There's no engineering reason why the same net neutrality rules imposed on fixed networks can’t be imposed on mobile, said New America's Open Technology Institute (OTI) Thursday in a paper filed at the FCC. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told public interest groups Monday and carriers Wednesday that the agency is still working through the legal underpinnings of mobile net neutrality (see 1411120041). Michael Calabrese, director of OTI’s Wireless Future Project, told us he was scheduled to brief key staffers on the report in meetings Thursday.

The FCC plans outreach meetings for broadcasters in about 50 markets to explain the upcoming incentive auction and answer questions, said the Incentive Auction Task Force in a blog post Thursday. The meetings are in cities as big as New York and as small as Ohio's Lima and Youngstown. Lima is a city of 38,771 with two licensed TV stations. The task force plans town hall meetings and individual follow-up meetings with broadcasters that express an interest in selling their license, it said. The meetings are to start in January and wrap up in April.

Cogent and Level 3 officials say they’re encouraged by a meeting Monday with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler that, unlike with the 2010 open Internet order, the agency is at least seriously considering dealing with congestion at interconnection points between backbones like them and ISPs.

Content companies seeking to prevent participants in the Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV proceedings from having access to their programming contracts on Thursday filed a new emergency request for a stay pending judicial review and a petition for review with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The FCC is set to allow access on Monday to the programming documents to outside counsel who have followed procedures laid out in a series of protective orders (see 1411120029). The content companies, which include CBS, Disney, Scripps Networks and Univision, want the court to block the commission from doing so. “The Court should issue a stay to allow careful review of what the FCC has rushed through its gates,” the emergency motion said. The FCC, AT&T and Comcast didn't comment. However, Comcast filed a motion to intervene in the case late Thursday, arguing that any stay would further delay the merger review. "Petitioners' actions leading up to the release of the Commission Order have already caused undue delay in the transaction review proceeding," said Comcast's motion.

The FCC’s AWS-3 auction, which started Thursday, shows the importance of spectrum sharing, said FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Thursday at the Americas Spectrum Management Conference. The FCC is offering a total of 65 MHz in the first major spectrum auction since the 700 MHz auction in 2008.

The U.S. brokered a deal with China to lay the groundwork for a quick conclusion to coming Information Technology Agreement expansion negotiations in Geneva. President Barack Obama announced the two sides broke through the ITA impasse during a plenary session at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing. U.S. trade officials, lawmakers and industry representatives applauded the deal.

The U.S. government needs to re-evaluate how it conducts its surveillance activities, tech industry officials and privacy advocates told the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board at a PCLOB hearing Wednesday. The panelists said total anonymity isn’t possible, but surveillance programs should be targeted and consumers should have a right to know how the federal government and tech companies collect data. As consumer awareness of such surveillance grows, so will industry’s investment in encryption technologies, they said.

The FCC approved an order changing how the 800 MHz cellular service is licensed -- from a site-based to a geographically based regime. The FCC sought comment on modernizing rules for the key wireless band in a 2012 NPRM (see 1202160063). Accompanying Monday's order is a Further NPRM seeking comment on additional changes beyond those contemplated in 2012.

When it comes to deployment of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system, "I think there’s going to be a good business proposition and a good financial proposition for 4K," Dave Siegler, vice president-technical operations at Cox, told us at NAB's Content and Communications World conference in New York Wednesday. Emphasizing that he was speaking in the context of Cox’s broadcast as well as its cable interests, Siegler said: "So much of it comes into implementation."

NEW YORK -- Traditional broadcasters will continue to adjust their approach to content delivery and distribution as consumer demand affects multiple platforms, media company executives said Wednesday at SATCON. Broadcasters are taking on the challenge of expanding platforms for delivering their content, said NAB President Gordon Smith.