The future of CableCARDs will among the issues “front and center” as the FCC weighs the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV mergers, said TiVo CEO Thomas Rogers said on an earnings call last week. TiVo’s views on Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV are “continuing to evolve,” Rogers said.

The FCC scored a court victory Friday as a three-judge panel held unanimously that petitioners were “unpersuasive” in their “host of challenges” to the 2011 USF/intercarrier compensation order (http://1.usa.gov/1r18uaa). The 31 consolidated petitions for review were denied by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It’s a validation of the agency’s power to condition the receipt of USF money on the promise of broadband buildout. The decision also affirms the agency’s authority over access charges on all telecom traffic. NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay told us he'd be “stunned” if no one appealed this to the Supreme Court, something others predicted (CD Nov 21 p6) after almost five hours of USF oral argument in November.

After pushing through votes on a net neutrality rulemaking and three incentive auction orders at its May 15 meeting, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler scheduled more of a breather for the June 13 meeting. There are no orders on the agenda, only presentations on the IP transition and expanding community access to radio (http://fcc.us/SsmKt9). Meanwhile Friday, a Wheeler blog post put the IP transition in historic perspective.

Comcast faces questions in California about whether it waited to tell regulators it mistakenly published the listings of 74,000 people, including domestic violence victims hiding from attackers, until the passage of a state law the company now says shields it from penalties. The case had been seen as significant by local and national consumer advocates as a test of state regulatory authority during the IP transition. It took on added weight last week when critics of Comcast paying about $66 billion including debt for Time Warner Cable used it as ammunition against the deal.

Opposition to TextMe’s petition seeking clarity on FCC rules under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act is coming primarily from TCPA plaintiffs “all of whom have a direct financial interest in the continued misinterpretation of the TCPA,” said the company in reply comments. TextMe offers an app that enables users to send and receive non-commercial texts messages to or from contacts in the U.S. and to make free calls to other TextMe users.

Stations repacked due to the incentive auction will have three months (CD May 15 p4) to file construction permits for alterations to their antennas and transmitters necessary to broadcast on their new TV channel. That’s not going to be enough time for CPs, said broadcasters, an engineer and industry attorneys in interviews this week. Though the auction order approved May 15 hasn’t been released yet, the three-month deadline was announced in the supplementary materials released by the FCC last week. With a limited number of consultant engineers to prepare the permit applications, a limited amount of FCC staff to process them, and a large amount of needed permits if the auction is successful, the time frame isn’t going to work, industry participants said.

The removal of the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s agenda virtually guarantees that comprehensive legislation to curb patent abuse will have to wait until the 114th Congress convenes in 2015, said industry stakeholders in interviews. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Wednesday he was cutting S-1720 from the committee’s agenda because negotiations had still not produced a compromise on controversial provisions in the bill, prompting outcry from pro-revamp industry stakeholders (CD May 22 p11). Several stakeholders said they believe a patent revamp has a far better chance of passing Congress next year if Republicans take control of the Senate after the November elections.

The U.S. must shift its global data flow approach if it wants to remain a major participant in the global economy, said industry representatives and academics at a New America Foundation event Thursday. Ongoing trade negotiations present some promising opportunities to establish the U.S.’s footing in the international data flow economy, but “we need the political will to push these through,” said Bradford Jensen, a professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.

SoftBank may have at least an opening at the FCC if it moves forward on a buy of T-Mobile US. While FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and the Justice Department have been negative on the deal, Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is officially taking a wait-and-see approach. Rosenworcel “doesn’t prejudge transactions before they are even announced,” a spokesman for the commissioner said Thursday.

The political stakes of NTIA’s plan to transition the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) rose Thursday after passage of the Domain Openness Through Continued Awareness Matters (DOTCOM) Act as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) (HR-4435). The amendment, which seeks to delay the transition until a GAO study is completed, was introduced by the bill’s co-sponsor and House Commerce Committee member John Shimkus, R-Ill. The amendment was approved by 245-177 with full Republican support (http://1.usa.gov/1jYFPsz). Only 17 Democrats supported the amendment. The House passed the NDAA by a vote of 325 to 98 (http://1.usa.gov/1vNmgNA). It’s going to be a “long uphill climb” before any legislation related to the transition is “enacted into law,” said Phil Corwin, founding principal of e-commerce and intellectual property law consultancy Virtualaw.