The agency that developed a new alerting standard sought a delay in the FCC enforcing compliance with it among radio and TV stations. The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked the FCC to hold off for four additional months in enforcing compliance with FEMA’s Common Alerting Protocol for emergency alert systems. The current EAS deadline, which a wide array of multichannel video programming distributors and commercial and nonprofit broadcasters want extended (CD Aug 2 p12), shouldn’t be enforced until Jan. 1, FEMA said. The industry entities want the deadline that’s now set at Sept. 30 extended by at least six months after the commission comes up with certification standards for CAP. Google said more time than the current deadline may be needed.

The U.S. GPS Industry Council used its reply comments in the broadband for native nations proceeding to take a swipe at LightSquared in docket 11-41 (http://xrl.us/bk5o48). “In its comments, LightSquared takes credit for the planned distribution of up to 2,000 MSS satellite phones to units of the Indian Health Service. … LightSquared then closes its comments with a request that the Commission consider extending waivers to cover LightSquared’s 4G LTE terrestrial mobile service base stations in order to facilitate deployment of satellite infrastructure on Tribal Lands,” the council said in its comments. “These two aspects of LightSquared’s comments are fundamentally at odds.”

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a vigorous opponent of the FCC’s net neutrality order -- approved over his dissent Dec. 21 -- said last week he hopes the Office of Management and Budget will examine the costs of the order for businesses large and small. McDowell noted questions raised by some Congressional Republicans, including Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida (CD July 8 p5), about the cost of the rules.

The Justice Department, sticking with a consent decree it agreed to with Comcast to clear its buy of NBCUniversal, answered a federal judge’s questions on how the proposed settlement’s terms affect online video distributors disgruntled with the combined company. Justice said the antitrust deal gives a choice to OVDs that can’t get deals for the rights to carry cable or broadcast online content from the company. They can complain to the FCC, which can order arbitration, or go to DOJ, which can send it to arbitration that can’t be appealed. The filing expanded on what a DOJ lawyer told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in his courtroom a week and a half ago: The commission is the likely venue for OVD complaints. The filing listed tradeoffs in taking a case to the FCC versus Justice.

Viacom is poised for years of steady revenue growth from digital, as its traditional pay-TV distributors and new entrants into digital distribution vie for the rights to its TV programming, executives said in the company’s Q3 earnings call. “We have a lot of confidence in what we see ahead,” CEO Philippe Dauman said. The company said it expects affiliate sales to increase by high single-digit percentage points or more each year for the foreseeable future, driven by growth in digital distribution. “The number of players out there continues to increase,” Dauman said. “And there is great demand for our content for obvious reasons,” he said. Viacom’s shows tend to target younger audiences who are more likely to watch on new platforms, he said.

T-Mobile USA lost 50,000 subscribers in Q2, the first full quarter since AT&T agreed to buy it. The loss was an improvement from the previous quarter when it lost 99,000 customers. The U.S. remains a difficult market for parent company Deutsche Telekom, whose profit fell 27 percent year-over-year to $496 million, said CEO René Obermann during a conference call Thursday.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s effort to issue another joint public statement by the FCC commissioners on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation system reform appeared to be in flux late Thursday, agency officials said. Genachowski had hoped to get his colleagues to sign another Web post, as they did in March. Then, the full commission had promised “a busy spring and summer” of reform work and a promise to move to order’s “within a few months” of the comment cycle’s end in May (CD March 16 p10). Commissioners apparently couldn’t agree on language in the proposed new post, the officials said. Efforts to reach Genachowski’s spokesman for comment were unsuccessful at deadline.

The FCC will issue a new public notice on reforming the Lifeline program, a commission official said. It could come out as early as Friday. It will ask questions about the pilot notification program in Tennessee (CD July 27 p11), how a “one-per-residence” rule would be phrased and how to determine eligibility and duplication. It also will ask how to structure a national database on duplicate benefits, whether and how to build a national database for eligibility, and whether to cap the Lifeline fund, the official told us.

The growing concern over mobile cybersecurity is warranted, security experts said Thursday at a Washington cybersecurity conference sponsored by CompTIA. “Right now mobile security is in a pretty dicey place,” said Andrew Hoog, viaForensics chief investigative officer. The threat model for mobile devices is significantly higher than for traditional computers and IT systems and the number of targeted attacks is on the rise, Hoog said.

Pay-TV companies found their next exhibit in the quest to convince the FCC to change good-faith bargaining rules on retransmission consent deals with broadcasters. Four days after the FCC approved the contested sale of a TV station (CD July 22 p16) despite the concerns of an alliance of all major multichannel video programming distributors other than Comcast and opposition from the association for small cable operators, a broadcaster filed an antitrust lawsuit against a rival. Nexstar’s suit against Granite Broadcasting was ill-timed, agreed broadcast and cable lawyers who reviewed it and related FCC filings, because it gave ammunition to MVPDs to press the FCC to act on retrans. They also said the case won’t likely spur the agency to act more quickly.