As online video streamer ivi TV continues to press its copyright arguments against media companies in federal court, the company has cut staff and refocused its resources on its legal and policy goals, CEO Todd Weaver said in an interview Thursday. After a federal judge ordered ivi to stop streaming TV stations’ signals to its subscribers, the company cut 70 percent of its staff and completely shut down its headend facilities, Weaver said in court documents associated with its appeal of that injunction filed last week. The company is “surviving on subscriber donations and savings” after seeing 95 percent of its sales wiped out, he said in the declaration. The company had claimed it was entitled to carry TV station signals under the Copyright Act’s compulsory license, but the major networks and other media companies sued last year to block the service.

The city of Charlotte, N.C., got broad support from the Public Safety Spectrum Trust and other local governments on its request for clarity from the FCC that use of its proposed wireless broadband network should not be restricted to police, firefighters and emergency medical service providers. Charlotte asked the FCC in March for a declaratory ruling that other government agencies can also use the 700 MHz network. Charlotte was one of the public safety applicants that got a Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grant last year to build out an early network in the band.

A House Democrat seeking to increase the disclosure requirements of third-party political donors and advertisers sued the Federal Election Commission over a 2007 rule change in that area and also petitioned it to open a rulemaking on a related issue. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., filed suit in the U.S. District Court, D.C., alleging the FEC violated administrative procedure in adopting a 2007 rule that eased electioneering communications disclosure rules. Van Hollen also asked the agency to quickly amend its independent expenditure disclosure requirements “that has similarly allowed groups to [raise] millions of dollars … while keeping secret the donors whose funds are used to pay for the ads,” the Campaign Legal Center said in a press release. From 2007 to 2010 Van Hollen was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

AT&T formally sought permission to buy T-Mobile in a filing Thursday afternoon at the FCC. AT&T said it’s increasing its projections for how much of the U.S. it will be able to cover with wireless broadband if the deal is approved, from 95 percent to 97.3 percent, closer to the Obama administration’s goal of covering 98 percent of U.S. households within five years. The filing stresses the growing competition in the wireless market, from other carriers ranging from Sprint Nextel to LightSquared. AT&T also emphasized the spectrum that will be freed up as a result of efficiencies if AT&T and T-Mobile are allowed to merge.

Helped by wireless gains, Verizon’s Q1 profit was $1.44 billion, up almost 70 percent from the year-ago quarter. Chief Financial Officer Francis Shammo affirmed the carrier’s spectrum position during a conference call Thursday. Meanwhile, the carrier will stay on the sidelines on the AT&T/T-Mobile merger for now, he said.

The FCC said it’s collecting data for the first time about how online video distributors operate and the extent to which they compete with or complement traditional pay-TV service. The questions are in a further notice of inquiry about the state of video competition released Thursday. The commission is required to submit a video competition report to Congress each year, but hasn’t produced one since January 2009. The forthcoming report, the FCC’s 14th, will look at the state of video competition from 2007 through June 30, 2010, the notice said. It also seeks comment on developments in the traditional pay-TV sector, and the prospects for broadcasters to build new businesses around delivering video on their digital spectrum.

Lawmakers are asking Apple for answers following the discovery that its iPod and iPad devices are regularly storing a list of its users’ locations. The findings were revealed Wednesday by Alasdair Allan, a senior research fellow at the University of Exeter, and Pete Warden, a former Apple programmer and founder of OpenHeatMap.com. The researchers claim “there’s no immediate harm” from the data records, but lawmakers are up in arms about the privacy implications of the discovery.

Public safety spending on 700 MHz D-block lobbying more than quadrupled in Q1 2011 compared to the same quarter last year, according to Q1 lobbying reports. The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials spent $80,563, 303 percent more than what the group spent in Q1 2010 and 66 percent more than Q4 2010. Meanwhile, the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association spent nearly five times what it did last year, and NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield said she expects the association of small rural telcos to continue spending at that level.

AT&T’s Q1 profit jumped 39 percent year-over-year to $3.4 billion though the company’s postpaid net additions plummeted 88 percent from a year earlier to 62,000. Executives insisted that customers stayed with AT&T despite Verizon’s iPhone launch. AT&T remains concerned about long-term capacity constraints as it relates to spectrum, “and that’s one of the things that will hopefully be relieved with the T-Mobile transaction,” Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T’s mobility and consumer markets, said on a conference call Wednesday.

A federal appeal court ruling that EchoStar violated an injunction barring it from continuing to sell satellite receivers/DVRs that infringed a TiVo patent leaves EchoStar with a range of options, analysts said. EchoStar said it will likely appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s finding that it’s in contempt of the injunction. But the ruling could also represent table stakes for a possible settlement, analysts said.