The U.S. has “an opportunity to truly advance the ball” on next-generation 911 this year, said FCC Public Safety Bureau Deputy Chief David Furth at an APCO event Monday. NG-911 challenges remain, including getting public safety answering points (PSAPs) still relying on legacy TDM systems to update equipment, without jeopardizing their ability to continue doing their work under the present system, said Furth. He said he had just met with Rhode Island legislators and realized many PSAPs in the state are relying on 40-year-old equipment.

Aereo may prove to be the wild card on Capitol Hill that drastically shifts the direction of video market legislation this year, industry lobbyists told us. The Supreme Court held oral argument last month (CD April 23 p1) in a case to determine the service’s legality, which broadcasters vehemently dispute. An American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo ruling is expected perhaps in June, and industry lobbyists predict a full-throttle lobbying effort after the decision, especially if Aereo wins. Conventional wisdom for months has suggested broadcasters would swarm the Hill seeking remedy, and the battle between broadcasters and Aereo’s defenders could potentially derail the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization process, which may drag into 2015, some lobbyists warned.

A recirculated net neutrality NPRM is less friendly to the idea of pay-for-priority deals, and more open to the idea of Title II reclassification, agency and industry officials told us. Industry observers see the redraft (CD May 1 p2) as a response to the public outcry over a perceived turnaround on net neutrality. Net neutrality proponents have been lobbying the FCC on the NPRM, ex parte filings show.

Parts of proposed FCC rules for unlicensed use of the TV bands will be the subject of further thinking following a May 15 FCC vote on service rules for the TV incentive auction, industry officials said Friday. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler likely will face pressure from his two fellow Democrats to adjust the rules to give unlicensed users greater access to the TV spectrum following the proposed 2015 auction, agency officials told us.

Changing trends in the way consumers use digital media are prompting telcos and programmers to retool many aspects of their business models, executives from AT&T, Qualcomm and Turner Broadcasting said Friday at a Brookings Institution event. The event coincided with Brookings’ release of a paper by Darrell West, founding director of its Center for Technology Innovation, that reports digital media’s biggest area of growth has been video streaming, particularly over mobile devices. The paper also noted growth in the number of smart devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) and the ongoing IP transition, as major factors in digital media changes (http://bit.ly/1ob3ZV6).

Lost in the commotion after the White House released its big data report Thursday was an accompanying big data report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) (http://1.usa.gov/1rTipM2). But the PCAST report had a significant impact on the White House report, said administration officials leading the review during a Thursday conference call. Not only did it spur the White House’s decision to solicit more stakeholder input before issuing any consumer privacy legislative proposal, it also recommends any policy proposal should be focused on data use, not data collection, according to administration officials and interviews with stakeholders. This pleased industry groups and some policy analysts, but worried privacy advocates as both wait to see how it affects any future White House policy proposal on consumer privacy.

Sprint warned that spectrum aggregation rules proposed by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler could mean the No. 3 U.S. carrier would find it difficult to buy additional spectrum without jumping through regulatory hoops. FCC officials have clarified that the rules add most of the 2.5 GHz spectrum Sprint got from Clearwire to the spectrum included in the screen. Sprint is seeking a revised screen that gives high-band spectrum less weight than low-band spectrum (CD April 28 p1).

A filing by public interest groups and residents with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) alleged that despite FCC caps on the price of inmates’ interstate calls last year (CD Aug 12 p3), inmate calls within the state remain “exorbitant.” The situation mirrors high rates in much of the rest of the country, where most states have not yet revamped intrastate calls, said the head of New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ), one of the groups that filed Wednesday’s petition, and national prisoners’ rights advocates in interviews.

Talks on an updated treaty to protect broadcast signals appear to have moved beyond consideration of strictly traditional broadcast and cablecast services to those available now and in the future via different technologies, broadcast officials said during last week’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) committee meeting in Geneva. Discussions on the treaty text (http://bit.ly/1nPuvGl) so far have been based on old technologies, but broadcasters want to focus on what they do today and will be doing in the near future, a broadcast official said in an interview. Broadcasters want to make clear that today’s technology and the Internet-connected TV of tomorrow -- including simulcast transmissions and catch-up services -- should be included in the treaty, the source said. Civil society groups said covering Internet-related activities would only add more complexity and harm users.

The White House big data report -- three months in the works -- pressed Congress to move on several pieces of data privacy legislation and outlined a research, investment and policy agenda for the administration. More broadly, the report centered the big data discussion on discrimination and fairness, rather than notice and choice (http://1.usa.gov/1ky0reK). In doing so, the White House partially went against its own 2012 consumer privacy bill of rights. “It’s undeniable that big data challenges several of the key assumptions that underpin the current privacy framework, especially around collection and use,” said Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker in a conference call.