The 700 MHz band open access controversy will be decided Tuesday, July 31, the FCC said late Tuesday. The agenda meeting may or may not finalize all aspects of the 700 MHz band auction, including the size of the blocks and whether bidding will be secret.

Monday’s announcement that Sirius and XM as a merged entity would offer a la carte options to subscribers who buy new radios (CED 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.”

Capitol Broadcasting’s plan to deliver broadcast TV signals over the Internet to viewers in a station’s Nielsen market would use FM radio signals to decide if someone trying to view the stream deserves access, CEO James Goodmon told the Copyright Office. His company said it developed a way of streaming a broadcast station’s signals online that protects local program exclusivity rights and content owner copyrights. The Copyright Office seeks input for a report on compulsory licenses due in June 2008 to Congress. Such licenses let pay-TV providers carry broadcast signals without requiring that they individually license each piece of programming from varied content owners. Monday, cable operators and satellite providers testified (CD July 24 p2). Verizon and AT&T will make their case today (Wednesday).

Capitol Broadcasting’s plan to deliver broadcast TV signals over the Internet to viewers in a station’s Nielsen market would use FM radio signals to decide if someone trying to view the stream deserves access, CEO James Goodmon told the Copyright Office. His company said it has developed a way of streaming a broadcast station’s signals online that protects local program exclusivity rights and content owner copyrights.

Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., confirmed that next week he will introduce a remote sales tax bill. That move was predicted by state tax officials seeking authority to require e-commerce Web sites and other remote sellers to collect and remit sales taxes on purchases (WID July 19 p7). “Clearly at this point there are different perspectives, so whatever I'll be introducing, I'm not going to foreclose changes that hopefully can be developed through a consensus effort among stakeholders,” he told us. Delahunt confirmed that on any such bill the sticking point is the revenue threshold for exemption from collecting sales taxes, intended to shield small businesses from administrative burdens. He has talked with several lawmakers showing “substantial interest” in co- sponsoring legislation, he said. Delahunt is not sure how close his bill’s substance will be to the Sales Tax Fairness and Simplification Act (S-34) by Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. That measure would require remote sellers to collect taxes once 10 states comprising 20 percent of the population of states that collect sales tax join the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (WID May 24 p3). “I'm viewing it at this point as a working draft,” Delahunt said. The Enzi bill would set a $5 million revenue threshold for collecting and remitting. The Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board, the body behind the Agreement, fears larger sellers may use the legislation to try to raise the threshold. In a conference call Wednesday, the group said one company participating in the drafting of the Agreement proposed a threshold exceeding $20 million.

As state regulators wrapped up their summer meeting in New York Wednesday, final panels focused on whether broadband deployment is a job for states, the federal government, private industry or some blend -- and what each has done to bring it about. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ (NARUC) Telecom Committee hosted a panel discussing the impact of legacy regulation on the current status of broadband in the U.S.

U.K. TV broadcasters should be responsible for complying with telephone premium rate service (PRS) rules, a report from the Office of Communications (Ofcom) said Wednesday. The report results from an inquiry launched by the regulator in March after a public outcry over pricey phone calls to competitions and votes that were lost, not counted, or made by consumers unaware that the game was already over. (Under the standard arrangement, telephone service providers split call revenue with broadcasters.) Given the scale of audience participation across a broad range of channels, programs and transactional opportunities, author Richard Ayre wrote, the number of would-be participants who were ignored, misled or unfairly charged cannot be guessed at. The key problem is the absence of systems designed to require, ensure and audit compliance with PRS rules, he said. The inquiry found broadcasters more at fault than telecommunications operators. Broadcasters and producers must clearly understand their obligation to viewers who pay premium rates in the expectation of receiving an additional service, it said. Although broadcasters have begun to clean up their act after the brouhaha, and the newly created Gambling Commission, which takes on full powers in September, is likely to declare most broadcast quizzes and competitions illegal lotteries, the report said, Ofcom should act now to boost its regulatory effectiveness and forestall future attempts by commercial broadcasters to induce viewers to enter into financial transactions. Ayre recommended that broadcasters be held directly responsible for PRS compliance through the entire supply chain, just as they are for broadcast content, and that TV licenses include consumer protection requirements related to PRS and other direct commercial transactions. Ofcom’s response to the report noted that it has already fined broadcasters in two major cases, including, for the first time, the BBC, and has other ongoing investigations. The regulator said it is “minded to accept” Ayre’s recommendation for changes to broadcast licenses and will raise the issue in an upcoming inquiry on participation TV.

FCC rules governing how broadcasters sell political ads in the weeks before federal elections could tread on stations’ First Amendment rights, former FCC Chairman Dennis Patrick said, taking care to say he hasn’t reviewed case law around those rules lately. Patrick addressed a National Press Club audience on his rationale for striking the fairness doctrine from FCC rules in 1987. The doctrine, requiring broadcasters to air contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues they covered, was “unconstitutional on its face,” he said.

Advocacy and public interest groups are looking for ways to stymie a possible takeover of Dow Jones by News Corp., even though the transaction presents no obvious avenues, source said. “We've been asked by lots of people to look into it and we think there may be some issues to raise at the commission,” said Media Access Project (MAP) President Andrew Schwartzman. “We're confident there is a basis to pursue things at the FCC. We're being asked to do it and we're giving due consideration to it.” It is unclear if the FCC has jurisdiction, since the deal would not require transfer of broadcast licenses (CD May 3 p5).

GENEVA -- Europe is poised to raise tariffs this fall on digital cameras with a high-resolution video function, and eliminate tariffs on low-resolution video camcorders, but no ruling was made for tariff suspension for LCD monitors with DVI connections, according to preliminary reports by industry from a July 12-13 meeting of the EC Customs Code Committee Nomenclature section.