Field tests found that increasing power levels for digital radio “would establish parity between digital and analog indoor and outdoor coverage,” a maker of HD Radio equipment told aides to FCC Commissioners Meredith Baker and Mignon Clyburn last week. Class A stations would gain a greater benefit, increasing coverage as much as half, a handout from iBiquity said. A group of 18 broadcasters sought FCC approval to increase digital FM power to 10 times the current level. The area of “potential impact” to analog stations is outside the protected contour, the handout said. “Compromise proposals” would allow stations in the nonreserved band to raise power immediately but would maintain current limits in the reserved band until public radio completes additional tests. National Public Radio has been running tests, and it has asked the commission to wait until they ended before acting on the power-increase request (CD July 8 p11). Another compromise would set maximum levels at 6 dB “pending further consideration of a full 10 dB increase,” iBiquity said.

Field tests found that increasing power levels for digital radio “would establish parity between digital and analog indoor and outdoor coverage,” a maker of HD Radio equipment told aides to FCC Commissioners Meredith Baker and Mignon Clyburn last week. Class A stations would gain a greater benefit, increasing coverage as much as half, a handout from iBiquity said. A group of 18 broadcasters sought FCC approval to increase digital FM power to 10 times the current level. The area of “potential impact” to analog stations is outside the protected contour, the handout said. “Compromise proposals” would allow stations in the nonreserved band to raise power immediately but would maintain current limits in the reserved band until public radio completes additional tests. National Public Radio has been running tests, and it has asked the commission to wait until they ended before acting on the power-increase request (CED July 8 p4). Another compromise would set maximum levels at 6 dB “pending further consideration of a full 10 dB increase,” iBiquity said.

Judges seemed skeptical of Rural Cellular Association arguments that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit should throw out the FCC’s interim cap on universal service payments to competitive eligible telecommunications carriers (CETCs), imposed in May 2008. RCA attorney David LaFuria told judges during oral argument Monday that the commission had imposed the cap without a factual or logical basis, without showing an emergency requiring bold action.

Congress can’t act to fix the complicated music licensing regime until music and technology companies can agree on a path going forward, a Copyright Office lawyer told a Future of Music Coalition conference in Washington Monday. But the repeated sniping between RIAA and Rhapsody executives on the panel discussion, and broader dispute over the viability of compulsory licensing to make music more easily available without harming existing business models, showed there was still a wide divide on core issues. British music industry veteran Peter Jenner, president emeritus of the International Music Managers Forum, called for an entire rethinking of copyright policy, saying the industries were “fighting over the scraps.”

The FCC may soon take a renewed look at the legality of traffic stimulation that rural local exchange carriers are accused of carrying out through arrangements with free- conferencing providers, industry officials said in interviews. They said two recent events have raised the profile at the FCC of what big carriers call traffic pumping: An Iowa Utilities Board decision last month requiring eight rural LECs to refund unauthorized intrastate switched access charges billed to Qwest, AT&T and Sprint, and an AT&T letter saying Google Voice is flouting an FCC ban on traditional telco “self-help” by blocking calls to numbers with high access charges (CD Oct 2 p13).

Dish Network seems to be within months of a legislative victory that would free it from a ban on distant signal importation, as Congress moves forward with satellite reauthorization legislation. The Senate Communications Subcommittee plans the first action on the bill in a hearing Wednesday. The House Commerce Committee will take up the bill soon, said a committee aide. The House and Senate Judiciary committees have passed separate versions of the bill leaving the details far from certain, say several congressional officials and lobbyists.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order banning federal employees from texting while driving on the job, the White House said. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood pledged to work with the Congress to ensure that the distracted driving issue is appropriately addressed, he said Thursday at a summit on distracted driving. Panelists urged more states to ban texting while driving, though some doubted the effectiveness of regulation.

Work on comprehensive emergency communications legislation will come next year when the FCC finishes its broadband plan and perhaps takes up revamping the Universal Service Fund, House aides said at an E-911 Institute meeting Thursday. The need for a nationwide strategy and funding for next-generation E-911 services could be taken up in a USF bill or some other broadband-related vehicle, aides said. Some of this year’s broadband stimulus awards could go to public-safety projects, as called for in the Recovery Act, but much more money will be needed to fulfill longstanding plans for a nationwide interoperable network, people at the conference said.

A draft notice of inquiry on children’s media now before FCC members mostly asks questions set up in the commission’s August report to Congress on parental controls (CD Sept 1 p1), FCC and industry officials said. The report listed 10 issues to be explored in the inquiry, most related to the V- chip and other types of parental controls. The draft notice on the eighth floor asks about ways to improve parental controls and mentions the Children’s Television Act, commission officials said.

The U.S. Department of Transportation will unveil recommendations Thursday on texting while driving and the broader topic of distracted driving, Secretary Ray LaHood said Wednesday, opening a two-day distracted driving summit. “We're not here simply to study the problem. We're here to come up with solutions,” LaHood said. “I don’t know if there’s any more important meeting that we can have at DOT than the meeting that will take place here in the next day and a half.”