For the second month in a row, the FCC won’t take on any high-profile issues at its monthly meeting. The agenda for the June 9 open meeting lists four items, none likely to excite much attention (CD May 23 p6). The May meeting’s agenda was similarly light (CD May 13 p 9).

The release of the White House proposed cybersecurity legislation is a very important step in protecting critical infrastructure, said Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, at a hearing Monday. “If we don’t do something soon, the Internet is going to be a digital Dodge City,” he said. “Cyberspace is just too important in modern life for us to sit back and allow that to happen.” The White House plan is similar to the Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act he introduced in February, he said. “Where there are differences, I think we can work together to find agreement.” The cyber arena “is where the biggest gap exists between the threat level and vulnerabilities and our level of preparedness,” said ranking member Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. “Unfortunately, the government’s overall approach to cybersecurity has been disjointed and uncoordinated to date.” Comprehensive cybersecurity legislation is more urgent than ever, she said.

More NBC-owned TV stations will seek local news sharing partnerships with nonprofit online news organizations, under the company’s local news commitments it made when Comcast acquired control of NBCUniversal from GE. The partnerships will be modeled on KNSD-TV San Diego’s relationship with voiceofsandiego.org, NBC said. Monday, it published requests for proposals from nonprofit news organizations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Washington, and Hartford-New Haven, Conn., it said.

Congress should be vague in legislation authorizing voluntary incentive auctions at the FCC, said commission and outside economists and consultants at a Technology Policy Institute lunch Monday. While the economists opposed forcing broadcasters and other holders to give up their spectrum, they said it’s not a good idea also to make the repacking process voluntary. Some urged the FCC to address competition in auction rules due to increasing consolidation in the wireless industry.

The FCC needs to take “extraordinary measures” to address the need for deployment and use of spectrum on tribal lands, the National Tribal Telecommunications Association (NTTA) said in comments on an NPRM on that topic, released by the FCC in March. The NTTA was the only tribal group to file comments before last week’s deadline. Only eight commenters filed last week in docket 11-40.

The FCC is backtracking on an AllVid proposal it floated (CD March 24 p1) as an alternative to cable and telco-TV providers having to connect to consumer electronics, said agency and industry officials. They said the alternative to a gateway connector approach the Media Bureau floated in recent months, for pay-TV providers to let CE devices connect to their IP streams using application programming interfaces, appears dead. Lobbying by the CE industry against the plan and technical concerns within the bureau and possibly the office of Chairman Julius Genachowski sunk it, said commission officials and executives in the CE and pay-TV industries. AllVid aims to replace CableCARDs.

Pay-TV interests ratcheted up criticism of terrestrial broadcasters Monday, in a fight over whether the FCC should change rules on retransmission consent deals. Terrestrial TV is archaic, a “needless expense” that’s “propped up” by outdated rules for a technology with a “brilliant run to obsolescence,” wrote an economist who often opposes regulation. The paper, heavy with historical reviews of regulation and technology, was paid for by pay-TV companies and others seeking retransmission-consent changes. In it, George Mason University Professor Thomas Hazlett backed reallocating TV stations’ frequencies for newer technologies like mobile broadband. The NAB, which along with its members has said retrans works, criticized the paper, while the CEA said it offered some good points on reallocating spectrum.

Sprint Nextel is urging regulators in California and West Virginia to follow Louisiana in reviewing AT&T’s plan to buy T-Mobile for $39 billion. The Louisiana Public Service Commission, which opened a proceeding, is requesting information on the deal, a commission spokesman said.

DALLAS -- Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, is “confident” that her joint spectrum bill with Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., will get through both houses of Congress and be signed this year, she said in response to our question after a speech at the TIA convention. Hutchison said the bill has “changed enormously” since Rockefeller initially introduced it, making it more appealing to both parties.

Carriers, E-commerce companies and trade associations have joined forces to form the Download Fairness Coalition to push for a national tax framework. The group seeks to end what it calls discriminatory and multiple state and local taxes, officials said during a conference call Thursday.