The public switched telephone network may be dwindling, but its intercarrier compensation regime has guaranteed high-quality voice service, and proponents of the broadband transition ought to take care that they don’t destroy service for the sake of their technological revolution, Free Conference Call CEO David Erickson said Tuesday. “We shouldn’t go out of our way to regulate out the old system just because some people on this call think it’s a dying business,” Erickson said in a conference call debate over the FCC’s proposed reforms of the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime. An AT&T executive said PSTN is quickly becoming a thing of the past, while the panel’s moderator said the transition away from that network is inevitable.

IVI TV is not a cable system under the Copyright Act, a federal judge in New York said in an order granting a temporary injunction against the company selling live online video streams of some broadcast stations and other programming. The injunction was sought by broadcasters, studios and sports leagues. Ivi had argued it was entitled to carry the stations under the statutory license in Section 111 of the act. “Many companies have constructed business models revolving around the use of new technologies and the statutory license,” U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald of New York wrote. “Some new technologies have been found to fall within Section 11. Others have motivated Congress to devise separate licensing schemes to address the unique issues they present."

AllVid rules could cut out cable and satellite providers because consumer electronics companies could take pay-TV content without having to share it with them or work directly with their systems, said DirecTV and NCTA executives. Requiring all multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to connect to a wide array of video devices shouldn’t be allowed to cut the MVPDs out of technological advances that they could use in their own systems, said DirecTV Vice President Stacy Fuller. AllVid could let CE companies “slice and dice” MVPD content without having a mandate to share it with pay TV, said NCTA Senior Vice President Rick Chessen. Both executives, speaking on a Tuesday D.C. Bar Association panel, said they support video device innovation. The FCC is working on an AllVid rulemaking notice.

The draft FCC rulemaking notice on retransmission consent asks questions about the practices of both pay-TV providers and broadcasters, the sides sparring over whether rules need to be updated, said commission and industry officials. The questions deal with subjects such as pay-TV providers’ notices to subscribers about possible carriage blackouts, and broadcast practices in negotiating retrans deals, FCC officials said. Some broadcast officials said they would prefer the item not ask about their industry’s retrans practices, or even to have a notice at all, and several pay-TV executives said they would prefer that the draft (CD Feb 14 p6) not say the commission doesn’t have authority to order interim carriage or arbitration in cases in which good faith is lacking.

The FCC should impose net neutrality conditions on the CenturyLink-Qwest deal, Free Press said in meetings with commission staff. In an ex parte notice published Friday, the group that supports such rules said it also asked the commission to require the merged company to forgo Universal Service Fund support for broadband projects. “We noted that the merging parties are making, and will be held to buildout requirements as a condition of the merger and that the combined entity should not expect to use USF monies to meet these commitments,” Free Press Policy Counsel Aparna Sridhar wrote in the notice.

The FCC’s net neutrality order became a small part of the larger federal budget game after the House Thursday night passed an amendment to the Continuing Resolution sponsored by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. Breaking mostly along party lines, the House voted 244-181 to approve the amendment. It would ban FCC implementation of net neutrality rules until the Continuing Resolution expires Sept. 30. A final vote on the CR was expected late Friday. The House also passed an amendment to cut the agency’s chief diversity officer. That position has been held by Mark Lloyd, who drew heat from the political right for what some thought was support of the fairness doctrine, which he said he never backed.

Moving AM and FM stations from rural to urban areas would become harder under a draft FCC order that also deals with tribal radio issues, agency and industry lawyers said. Among the many items tentatively set for a vote at the March 3 meeting (CD Feb 14 p6), the Media Bureau order circulated by Chairman Julius Genachowski sets up a rebuttable presumption against what are called move-ins, an agency official said. AM and FM stations seeking to change their community of license to reach a service contour that was half or more urbanized would need to make a case why they should be able to make such a move, FCC officials said.

The FCC is probing the representations of News Corp.’s Fox Television Stations in discussions it had with the agency over the pending and contested license renewal of WWOR-TV Secaucus, N.J. Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake on Thursday sent the a lawyer for the broadcast network a letter of inquiry saying it’s investigating whether Fox broke several rules by allegedly misrepresenting the extent of its news and operations. WWOR is the only full-power commercial station in New Jersey and is required to carry news serving the specific audience of the northern part of the state, rather than just its community of license, as is the case with all other U.S. TV stations.

A broad state role is critical to modernize and streamline Universal Service and Intercarrier Compensation policies, state members of the Federal-State USF Joint Board told an FCC workshop Thursday. Speakers debated proposed changes in fund size.

President Barack Obama’s broadband stimulus program was “vindicated” by new NTIA findings that up to two-thirds of America’s schools can’t get broadband at speeds they need, NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling. Thursday, the agency unveiled its new broadband map. The map indicated that up to 10 percent of Americans can’t get broadband. The map is based on more than 125 million searchable records in the new mapping database, with information from some 1,600 broadband companies. “All of these records can be analyzed in countless ways,” Strickling said. “But the data continues to show that a digital divide continues to exist."