT&T’s rivals, some analysts said. Meanwhile, Public Knowledge late Thursday asked the FCC to act now to reject the transaction in light of DOJ’s challenge.

AT&T is vowing a fight, but if the carrier’s $39 billion buy of T-Mobile falls through, one big implication is ramped up pressure on federal policymakers to get more spectrum online quickly for wireless broadband, industry officials and analysts said Thursday. Pressure was already strong for the FCC and NTIA to make good on administration promises to make another 500 MHz available for broadband.

SEATTLE -- Defendants seeking to hold telecom companies accountable for alleged government-directed wiretapping can’t overcome the classified nature of orders by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, the Justice Department argued Wednesday before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), representing plaintiffs in both the Jewel and Hepting cases targeting government and telecom defendants, asked the judges to find they have more than a “general grievance” and to strike down the law passed by Congress to shield telecoms for cooperation. Judges seemed wary of Justice’s suggestion they hold back oversight and defer to the policy judgment of Congress and the executive branch.

State regulators formed a NARUC task force hoping to convince the FCC to create financial incentives to states to lower their intercarrier compensation rates, Vermont regulator and NARUC telecom committee Chairman John Burke told us Thursday. The task force is chaired by New York Commissioner Maureen Harris, Burke said. Members of the task force hope to have recommendations before the October open meeting, when many expect the FCC to move to orders on universal service fund and intercarrier compensation regime reforms, Burke said. Some state regulators are hoping to keep the FCC from preempting state authority with the reforms, he said.

The second-largest TV station blackout of 2011 on a multichannel video programming distributor spurred the cable company’s CEO to send a critical letter to the FCC chairman. Mediacom’s Rocco Commisso said Julius Genachowski isn’t living up to promises to protect consumers, in not issuing new retransmission consent and a la carte rules. No retrans order is poised to circulate, FCC officials said, and one may not be ready this year (CD Aug 5 p2). Wednesday evening, Mediacom subscribers could no longer see seven LIN Media stations in small- and mid-sized markets. A commission spokesman declined to comment.

Microsoft was dragged into the mobile privacy maelstrom this week when a Washington woman sued the company for alleged geolocation tracking on its Windows 7 phones. Rebecca Cousineau filed a class action lawsuit Wednesday with the U.S. District Court in Seattle that claims the company “intentionally” and “deceptively” tracks its users’ movements even if they affirmatively deny their consent to do so. Microsoft’s conduct violates the Stored Communications Act (SCA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), and the Washington State Consumer Protection Act, the suit said.

The Justice Department, in a surprisingly quick decision, said Wednesday it’s suing to block AT&T’s buy of T-Mobile. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Commissioner Michael Copps were quick to react, issuing statements saying they too had concerns about the deal, raising the question of whether the transaction was in trouble at the commission as well. A top AT&T executive expressed surprise and said the company will fight the DOJ’s decision.

The FCC review of Dish Network’s transfer of control and waiver applications (CD Aug 23 p5) will likely use LightSquared as the starting point for discussions on possible conditions of the deals and any resulting waivers, said observers. It will be up to the company and others to convince the agency of major differences between Dish’s situation and business plans and those of LightSquared if it hopes to see a major departure from the conditions imposed on LightSquared, they said. Many questions about Dish’s intent remain unanswered, and the commission will likely seek far more specific information on the plans before conditions are imposed, they said.

Comcast and Bloomberg show no sign of ending an impasse over what channel positions the cable operator carries Bloomberg TV on its systems. Both sides seem dug in on their stances about whether Comcast needs to put the financial news channel near clusterings of other similar networks in its channel lineups, according to interviews with an FCC official and a Bloomberg executive and recent filings from both companies.