The FCC didn’t back down on new program carriage rules whose prospect had spurred opposition from major cable operators, agency officials said Friday. They said Chairman Julius Genachowski, the Office of General Counsel and the Media Bureau, the latter of which wrote the order and further rulemaking notice, decided against changing the item to accommodate Commissioner Robert McDowell. His concerns had dovetailed with those of the NCTA and members including Comcast. And in another program carriage case, an independent programmer withdrew allegations that its complaint was dismissed in an atmosphere where FCC officials left to work for the cable industry.

There seems to be little momentum now at the FCC for an AllVid rulemaking proposing how consumer electronics can connect to multichannel video programming distributors and get online content without using CableCARDs, agency officials said Friday. The day before, a 10-page letter from CE companies, groups and nonprofits that have been seeking the rulemaking was posted to docket 10-91. It remains to be seen whether the letter and lobbying of the commission by AllVid advocates will lead to the rulemaking being circulated soon, and it very well may not, some commission officials watching the proceeding said.

GENEVA - Participants in ITU-R meetings may try to close a gap between the level of protection needed to guard fixed satellite service (FSS) systems from interference from high altitude platform station (HAPS) gateway links, according to interviews and documents. HAPS proponents say the gateway links can spur voice and data service in rural and underserved areas. Intelsat in the U.S. WRC-12 preparatory process has been strongly opposed to new identification of bands for HAPS gateway links, we've learned.

With the advent of IPv6 and the growing number of devices and smart objects in the house, ordinary home networks will become data centers, with subnets for communication, TV, smart grid management, healthcare applications and more. How to make such networks easy for anyone to handle and secure was a major topic of the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting in Quebec last week. Nearly 300 engineers indicated interest in a soon-to-be-formed working group of the standardization body that will talk about the requirements.

The FCC opened the door to looking at AT&T and T-Mobile’s tower holdings as part of its review of their proposed merger. The Wireless Bureau sent letters to three leading tower companies asking for data about their towers. The FCC has not considered tower consolidation in evaluating recent wireless transactions. But AT&T and T-Mobile collectively have some 17,500 cell towers, almost as many as American Tower’s 20,900 and Crown Castle’s 22,300.

A low-power TV (LPTV) operator is again seeking FCC authority to test an alternate broadcast transmission system that would let stations offer broadband service alongside traditional broadcast content. Portland, Ore.-based WatchTV filed an amended application “to evaluate new digital television technology” with the FCC this week, five months after the FCC Media Bureau denied the station’s last request to test the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based system (CD Feb 11 p12). WatchTV’s March application for review of that denial remains pending, it said.

Comcast and the Justice Department may revisit terms of a consent decree clearing the cable operator’s multi-billion-dollar purchase of NBCUniversal (CD Jan 19 p1) after a judge who must approve the settlement expressed concerns, antitrust lawyers predicted. Judge Richard Leon of U.S. District Court in Washington, in a fairness hearing Wednesday afternoon, criticized an arbitration clause in the antitrust pact for online video distributors (OVD), The Wall Street Journal reported. Such rebukes are extremely rare, and all antitrust lawyers we interviewed said they couldn’t recall a single instance where that happened in such a hearing. Comcast and Bloomberg, meanwhile, continued to trade filings at the FCC on the first company’s adherence to one of the agency’s deal conditions.

A breakaway group of rural telcos organized a last-ditch effort to keep their trade associations from signing on to a USTelecom-brokered agreement on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime reforms. “It is simply a bad deal for rural America!” said a draft letter circulated by the Rural Broadband Alliance’s Diane Smith and Stephen Kraskin.

Billions of dollars are at stake in WRC-12 negotiations aimed at creating new jobs, driving economic growth and pushing forward emerging U.S. industries as global leaders, officials said in a briefing. Spectrum for mobile broadband, unmanned aircraft systems, wireless avionics intra-communications and a framework for post-shuttle era communications are some of the top U.S. objectives for the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) and beyond, officials said. The U.S. is heavily engaged in bilateral and regional talks to solidify support, they said.

Eric Mokole, head of the Surveillance Technology branch of the Radar Division at the Naval Research Lab, warned Thursday about a growing threat to military radars as the government looks for more spectrum for wireless broadband. The wireless industry often doesn’t fully understand the threat to military radars, Mokole said at the International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies in Boulder, Colo.