A European Parliament member’s plans for releasing TV spectrum for mobile broadband services exceed the European Commission’s, said Public Affairs Head Nicola Frank of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), in an interview Monday. With the 800 MHz band expected to be freed for wireless uses by digital switchover by 2013 across Europe, Gunnar Hokmark of Sweden and the European People’s Party and others are already looking for a “second digital dividend” from the 700 MHz band, Frank said. That could spell “the end of terrestrial television” in some countries, she said. She was responding to a draft report by Hokmark on the EC proposal for a five-year spectrum policy roadmap, discussed Monday in the Industry, Research and Energy Committee.

Cable, DBS and telcos’ desire for changes to a draft retransmission consent rulemaking may not be fulfilled entirely when the notice is voted on at Thursday’s FCC meeting. Agency officials said wholesale or substantive changes to the notice are unlikely. Commissioners hadn’t formally proposed any changes by midday Monday, FCC officials said. Some pay-TV executives had said they would like the forthcoming notice not to tentatively conclude that the agency can’t force carriage or require arbitration when a TV station is blacked out on a subscription-video system. The draft before commissioners reaches the tentative conclusion that the commission can’t (CD Feb 22 p5).

The FCC is waiting to hear from CenturyLink and Qwest about the kinds of conditions they would accept for approval of their deal, commission officials told us. Approval is not “imminent,” but the fact-finding has wrapped up, the officials said. The deal is reaching “the home stretch,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast wrote Friday, but a government shutdown remains “a threat.” She added, “We expect the FCC will impose duties” on the combined company “in certain areas -- including wholesale performance and broadband deployment/adoption, some of which could resemble previous conditions on CenturyLink-Embarq and Frontier-Verizon -- with additional obligations possible, but not as onerous as critics want."

The FCC appears to be leaning toward Title II-style regulation of broadband through its Universal Service Fund revamp, industry officials told us after examining the commission’s rulemaking notice on USF. “It’s clear to me that when you look at the questions they're asking around support, that seems where they're heading,” Voice of the Net Coalition Executive Director Glenn Richards said. “It’s a way to get broadband providers to agree to Title II-like obligations.” FCC officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

T-Mobile USA’s Q4 profit fell 12.4 percent year-over-year to $268 million. The carrier lost 318,000 contract customers in the quarter, though it more than doubled its smartphone users.

Use of the 4.9 GHz band by public safety has been a failure so far, former FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Ed Thomas said during a commission forum Friday. Thomas proposed that the band be opened up for commercial use, on a secondary basis to public safety.

NAB and the Association for Maximum Service Television asked the FCC to reject industry petitions seeking changes to the commission’s white-spaces rules filed in January (CD Jan 10 p 4). The Wi-Fi Alliance, meanwhile, opposed NCTA and Cellular South petitions for reconsideration that would tighten the rules.

Many organizations expressed support for a privacy-by-design principle, in their comments to the FTC on its privacy framework. The framework’s potential for heavy privacy restrictions was a point of contention. Comments were due Friday. The commission posted some last-minute submissions this week.

The American Trucking Associations (ATA) supported a ban on drivers’ use of hand-held cellphones while behind the wheel but said they should be able to talk using hands-free devices. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, another major trucking group, said a ban on hand-held use should not be imposed at this time. Both groups filed comments this week in response to a rulemaking notice by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

The FCC’s forthcoming rulemaking notice on the Lifeline/Link-Up funds would cap support -- and that’s already drawing resistance, industry and commission officials said. A group of Florida public officials wrote the commission this week, urging it to recognize that low-income support is “cyclical” and to focus on other ways of trimming the funds’ costs. TracFone Wireless “will oppose any capping of the fund,” said Greenberg Traurig telecom lawyer Mitchell Brecher, who represents that company. The agency will take up a rulemaking notice on the fund next week.