The FCC must address the overall spending of the USF, not use “savings” from universal service reform to expand other USF programs, FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said Friday in remarks to the commission’s Consumer Advisory Committee (CAC). O'Rielly said he wanted to lay down this marker as the agency takes up Lifeline reform. He also suggested that at least one of the CAC members should come from a group representing taxpayers.

Large telcos supported eliminating FCC network non-duplication and exclusivity rules, while broadcasters and large content companies fired back at multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) for including calls for retransmission consent reform in the proceeding focused on exclusivity rules. MVPDs, direct broadcast satellite companies and Time Warner Cable echoed their calls for elimination, in reply comments, due last week, in docket 10-71.

The FCC moved another step closer to holding the AWS-3 auction, releasing a public notice late Wednesday that puts in place procedures for the auction set to get underway Nov. 13. In a key policy call, the FCC decided not to bifurcate the two different types of spectrum offered, agreeing with arguments by AT&T and Verizon and disagreeing with Dish Network, T-Mobile and other comments. The Wireless Bureau approved the rules on delegated authority.

Facial recognition can be broken down into roughly three steps -- detection, categorization and identification -- the NTIA-backed multistakeholder group mostly agreed at a Thursday meeting. While the group is hammering out the specific words and definitions (for example, profiling instead of categorization, recognition instead of identification), it largely agreed facial recognition technology occurs in three steps that merit differing levels of notice and privacy, stakeholders said Thursday. Differing opinions remain over issues like which characteristics, when detected, count as categorization. And setting the privacy standards associated with each step is an unsettled issue as the group attempts to move toward a code of conduct.

The FCC Media Bureau approved Sinclair’s $963 million buy of Allbritton’s TV stations Thursday evening (http://bit.ly/1lAXiJr). Though commissioner offices are typically notified of Media Bureau actions on delegated authority 48 hours before they're announced, word of the Sinclair/Allbritton approval was not disseminated until the middle of the day Thursday, according to FCC officials. Industry officials have expected the deal to be approved this week since the Department of Justice signed off on it with a consent decree last week (CD July 22 p4). Although the approval was announced after our deadline, FCC officials told us the order accepts the concessions previously announced by Sinclair to come into compliance with the FCC’s rules on sharing arrangements, and conditions the deal on the same single station divestiture to Media General required by DOJ. The deal’s approval had a July 27 deadline that would have allowed either Sinclair or Allbritton to abandon the transaction.

The White House Rural Council announced the creation of a $10 billion investment fund that aims to help a variety of rural infrastructure projects, including deployment of broadband infrastructure. President Barack Obama created the council in 2011 to focus on rural initiatives. The fund is known as the U.S. Rural Infrastructure Opportunity Fund, and CoBank is the anchor investor in this public-private partnership, with Capitol Peak Asset Management handling the fund’s operations.

The dust-up between Verizon and Netflix over which company is to blame for the slowdown in streaming has raised some concern for possible new entrants into the content streaming market, while some technology analysts argue that the issue comes down to how content companies and ISPs negotiate interconnection or peering agreements, which is how the Internet business model works. Verizon said it’s working with Netflix to avoid congestion problems that prompted Netflix to send on-screen messages to customers claiming that the ISP’s network was crowded (CD July 22 p12).

Republican FCC commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly were sharply critical of a waiver giving Grain Management and similarly situated companies a waiver of parts of the commission’s designated entity (DE) rule. The FCC released the Grain order (CD July 24 p3) and the dissents Wednesday. Both said the order would undermine rather than strengthen the DE rules.

A Mediacom petition urging the FCC to restrict programmers -- including broadcasters -- from requiring bundling and other concessions during content negotiations may find favor with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler but is unlikely to be acted on soon, several cable attorneys and industry officials told us in interviews Wednesday. “It would take a very courageous Commission to follow this approach,” said Andrew Schwartzman, senior counselor at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Public Representation. Though Wheeler’s support of rules banning joint retransmission consent negotiations by broadcasters indicates he might agree with some of Mediacom’s points, its petition is likely to be crowded out by the ongoing net neutrality and incentive auction proceedings and the host of large scale mergers facing the commission, numerous industry attorneys told us.

One potential piece of legislation may slow the pace of the FCC’s broadcast TV spectrum incentive auction, a lawmaker and congressional witness warned Thursday, as expected (CD July 24 p6). But Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who authored the draft of the LPTV and Translator Preservation Act, strongly defended the proposed bill, as did Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., who helped craft its language. They considered the draft and two other bills during a Thursday subcommittee hearing.