NAB CEO Gordon Smith plans to tackle head-on the pay-TV industry attempts to include video marketplace add-ons to the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization process. His written testimony for a Tuesday Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing on STELA emphasizes the need for a clean bill and slams specific proposals floated in recent months -- in particular defending retransmission consent rules just as the FCC voted to change them Monday (see separate report in this issue).

The administration’s ongoing process for assessing the spectrum that federal agencies are actively deploying through a quantitative assessment of their spectrum use is “narrower, but deeper” than a generic spectrum inventory would be, U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Tom Power said at a Wireless Spectrum Research and Development conference Monday. He also said the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) likely will post on Tuesday comments filed last month (CD March 24 p8) in response to a Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) report identifying approaches to providing incentives to federal agencies to share or relinquish spectrum (http://bit.ly/1oG93Br).

The FTC’s settlements with two mobile apps for misrepresenting their data security measures focused on Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), according to a Friday release (http://1.usa.gov/1lroHC0). SSL is an industry standard that mobile operating systems, such as iOS and Android, provide to app developers to secure transactions with sensitive data, the FTC said. While the FTC’s complaints against the two companies -- movie ticket seller Fandango and credit score monitor Credit Karma -- cited several security shortcomings, the SSL certificate got prominent billing.

Enforcement is emerging as one of the biggest challenges facing industry as spectrum sharing becomes the rule rather than the exception, members of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee said Friday at the group’s meeting at NTIA.

The Aerospace Industries Association is “not really comfortable speculating” why the Federal Aviation Administration’s rulemaking on small unmanned aircraft systems (SUASs) -- what many call drones -- has been delayed for so long, spokesman Dan Stohr told us by email Thursday, a day after AIA teamed with CEA on a joint letter urging the FAA to get the rulemaking moving (CD March 28 p16).

Competitive Carriers Association CEOs said they are not overly concerned about Sprint’s buying T-Mobile. On Thursday, Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son spoke to the CCA conference, encouraging the small carriers to fight on (CD March 28 p13). On Wednesday, Sprint unveiled an agreement under which small carriers could use its network for data roaming.

The FCC clarified in a declaratory order that wireless consumers should be able to receive package delivery notifications without the sender violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The FCC also provided clarity on the TCPA and its applicability to administrative text messages sent by social networks. FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly concurred with the orders, saying they are helpful. On Tuesday, O'Rielly said in a blog post it’s time for the FCC to provide clarity on the TCPA (http://fcc.us/O5UKc2).

A draft order that would make TV joint sales agreements attributable for the purposes of calculating broadcast ownership is likely to be approved by FCC members Monday with few changes from the way it was initially presented by Chairman Tom Wheeler despite intense opposition lobbying efforts by broadcasters, said agency officials and broadcast attorneys in interviews this week. Although last-minute changes are possible and FCC offices are putting forward possible edits, they're unlikely to shift the core of the draft order, said an agency official. The order (CD March 21 p1) would make JSAs where one company is in charge of more than 15 percent of another’s ad sales attributable and give companies two years to unwind such arrangements. If that version of the draft order becomes a rule Monday, broadcasters are likely to go directly to the courts, several broadcast industry observers told us. A court finding that the rule is arbitrary and capricious is “likely,” said an industry official. An NAB spokesman declined comment.

The largest inmate calling service (ICS) providers submitted Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) challenges in response to the FCC inmate calling order. That order required all ICS providers to submit information about their costs to provide interstate, intrastate toll and local service, and associated costs for interconnection fees, equipment investment and forecast data. Annual reporting requirements would add 101 hours per year for each ICS provider to respond, said the FCC. In comments to the Office of Management and Budget, ICS providers called the estimate unrealistically low.

CEA President Gary Shapiro and his counterpart at the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), Marion Blakey, want Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Huerta to throw his weight behind the “expedited consideration and approval” of a long-delayed rulemaking regulating the safe use of “small unmanned aircraft systems” (UASs) -- what many call “drones” -- in U.S. airspace, they told Huerta in a joint letter Wednesday.