The FCC Thursday delayed by 60 days the Aug. 10 deadline by which wireless carriers had to have in place backup power for cellsites. The requirement applies only to nationwide carriers with more than 500,000 subscribers. The delay will give the agency more time to investigate concerns raised by CTIA, AT&T, USTelecom and other industry groups concerned about the deadline, which was approved as part commission’s June Katrina Panel order.

Sports leagues, movie studios and book publishers shouldn’t be allowed to intimidate consumers with misleading and false copyright warnings, the Computer and Communications Industry Association complained to the FTC Wednesday. Most importantly, the warnings ignore consumers’ fair-use rights under copyright law, the group said. It’s asking the FTC to check how much beyond actual legal protections the copyright warnings from Major League Baseball, the NFL, NBC Universal, DreamWorks, Harcourt and Penguin may have gone.

Sports leagues, movie studios and book publishers shouldn’t be allowed to intimidate consumers with misleading and false copyright warnings, the Computer and Communications Industry Association complained to the FTC Wednesday. CEA said it backs CCIA’s complaint.

The Ohio Office of Consumer Counsel asked the Public Utilities Commission to reconsider its June decision to grant AT&T basic exchange pricing flexibility in eight communities, saying it allowed AT&T to increase stand-alone basic exchange rates when there’s no competition for stand-alone basic exchange service. The OCC said AT&T’s competitors in Barnesville, Belfast, Dresden, East Liverpool, Harrisburg, Lewisville, St. Clairsville and Salineville offer basic exchange only as part of service bundles, not as a stand- alone offering. The OCC said AT&T had full pricing flexibility for bundled services under previous PUC orders, so it didn’t need the June order’s flexibility to match its competition. The June order allowed AT&T to raise basic exchange rates up to $1.25 annually and caller ID rates up to 50 cents annually. The OCC (Case 07-259-TP-BLS) said the PUC acted on the basis of line loss and market share tests that said nothing about whether AT&T’s line losses were the result of stand-alone basic exchange competition or other factors and failed to determine whether equivalent competitive alternatives were available to all customers affected by the PUC order.

The FCC seems on track to vote Tuesday on an order firming up wireless carriers’ duty to provide automatic roaming for voice, though probably not for wireless broadband or most other data. Commission sources said Monday that with nearly all focus on the 700 MHz order the roaming item has gotten little discussion in recent weeks. “700 MHz has sucked all the air out of the room,” an FCC source said.

Verizon Wireless will pay $2.67 billion in cash and assumed debt for Rural Cellular, it said Monday. The Bell also reported strong Q2 results, bolstered by its FiOS and wireless businesses. And Verizon officials used the company’s quarterly conference call to update investors about FairPoint and the MCI integration, spectrum auction strategy and the iPhone’s effect on the wireless business.

Irate at government and industry plans for telling people about the DTV transition, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said Thursday he plans a fall hearing to press for ways to improve those efforts. “We're going to do something about this,” Inouye said after a hearing at which he said polls showed up to 90 percent of people in the U.S. don’t know of the Feb. 17, 2009, digital transition, or that after it their analog TVs won’t work. Government efforts have yielded “too few results,” he said.

Irate at government and industry plans for educating consumers about the DTV transition, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) said Thursday he plans a fall hearing to press for ways to improve those efforts. “We're going to do something about this,” Inouye said after a hearing at which he said polls showed up to 90 percent of people in the U.S. don’t know of the Feb. 17, 2009, digital transition, or that after it their analog TVs won’t work. Government efforts have yielded “too few results,” he said.

Monday’s announcement that Sirius and XM as a merged entity would offer a la carte options to subscribers who buy new radios (CD July 24 p1) “is tantamount to an admission that without such special promises or conditions, the proposed merger would lead to higher prices and fewer choices to the detriment of satellite radio subscribers,” NAB said in reply comments Tuesday at the FCC. XM-Sirius, in reply comments of their own, said NAB’s “scorched-earth opposition” to the merger “is itself powerful evidence of the competition that so obviously exists” in the audio entertainment marketplace from which “terrestrial broadcasters have the most to lose.”

Mandatory open access in the 700 MHz spectrum would be a “public policy mistake of the first order” and raise “serious legal problems,” Verizon Wireless warned the FCC in a late Tuesday ex parte filing. From a policy standpoint, “there is no competitive failure that could warrant such unprecedented intrusion” and regulating the openness of wireless devices and applications could harm the “privacy and security of consumers and wireless networks,” the company said. “Far from ‘opening’ access, government intervention would in reality be mandating ‘forced access.'” Numerous legal barriers “preclude the Commission from adopting ‘open access’ conditions in this or any other proceeding,” Verizon Wireless said. The company warned the action would “violate the Administrative Procedures Act and the auction statute in multiple respects, violate the First Amendment, exceed the Commission’s statutory authority on numerous grounds, and violate both FCC and Congressional policies.” Verizon Wireless is the second large wireless company to warn about the legal ramifications of imposing open access. AT&T did likewise, then last week retrenched in favor of a compromise plan by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Meanwhile, University of Chicago Prof. Richard Epstein said open access conditions could “reduce both market and social value of the spectrum.” The best route is “a simple common law property rights approach,” he said. “No matter what Google, AT&T or anyone else may think, this is one case in which the fewer the conditions, the stronger the property right,” Epstein said in a paper released by the Free State Foundation. “The stronger the property right, the greater the return from the spectrum to be auctioned and the greater the enhancement of long-term consumer welfare.”