When the Mountain View, Calif., City Council took up the issue of whether to apply for Google Fiber recently, City Councilman Jac Siegel criticized the process. But that Silicon Valley city, like all 33 others the company invited to apply for the high-speed broadband service, is applying, said a company spokeswoman.

The House Homeland Security Committee cleared the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) Modernization Act, HR-3283, Wednesday by unanimous voice vote. A version of the bill had cleared the Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications Subcommittee last month. The committee considered an amendment in the nature of a substitute, used as the base text going into the discussion (http://1.usa.gov/1o3TSS5).

LOS ANGELES -- Comcast’s agreeing to buy Time Warner Cable and the divestiture of 3.9 million subscribers to Charter Communications (CD April 29 p4) will make the industry more competitive, said analysts at the Cable Show Tuesday. “It’s hard not to say that life is gonna be tougher for people competing with cable than in years past,” said J.P. Morgan’s Philip Cusick. Comcast/Time Warner Cable and the divestitures to Charter has been the dominant topic among show attendees, including speculation about how the deal came to be, several cable officials told us.

LOS ANGELES -- Programmers and cable providers should work together to keep programming costs down and repel challenges from companies outside the industry such as Google, said a panel of cable and content company executives at the first general session of NCTA’s 2014 Cable Show. “The partnership between programmers and operators needs to be solidified or a lot of competitors are going to pass [cable] on by,” said A&E President Nancy Dubuc. Such a partnership seems unlikely while cable companies have to pay programmers high prices for content, said Massillon Cable TV President Bob Gessner, in an interview. “I don’t work for ESPN, I work for my customers” he said.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said Tuesday the net neutrality NPRM on circulation will seek comment on peering arrangements. A day earlier, Netflix and Verizon said they agreed to enhance their interconnection, with the end goal of increasing speeds to end-users. Verizon is the latest ISP to reach such an agreement with Netflix, following a similar announcement earlier this year on a deal with Comcast (CD Feb 25 p2). The industry is split on whether the FCC should regulate paid peering deals, but those on both sides noted in interviews Tuesday that interconnection raises different issues than net neutrality.

Proposed spectrum aggregation rules for the TV incentive auction could mean as much as 50 percent of the spectrum offered for sale in some markets would be set aside for competitors to Verizon and AT&T and off limits to any carrier that already has a dominant sub-1 GHz spectrum position in that market, FCC and industry officials tell us.

Sprint’s exclusive on HTC’s high-resolution audio-compatible HTC One (M8) Harmon Kardon smartphone brings the carrier into CE specialty chains for the first time, broadening its reach to Crutchfield and World Wide Stereo, with other potential distribution deals on the horizon, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told us Tuesday after a news conference in New York.

An $89,200 proposed fine to a Philadelphia Class A station, likely a record to any low-power TV station, is raising anew LPTV operator fears the FCC would like to reclaim their spectrum so it can be sold to carriers. LPTV allies and an executive at a company that owns such stations said in interviews Tuesday that the agency has been singling out low-power stations among all broadcasters by threatening to downgrade their status so they lose interference protection and the owner’s chance to sell their spectrum in the incentive auction. Without Class A status, the FCC could potentially shift a station’s channel slot without reimbursing it for the move, letting it auction that frequency without the broadcaster getting a cut of the proceeds, LPTV executives have said.

Public radio stations in the Gulf region will begin testing newly installed equipment as part of a pilot project aimed at transmitting emergency alerts to the deaf and hard of hearing community. The pilot, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and NPR, was originally scheduled to begin in December (CD Oct 24 p5). The project was extended to the end of May due to the length of time needed to complete the manufacture of the radio data system (RDS) encoders, said Rich Rarey, NPR Labs manager-strategic technology applications. “It took longer than we'd anticipated to build these units from scratch.” Testing of the equipment is set to take place within the first three weeks of May, he said.

The Supreme Court examined how much information police can extract from a smartphone without obtaining a warrant in a case argued Tuesday, Riley v. California. Justices peppered both sides with questions, but appeared to be wary of giving police access to all cellphone information without a warrant. “People carry their entire lives on their cellphones,” Justice Elena Kagan said.