How much money the FCC should devote to the rural broadband experiments -- and which criteria it should use to judge applications -- were debated in reply comments posted Monday and Tuesday. The agency received more than 1,000 “expressions of interest” in participating in the experiments. Other sticking points include whether incumbents should get right of first refusal; how to ensure high-cost support mechanisms like Connect America Fund (CAF) II still get the attention ILECs say they deserve; and whether to run experiments in areas that already see extensive broadband service.

The defeat of 911 funding bills in Kentucky, Wisconsin and Mississippi this year has left those in charge of operating emergency services worried about aging equipment, and wondering how to fund upgrades for next-generation 911 (NG-911), even as they struggle to pay for current-generation systems. The bills were among at least six nationwide that sought additional funding to make up for a decline in 911 fees collected from the dwindling number of landline customers.

U.S. broadband investment, both public and private, has paid off in recent years, with access numbers much improved, but much work on broadband adoption remains, said observers and stakeholders during a congressional briefing Tuesday. The National Urban League Washington Bureau hosted the Capitol Hill event on what future steps may be necessary.

The FCC closed the proceeding on allegations that large satellite operators are warehousing spectrum. The proceeding is closed “given the limits of the record and information on this issue,” the International Bureau said Tuesday in an order (http://bit.ly/1eLmvxK). The allegations of anti-competitive behavior against Intelsat arose in the 2010 11th Open Market Reorganization for the Betterment of International Telecommunications (ORBIT) Act report to Congress. The allegations led to an FCC Notice of Inquiry on the issues of warehousing and vertical foreclosure in the satellite space segment (CD May 9 p3). Some satellite operators said the commission’s action is a result of the competition that exists in the satellite marketplace.

The recently publicized Heartbleed bug (CD April 11 p13 ) is part of a “continuous cycle of weaknesses” that federal agencies regularly identify as they work to improve federal networks’ cybersecurity, said Rear Adm. Robert Day, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard Cyber Command, during an Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association event Monday. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is responsible for cybersecurity on the .gov domain, said Friday that “core” publicly facing .gov sites are not vulnerable to Heartbleed and that it’s coordinating with other agencies to ensure other .gov sites are protected.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will likely uphold last year’s decision by Judge Denny Chin to allow Google’s public indexing of copyrighted books under the fair-use doctrine in Authors Guild v. Google, said fair-use backers in interviews. The Authors Guild filed an unsealed, heavily redacted appeal with the 2nd Circuit Friday to have Chin’s ruling overturned, according to court documents (http://bit.ly/Q7qIpZ). Chin kept oversight of the cases in the U.S. District Court in New York after his 2010 appointment to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Some authors, including Malcolm Gladwell, filed a joint amicus brief Monday on behalf of the Authors Guild, according to court documents. The Authors Guild wants the case remanded to the U.S. District Court in New York, said the appeal. “We had to appeal because the ruling is a disaster for authors” and the publishing industry, said James Gleick, an author and member of the Authors Guild board, in an interview.

Qualcomm, public interest groups and other commenters said the FCC should further explore the future of the 10-10.5 GHz band. Comments were filed in response to an FCC public notice on a 2013 proposal by Mimosa Networks (http://bit.ly/1n6lCb4) asking that the band be set aside for outdoor and long-distance backhaul links at the power levels allowed under Part 90, subpart Z, of commission rules. Amateur radio operators raised concerns because they already have an allocation in the band.

AT&T doesn’t have all the answers about how its proposed IP transition trials will affect consumers, but finding those answers is the whole point of its wire center trials, it said in FCC reply comments Friday. The telco was responding to criticism by CLECs, consumer groups and state commissions that its IP transition trial proposal was vague on key points, including assurances of continued availability of wholesale access when the copper is removed (CD April 2 p6). CLECs reiterated those concerns in their own reply comments Friday, and public interest groups challenged AT&T’s designation of certain portions of its proposals as “confidential.”

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is proposing a two-stage process for the forward part of the TV incentive auction, industry officials said Friday. The first phase is an unrestricted “put up or shut up” phase, officials said. If bids reach a still-to-be-defined threshold, then Verizon and AT&T could effectively be limited to bidding for a limited amount of “unreserved” spectrum, in what one official said would be a “cage match” contest between the two wireless heavyweights. The proposal doesn’t mention AT&T or Verizon but specifies carriers that own more than a third of the sub-1 GHz spectrum in a market, so that the restrictions could apply to other carriers as well, officials said.

Advocates for public, educational and governmental access channels bemoaned what they view as a scarce mention of a commitment to providing access to PEG channels in Comcast’s proposal last week to the FCC to buy Time Warner Cable for about $45 billion. Offering PEG channels in HD and through VOD are some of the options that Comcast should commit to offering subscribers, said PEG officials. Comcast’s FCC filing laid out the benefits to consumers it plans if the transaction is approved (CD April 9 p5). Some have said Comcast does more for PEG than other cable operators, in part because of conditions it agreed to in 2011 to win FCC approval to buy control of NBCUniversal.