The Federal Aviation Administration voiced uncertainty in a July 12 document over how well LightSquared’s revised rollout plans would mitigate potential interference with some GPS services used by civil aircraft. The FAA responded to questions from the Executive Office of the President’s Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Executive Committee’s National Coordination Office. Under LightSquared’s new plan, it would begin terrestrial broadband service only in the lower part of the L-band to help reduce interference problems with GPS devices. LightSquared still needs approval from the FCC on the plan and the agency is now reviewing the LightSquared proposal and has requested public comment.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Smaller cable operators were reassured that they'll withstand the onslaught of Netflix and over-the-top video. The words of comfort came late Tuesday from Chairman Mark Cuban of cable programmer HDNet, whose personal fortune came from Internet broadcasting. “Netflix replaces going to Blockbuster and buying the stack of DVDs that you had, because it’s primarily library stuff,” he said in a keynote at the American Cable Association’s and the National Cable Television Cooperative’s Independent Show. Cuban added “It kind of loses its cachet over time.” He said Netflix will remain complementary to cable service, because it won’t be “able to offer new content” that can compete directly with conventional pay TV.

Phone companies aren’t the only industry group divided by potential Universal Service Fund change proposals. With a group convened by USTelecom poised to give the FCC on Friday a plan to make USF pay for broadband (CD July 26 p1), large and small cable operators also have different views on that framework. Just as major phone companies like AT&T and Verizon are expected to back the plan, with some mid-size telcos also joining in, the biggest U.S. cable operators also may support many if not all parts of the plan. As with small telcos that are net recipients of USF money and intercarrier compensation funds, cable operators that get such money also may back few if any aspects of the framework. That’s according to interviews with cable executives Tuesday.

Spectrum legislation to authorize voluntary FCC incentive auctions for broadcast spectrum appears to have become inextricably enmeshed with the debate over raising the debt ceiling. With no clear path in sight for compromise between President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress, industry and government officials said Tuesday it’s unclear whether the debt reconciliation will emerge as the key lever for getting the commission the auction authority it seeks as part of the National Broadband Plan. Broadcasters said a debt limit amendment unveiled late Monday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., could hurt the industry.

AT&T and Deutsche Telekom released a highly redacted version of a revised economic analysis of their proposed merger, offering regulators a detailed analysis of synergies they say would result from the deal in 15 markets. Merger opponents were quick to criticize the revised model. Disclosure of the revised model led the Wireless Bureau last week to temporarily halt the 180-day shot clock on its review of the deal.

The FCC wants to know about the ease of signing deals to carry regional sports networks on multichannel video programming distributors. The Media Bureau asked about a dozen questions on RSNs in a public notice. It’s part of work on a report due Jan. 13 on access and carriage issues for those channels. That’s six months before the expiration of RSN conditions imposed by the commission in 2006 on Comcast and Time Warner Cable as part of letting them buy Adelphia Communications. “After issuing the report, the Commission, in its discretion, may determine if further action is warranted,” the bureau said Tuesday. The Adelphia order barred the top two U.S. cable operators from withholding access to RSNs they deliver without using satellites, other than Comcast’s SportsNet Philadelphia.

Device maker Wilson Electronics and Verizon Wireless filed at the FCC a joint agreement on cell boosters, which would create three classes of boosters, with many available for use without carrier permission. Their joint proposal was filed this week as the FCC took a final round of comments on an April notice of proposed rulemaking on new technical, operational, and coordination parameters for fixed and mobile signal boosters (http://xrl.us/bk28pb).

Cybersecurity is a “very important subject” to small business across the U.S., and is deserving of more attention, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., said during a field hearing of the Senate Small Business Committee late Monday in Laurel, Md. Cardin was joined by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. The hearing took place near Fort Meade, the headquarters for the new U.S. Cyber Command and also the National Security Agency.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The future of small cable operators is in providing broadband access to customers, young executives at family-owned companies told the National Cable and TV Cooperative’s annual conference Monday. “We still provide the cable TV product, but our main focus in the business is now broadband and moving that forward for the future,” said Kyle South, general manager of West Alabama TV Cable. As that happens, cable operators need to make sure the Internet doesn’t begin to mimic the cable-TV programming marketplace, said Levi Maaia, vice president of Full Channel TV, which operates in Rhode Island. “The primary issue I'm concerned with moving forward is the cable TV model” of cable operators paying programmers for the right to distribute their programming “being imposed on the Internet,” he said. “It concerns me that programmers could come into the Internet and drive up our cost of delivering affordable Internet access,” he said. They spoke on panel of younger executives poised to take the reigns of family-owned operations.

The FCC wouldn’t distribute Universal Service Fund cash for broadband in areas where any ISP already sells Internet service, under a USTelecom-brokered industry agreement that could be made public as early Friday (CD July 22 p3), industry and FCC officials told us. Talks are still going on, they said Monday. Under the agreement, which USTelecom has been calling a “framework,” VoIP wouldn’t be classified either as telecom or information service, and VoIP carriers would be required to pay interstate access rates for all non-local calls, the officials said. Comcast and other major cable operators continue to evaluate the USTelecom proposal, and it’s possible they'll join it, industry officials said.