Dish Network agreed to buy DBSD for about $1 billion Tuesday, potentially giving Dish access to 20 MHz of valuable mobile satellite spectrum. The purchase of bankrupt MSS/ancillary terrestrial component licensee, which is subject to approval from the bankruptcy court and the FCC, offers Dish several options, said industry executives. The agreement follows the FCC’s waiver approval last week that allowed LightSquared to offer terrestrial-only services in spectrum allocated for MSS (CD Jan 27 p1). Dish may have similar hopes for the DBSD spectrum, said observers.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Egypt’s Internet cutoff vindicates support for strong net neutrality and opposition to online censorship, said Free Press President Josh Silver. A lesson is that neither governments nor corporations should be allowed to shut down or censor the Internet, he said at the Commonwealth Club civic forum Monday evening.

The Obama administration, working with companies like Facebook, Intel, IBM, Google and Hewlett-Packard, has created a Startup America campaign to help technology entrepreneurs, officials said Monday at a White House briefing. The effort proposes to speed up patent reviews and provide tax relief and credits as well as funding. Steve Case, co-founder of AOL and Chairman of the Case Foundation, will chair the partnership.

The work of career FCC staffers on an order about an independent programmer’s complaint against the three largest U.S. cable operators and another sizable one is continuing and may be getting closer to completion, said commission and industry officials watching the progress. No order was circulating midday Monday on WealthTV’s program carriage complaint against Bright House Networks, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable, commission officials said. The Media Bureau may finish its work soon, though it’s unclear exactly when, said commission and industry officials.

Analysts expect cable operators to tell of further video subscriber losses when they report Q4 financial results in coming weeks. The lagging economy, a nearly saturated pay-TV market and the lack of new housing construction have limited the overall size of the pay-TV market, and cable operators are continuing to lose share to DBS and telecom competitors, they said. “What we're seeing are pretty much flat results for the industry as a whole,” said Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group. “We're talking about essentially 90 percent of people having some form of multichannel video service."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski abandoned trying to use Title II authority in the net neutrality order, but his proposed overhaul of the Universal Service Fund may revive the reclassification debate, an industry official and a former Obama administration adviser each told us. Genachowski wants to refocus the fund to support high-speed broadband, and his staff has drafted a notice of proposed rulemaking that the commission is expected to vote on next week. Congress is poised to jump into the universal service deliberations (CD Jan 28 p4).

A Time Warner Cable executive’s comments show the company is “warehousing spectrum” that could be used to build out Internet service to underserved markets, NAB President Gordon Smith wrote the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Commerce committees. Statements by Time Warner Cable Chief Operating Officer Rob Marcus on a conference call last week to discuss Q4 results (CD Jan 29 p7) amounted to a “surprising admission,” Smith wrote. It comes “at a time when other press reports have indicated that wireless carriers are sitting on as much as $15 billion in spectrum that has yet to be deployed,” he wrote in a letter Friday. Hours after the NAB released the document Monday, CTIA criticized it as “baffling.” The wireless and broadcast industries have been at odds over whether a spectrum shortage is approaching.

Another wireless bill to give the 700 MHz D-block to public safety is in the works, from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, the Commerce Committee’s ranking member, a GOP committee staffer told us Friday. A White House endorsement late Thursday of D-block reallocation brought cheers from lawmakers with reallocation bills and silence from House Commerce Committee leaders who have supported a commercial auction.

TORONTO -- With Canada’s DTV transition seven months away, broadcasters are fighting over the government’s plans to make stations air two different public service announcements (PSAs) about the switchover several times each day. In recent comments to the Canadian Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), national broadcasters CTVglobemedia Inc. and Shaw Media and Quebec broadcaster V Interactions Inc. complained about the potential revenue loss of running the pair of PSAs. Other major broadcasters, such as CBC/Radio-Canada, complained that the government’s proposed PSAs could confuse viewers by overloading them with too much information at once. Consumer groups complained that the government’s plans wouldn’t go far enough in educating the public.

A senior FCC official said Friday Verizon and MetroPCS filed challenges to the net neutrality rules too early, because the text of the order hasn’t been published in the Federal Register. The commission asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to put off a deadline to respond to a motion by Verizon that the case go to the panel that heard the Comcast case.