Companies, associations and think tanks began weighing in last week on how best to overhaul the Communications Act. House Commerce Committee Republicans announced a desire to update the act in December, and they solicited feedback on their first white paper last month. The deadline for commenting was Friday, and several stakeholders released proposals for tweaking the landmark telecom law, with initial comments emphasizing the role of the marketplace and a need to end regulatory silos.

Public, educational and governmental channels have a strong interest in expanding their programming through online and VOD platforms, but those capabilities must be complementary to providing content on pay TV, some PEG advocates said in interviews Friday. That day, a Comcast pilot program’s final progress report was posted in FCC docket 10-56, showing that from 2011 to 2014, websites providing PEG content online generated more than 1 million visits and 50,000 on- demand views by Comcast customers in the five pilot markets.

A July 2012 report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommending that the White House shift its focus from exclusive-use spectrum to sharing (CD July 23/12 p1) has proven critical in reshaping federal policy on spectrum, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling told PCAST at its meeting Friday.

The FTC is unlikely to play a greater role in overseeing net neutrality after last month’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision against the FCC’s rules (CD Jan 15 p1), said lawyers, a former FCC official, a former Department of Justice official and consumer advocates in interviews last week. Nor should they, most agreed. Three FTC commissioners have said it would be able to handle net neutrality issues under both the commission’s antitrust and consumer protection jurisdictions. Open Internet advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation and Richard Bennett, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications and Technology Policy, said the FTC’s narrow, issues-based focus and general jurisdiction might even be better suited to overseeing net neutrality. Several people expressed sympathy for that argument, but said it’s improbable -- or even impossible after the D.C. Circuit reaffirmed some FCC authority in the area -- that the FTC will play a larger net neutrality role in the near future.

Even if the Supreme Court reverses the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the dispute between broadcasters and streaming TV service Aereo (CD Jan 13 p5), that wouldn’t herald the end of FilmOn’s business, FilmOn CEO Alki David told the New York Bar Association’s annual meeting in New York. That’s because less than 3 percent of his company’s business is terrestrial TV, he said Tuesday via Skype. “Most of our business relies on content that we've licensed and aggregated and the whole social video part of the platform as well."

A report and order establishing the framework of the incentive auction will be presented to the FCC this spring, announced the Incentive Auction Task Force in its update presentation at Thursday’s open commission meeting. The R&O will be followed by two public notices and comment periods to finalize every aspect of the auction, applications from prospective bidders will begin to be accepted in early 2015, and the auction itself will be held in mid-2015, said task force’s Chairman Gary Epstein. The NAB and CTIA praised the commission’s timeline, though some broadcast attorneys told us they're concerned about a lack of specificity and the commission’s plans for reaching out to broadcasters. “We are on course at speed to get this thing done,” said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

FCC commissioners voted unanimously Thursday to accept proposals for experiments (CD Jan 30 p6; Jan 29 p3) moving customers from legacy TDM services to IP-based alternatives. The vote came nearly 15 months after AT&T proposed deregulatory wire center trials -- a request that, at the time, divided the industry (CD Jan 30/13 p2). Proposals initiating tests of IP services are due Feb. 20, will have a public comment and reply period ending March 31, and will get a final vote at the FCC’s May meeting, officials said. That’s the earliest any trial would start.

The FCC approved a policy statement and second further NPRM, designed to make text-to-911 more widely available, at its meeting Thursday, potentially imposing a mandate on interconnected over-the-top (OTT) text providers. The policy statement approved was a somewhat watered-down version of the statement originally circulated by Chairman Tom Wheeler (CD Jan 27 p5), FCC officials said. With the changes, all five commissioners voted to approve. Wheeler said Thursday that at the FCC’s February meeting it will take on a second 911 issue -- location accuracy for wireless calls made indoors.

The FCC got an update Thursday from Diane Cornell, who heads the agency’s process reform team, but she offered few details on what will be recommended in a pending report on various proposals for improving how the agency does business (CD Jan 30 p2). Officials said after the commission meeting a report is likely to be published in about a week. The FCC will ask for public comment on the report, Cornell said. The FCC is also still taking recommendations through its website, she said.

The FCC circulated Wednesday night a draft program comment it plans to submit to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) that seeks to streamline the FCC’s review process for wayside poles that railroads are building for the positive train control (PTC) safety system. The draft would also exempt some PTC infrastructure from review (http://bit.ly/1ffJpho). The FCC began developing the program comment last year amid railroads’ concerns they wouldn’t be able to meet Congress’s mandate to complete work on PTC infrastructure by Dec. 31, 2015. The railroads were concerned the existing preview process under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act would not be able to expeditiously clear each of the more than 20,000 poles in time to meet the deadline (CD Dec 19 p2). An FCC official told us the railroads have “essentially agreed” that the rules in the program comment would create a timeline that “works for them to get everything into our system, reviewed by the tribes and the states and still allow them to get everything constructed by the statutory deadline."