The FCC would be allowed to do voluntary incentive auctions under a House bill introduced late Friday by Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio. The narrowly written bill (HR-1622), which would split proceeds between licensees and the U.S. Treasury, is the first incentive auction bill from a House Commerce Committee Republican. However, the committee is expected to have at least two more spectrum hearings before agreeing to any legislation. Industry lobbyists said budget talks are likely to determine the House’s pace.

FCC staff have been asking carriers a new round of questions about their billing procedures, according to recent ex parte filings at the FCC. That could mean the commission is getting closer on bill shock rules, sought by consumer and public interest groups but opposed by carriers, industry sources said Monday.

Replacing Commissioner Michael Copps may not be easy and may not happen until after he leaves the FCC at the end of the current Congress. The White House has vetted several candidates for the soon-to-be-open FCC seat held by Copps, industry and government officials confirm. Jessica Rosenworcel, aide to Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., appears to be the likely nominee (CD March 3 p5) and Rockefeller has asked the White House that she be nominated, officials said. The FBI may have already started the final critical background investigation on a single candidate, officials said.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Unless the FCC does away with its net neutrality rules, Congress probably won’t give the FCC authority for incentive spectrum auctions to move TV broadcasters off their frequencies and let mobile broadband operators bid on them, said House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., after a field hearing on government impediments to job creation in the high-tech sector. “Until net neutrality is rolled back, I don’t believe Congress is going to be willing to give the FCC any new power,” Issa told reporters. The FCC got “administratively what it couldn’t get legislatively,” he said. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.

Telephone and Internet traffic data storage “has proved useful in criminal investigations” but the EU data retention directive needs reworking, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said Monday. A European Commission evaluation of how the measure is working found wide-ranging differences in how it’s adopted and used across the EU, which Malmström said she'd remedy in amendments, but also general agreement by governments that it’s helping guard against serious crime. But civil rights advocates flayed the EC for recognizing the law’s failings but refusing to find a less privacy-invasive alternative.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said he expects industry help in his company’s fight to prevent AT&T from buying T-Mobile. Right after saying at a Commonwealth Club civic forum Friday that Sprint doesn’t expect to stand alone in its battle, he said the acquisition would hurt suppliers and distributors of network equipment and user devices, along with operating-system makers and applications developers. After the presentation, Hesse told reporters that such companies would face business risks in opposing the deal. He wouldn’t discuss what Sprint may be doing to organize opposition, with whom or with what success.

While the Rural Cellular Association and Sprint Nextel urged the FCC’s data roaming order to be followed by mandating 700 MHz device interoperability, AT&T questioned the need to act at a New America Foundation Friday panel, co-sponsored by the Consumers Union.

White spaces rules waivers are likely to be given by the FCC to many or all of the several dozen TV stations that sought protection from interference for outlets far away from the antenna of the broadcaster that originates the content, industry officials predicted. Those who have filed the requests, which were due April 5 but continued being posted last week to docket 04-186, and engineering officials said they're hoping the waivers won’t be controversial. Under last year’s white spaces order, those with sites receiving the TV signals of other stations, and located more than 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the protected service area of the originating station, can seek such waivers.

The FCC doesn’t need to expand the scope and scale of its broadband information gathering program, said Verizon, T-Mobile, SpeedNet, and the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions in reply comments released Friday. But local and state regulators at NASUCA, New Jersey and the District of Columbia said they need more information to regulate telecom effectively. The comments were posted to dockets 11-10, 07038, 08-190 and 10-132. The commission collects information on the telecom industry through the so-called form 477, but it opened a rulemaking proceeding asking whether the form should be expanded to extract data on broadband speed, prices and practices around the country.

Two senators took issue with the interference potential of LightSquared’s wireless service with GPS operations. They asked colleagues to join in petitioning the FCC to be more involved in the review process. Sens. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., sent a “dear colleague” letter to the rest of the Senate on Thursday asking for support in pushing the agency to more closely oversee LightSquared’s testing. LightSquared is reviewing the interference potential through an FCC-required working group that includes wireless, GPS and federal interests. That group is supposed to present a final report to the agency by June 15.