The FCC majority got things wrong last year when it declined to find in its annual wireless competition report that the U.S. market, is “effectively competitive,” Joshua Wright, associate professor of law at George Mason University, said at a Mercatus Center conference late Wednesday. The GMU-based center asked experts to comment on the future of the report, which the FCC has released every year since 1995, following a congressional mandate. Wright was sharply critical of how FCC economists interpreted the data collected on the state of the market.

AT&T faces mounting criticism from public, educational and governmental channel advocates (CD March 31 p11) calling anew for the telco to make major changes to how its pay-TV service delivers PEG channels to subscribers so the blind can easily access them. The campaign for AT&T to stop putting PEG channels on a subchannel, and to instead make each one a separate channel as the company’s U-verse service does for other programming, intensified with a letter Thursday to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. He was written by American Community Television (ACT) President John Rocco, who can’t see well and said he’s among those that can’t use on-screen menus to choose PEG networks within channel 99.

Not one Capitol Hill proposal to renew Patriot Act sections expiring May 27 sufficiently protects U.S. citizens from government spying, civil liberties advocates said Thursday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Wednesday introduced a much scaled-back alternative to the extensions bill approved in March by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Expiring Patriot Act sections relate to roving wiretaps, lone wolf attacks and Section 215 orders to obtain “any tangible thing.” House lawmakers will vote next week on an extension bill, but it was unclear Thursday on which proposal.

Senate lawmakers again chided Facebook, Apple and Google at a mobile privacy hearing held Thursday for failing to protect minors. Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., took a hard line against the three companies for behaviors that he said might violate the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). FTC official David Vladeck said that the commission is targeting “a number” of companies for alleged COPPA violations and asked Congress for more assistance.

DALLAS -- The prospect of wireless security regulation is “changing the basic incentives of many management structures,” said Sam Curry, RSA chief technology officer. RSA is the security division of storage hardware and data recovery firm EMC. But officials at the TIA convention said that may not be happening quickly enough as malware for Android operating systems, for example, proliferates with a compounded growth rate of 400 percent monthly. “Security is a dirty word at many companies,” Curry said. “The language of risk at the C-level and elsewhere is not always fully developed.” Chief financial officers see security as just a cost to be managed, said Phil Attfield, CEO of Sequitur Labs. He said they need to start seeing security as a “profit center."

OMAHA, Neb. -- The FCC shouldn’t fall for the “misperception” that satellite can’t provide effective voice and broadband service, WildBlue Vice President Lisa Scalpone said late Wednesday at a commission workshop on changing the Universal Service Fund to pay for Internet service. “We don’t want to be foreclosed,” she told federal and state regulators, including FCC members Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn. ViaSat, WildBlue’s parent, is scheduled to launch ViaSat-1 in July. Scalpone said that once that satellite is operational, WildBlue will go from download speeds of 2 Mbps to 12 Mbps. “At least let satellite perform in pilot programs,” she said. “We'll have the programs up and running."

OMAHA, Neb. -- Industry and public interest advocates have yet to devise a comprehensive proposal addressing all the problems of the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said at a commission roundtable. “We want to see more from stakeholders in this program, and we want to see it quickly.” The chairman led a public forum on the pending overhaul late Wednesday at the University of Nebraska at Omaha to close a day-long set of discussions. He reiterated the four corners of his reform program: Moving to a broadband fund and phasing down intercarrier comp rates, (including intrastate revenues); “controlling costs and constraining the size of the fund;” “demanding accountability;” and “market-driven and incentive-based policies to maximize the impact of scarce program resources.”

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Comcast’s top lawyer hopes people will take a “deep breath” about Meredith Baker’s hiring by the cable operator, after the FCC member’s decision last week to leave the agency resulted in what he called unsubstantiated innuendo. Executive Vice President David Cohen spent much of the Q-and-A after a Wednesday speech to industry executives, lobbyists and FCC staffers fielding questions about Baker. He said he hopes it will be the last word on the topic (CD May 18 p1), as the company, fresh off its purchase of control in NBCUniversal, seeks to make broadband more affordable for the poor, part of a commitment it made to the commission in the deal.

A wireless industry coalition warned that the FCC could be on the wrong track as it moves forward on its Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) of the Antenna Structure Registration (ASR) process. CTIA, NAB, PCIA and the National Association of Tower Erectors said the FCC appears to being giving too much weight to a study by Travis Longcore of the Urban Wildlands Group in Los Angeles and other scientists who want quick action imposing new rules for tower construction.