Public safety officials voiced concerns to top brass at NTIA and the FCC Wed. about spectrum policies under consideration, including band sharing and the “interference temperature” concept. At an NTIA public safety forum, officials grappled with balancing the rollout of new technologies against public safety considerations such as funding constraints.

A la carte pricing for cable or DBS services was a popular idea among officials at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on broadcast indecency Wed. Although the hearing focused on broadcast indecency, several members of Congress and a few FCC commissioners said it was increasingly difficult to distinguish cable and DBS from broadcast TV and all of those industries should be part of the debate. FCC commissioners also told members in both the House and the Senate that they supported efforts to raise FCC fines for indecent broadcasts.

Phoenix Gold, acting just days after its annual shareholders meeting, filed with the SEC to de-register its common stock, a move that will relieve it of requirements to file annual and quarterly reports. Phoenix Gold disclosed its plans following its annual meeting on Feb. 3 during which the topic of de- registering its stock wasn’t discussed, according to those who attended the meeting in Portland, Ore.

The Telecom Industry Assn. (TIA) urged the FCC to grant Pulver.com’s petition seeking a ruling that the company’s Free World Dialup (FWD) isn’t a telecom service, saying that would be “appropriate” and “timely.” The FCC is set to consider the petition at its agenda meeting Feb. 12. In an ex parte meeting last week with Jessica Rosenworcel, aide to FCC. Comr. Copps, the TIA argued VoIP wasn’t just another way of providing traditional phone service, but was “a new application on a new kind of network.” In a separate ex parte meeting with FCC Comr. Martin and aide Dan Gonzalez last Thurs., Cisco Systems said the Commission should: (1) Declare that Pulver.com’s FWD service was an interstate information service. (2) Address applicability of CALEA to different IP services, as well as issues raised by an AT&T petition on phone-to-phone IP telephony, in an “industrywide proceeding.” In a separate ex parte filing, Vonage stressed the importance of moving forward “expeditiously” with the pending VoIP NPRM. Addressing universal service, Vonage said it favored a contribution mechanism that would let VoIP providers contribute on a “more formal basis.” It also noted Sec. 254 of the Telecom Act provided the Commission broad discretion to modify Universal Service Fund (USF) contribution methodology.

Sen. Brownback (R-Kan.), a Commerce Committee member, introduced a bill to increase FCC fines for broadcasting indecent content. S-2056 appeared to be a companion to HR- 3717, by House Telecom Subcommittee Chmn. Upton (R-Mich.), scheduled to be marked up 9:30 a.m. Thurs., Rm. 2123, Rayburn Bldg. Both bills would make FCC fines 10 times current levels. The Senate Commerce Committee and House Telecom Subcommittee will hold hearings today (Wed.) on broadcast indecency -- the Senate starting 9:30 a.m. in Rm. 253, Russell Bldg., and the House 10:30 a.m. in Rm. 2123, Rayburn Bldg. The Senate Commerce Committee hearing also will consider S-161, Committee ranking Democrat Hollings’ (S.C.) bill to create a safe harbor from violent TV content. Committee Chmn. McCain (R-Ariz.) is expected to push the FCC Reauthorization Act (S-1264), which also would raise fines, as the best measure to address indecency.

In the February 4, 2004 issue of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Bulletin (CBPBulletin) (Vol. 38, No. 6), CBP issued a notice proposing to revoke two classification rulings on certain voice and data terminal blocks. CBP states that it is also proposing to revoke any treatment it has previously accorded to substantially identical transactions that are contrary to its position in this notice.

German competitive telecom carriers vigorously disputed the main provisions of an amendment to that country’s Telecom Act in the only public hearing held by the Economic Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag Mon. in Berlin. Competitors strongly criticized Deutsche Telekom’s (DT’s) attempts to eliminate resale obligations for broadband services and asked that the new Act require timely access for the incumbent’s new wholesale products. Meanwhile, DT threatened to revisit its investment plans if the law imposed burdensome requirements on resale services.

The appellate ruling forcing RIAA to file suit to get the names of those accused of unauthorized Internet music sharing doesn’t help anyone, including the individual targets, music industry attorney Jeffrey Knowles said. The Verizon decision by the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., means people will find themselves sued before they can address any mistakes, whereas they could be resolving prelitigation last year while RIAA was using a streamlined Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) procedure, he told Santa Clara U.’s symposium on “The Digital Challenge to Copyright Law.” Gerard Lewis, senior counsel-chief privacy officer, Comcast Cable, disagreed, saying the costs of suing first might produce “more deliberation” before RIAA went after a person. Demands to identify subscribers accused of infringement put a heavy burden on Comcast, which has received the most RIAA subpoenas of any ISP and more than all but a couple of others combined, including 200 immediately after the July 4 holiday, Lewis said. Content owners may think it’s easy to put a name to a supplied IP address, but it isn’t -- there’s no “magic database.” “I wish our systems worked that well or that clearly, but they don’t,” he said. “There’s a certain amount of manual labor involved.” Lewis said: “It’s an awful lot of work” and “it doesn’t scale” with the volume of requests. Raising the stakes is the great importance of accurate identification. It’s just one of the ways ISPs are “in many ways called upon to be the hall monitors of the Internet,” he said.

As state lawmakers get down to the serious business of the 2004 sessions, a number of proposed measures have cleared important hurdles on the road to final passage. Bills seeing recent action would reform PSC procedures, wireless E-911 funding, spam, telemarketing, service quality and Internet porn.

The Dept. of Justice said last week it wouldn’t stand in the way of the FCC’s consideration of regulatory issues raised by the growth of VoIP technology. DoJ sent a letter to the FCC Wed. that appeared to back off from an earlier letter from the FBI and DoJ (CD Feb 2 p1) that had asked the FCC not to act on VoIP matters until action was taken to make sure law enforcement agencies would be able to tap into VoIP calls. The new letter from Deputy Asst. Attorney Gen. John Malcolm, which the FCC and DoJ officials acknowledge was sent, wasn’t made available publicly although it had been obtained by The Wall St. Journal. Some observers said the Malcolm letter appeared to clear the way for the FCC to place 2 VoIP proceedings on the agenda for the open meeting Feb. 12 (CD Feb 6 p1) -- (1) A notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) asking for comment on how the new technology should be treated by regulators. (2) A petition by Pulver.com for a ruling that its VoIP offering wasn’t a telecom service. Malcolm’s letter said the Justice Dept. would prefer that the FCC solve the wiretapping problem first but didn’t want to impede its work or the development of VoIP services.