The demand for 3D TV programming hasn’t developed yet and has grown slower than expected, Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav said during the company’s Q2 earnings teleconference. “3D, candidly, has been slower than expected.” The market will be driven by the penetration of 3D TV sets into consumer homes and how quickly consumers adopt them, Zaslav said. “The good news for us is that we've gotten a lot of experience with it,” through Discovery’s joint venture with Sony and Imax, he said Thursday.

CTIA said Thursday it’s reviving a lawsuit challenging a San Francisco ordinance requiring disclosure about cellphone radiation, in response to enactment of a new, weakened version. Mayor Ed Lee approved Wednesday the measure by Supervisor John Avalos in order to “protect public health,” an aide to Lee said. Michael Altschul, CTIA general counsel, said, “Our lawsuit remains on file. Now that the Mayor has acted, we plan to resume the litigation."

The longer the FCC delays in providing VoIP providers with legal certainty and consistency across their multi-state operations, the more difficult it will be to replace the “growing body of disparate state regulation with a single coherent national regime,” telecom groups said. The VON Coalition, TechAmerica, National Association of Manufacturers, Telecom Industry Association and Information Technology Council wrote the FCC Wednesday. They cited growing state efforts to regulate VoIP.

The FCC dropped from the Aug. 9 meeting agenda a controversial foreign ownership rule change opposed by Verizon Wireless, Vodafone and Telefonica Internacional USA. Chairman Julius Genachowski pulled an order and declaratory ruling on the International Bureau’s Foreign Ownership Guidelines and the application of section 310(b)(3) of the Communications Act to foreign ownership of common carrier and aeronautical licensees. The item had been circulated two weeks ago for a vote at the meeting.

The House sponsors of last year’s Universal Service Fund overhaul bill support the FCC acting on the industry USF agreement brokered by USTelecom. Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., no longer plans to move USF legislation, aide Brad Schweer told us Wednesday. He said that Terry “will now be encouraging the FCC to produce details that reflect suggestions” proposed by the industry group. Terry’s former co-sponsor Rick Boucher agreed that the commission should move forward on its own.

TV stations, having dodged one spectrum bullet, now face longer-term prospects for Congress to pass legislation for the FCC to voluntarily auction some channels. Industry executives said they avoided having Congress authorize the incentive auction (CD Aug 2 p1), in debt-ceiling legislation that President Barack Obama signed Tuesday, through several means. Lobbying on Capitol Hill by state associations, NAB and its corporate members, House Republicans’ concerns about auctioning TV spectrum but not the D block, and GOP legislators’ focus on deficit reduction and not adding government revenue each played a part.

Comcast could offer online TV products to consumers outside its physical footprint through wholesale arrangements with other multichannel video programming distributors, CEO Brian Roberts said on its earnings call Wednesday. Asked whether Comcast would consider introducing new consumer-targeted online video products outside its physical operating footprint, he at first downplayed the idea. “I don’t think there is yet a business model that we have seen that returns to our shareholders where you have relationships with customers in that way outside of our footprint, that we can make money with,” he said.

Regulators should not discount the benefits of the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said in a letter that circulated Tuesday. Smith sent the letter Monday to Attorney General Eric Holder and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The top Republican on Judiciary disputed recent opposition by Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., and some other members (CD July 21 p1). “Unfortunately, they provided you with only one side of the story,” Smith wrote.

The FCC’s E-Rate program needs better rules to define eligibility, improve efficiency and transparency, State E-Rate Coordinators Alliance Chairman Gary Rawson told us. The program is successful, but in a minority of cases, the process is “significantly more complex, frustrating, and ultimately self-defeating,” the group said in an ex parte filing at the FCC.

Charter said it will again court customers most prone to cancelling service and not paying bills, and put more money back into direct-response marketing, after abandoning both strategies for several quarters led to worse-than-expected subscriber results. It will approach those higher-credit-risk customers with a less-expensive and simpler version of its product bundle designed to get them to remain customers and not run up bills they can’t pay, CEO Mike Lovett said on its Q2 earnings teleconference. “The goal is really to drive connects from the high-credit-risk segments” of Charter’s addressable market, he said.