One of Capitol Hill’s fiercest defenders of net neutrality principles, competition and consumer protection announced Thursday that he would be stepping down at the end of his term. House Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., will not seek reelection after 40 years in office, he said in a press release (http://1.usa.gov/LsWQSA). Waxman will depart as the committee undertakes an overhaul of the Communications Act, leaving some uncertainty among lobbyists and observers about who will take over for Democrats.

Lenovo’s proposed purchase of Motorola Mobility from Google for $2.91 billion will be felt hardest among competitors including Huawei, LG and ZTE, which have been jockeying for the No. 3 position among worldwide smartphone makers behind Samsung and Apple, analysts said Thursday. “If you're a Samsung or an Apple, this isn’t going to hurt you too much right now, but if you're anybody else this is pretty significant,” IDC’s Ramon Llamas told us.

The IP transition order FCC members are to vote on Thursday will okay the types of trials AT&T has suggested, where customers in a service area will be transitioned from legacy TDM to IP services, agency officials told us. The order approves and recognizes the benefits for doing trials, which include helping the commission understand the impact of technology transitions on end users, the officials said.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s office had planned to circulate a draft order Thursday that would attribute TV joint sales agreements (JSAs) for the purposes of calculating ownership, but the item is expected to be delayed until March, an agency official told us. The order would have treated the attribution of TV JSAs the same way as for radio, counting as 15 percent toward ownership, the official said. It’s not clear why the item may be delayed. The item would also have included a further notice of proposed rulemaking on media cross-ownership, the official said.

President Barack Obama’s commitment to bringing super-fast broadband to U.S. schools, which got a shout-out during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address (CD Jan 29 Bulletin), was met with praise from the telecom industry. Obama mentioned a “down payment” supported by Verizon, Microsoft, Sprint and Apple that would help connect 15,000 schools within the next two years, but didn’t go into detail. Statements from some of the companies involved, and interviews with industry officials, hint at an announcement in the coming weeks.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) plans to “begin a multistakeholder dialogue” in early March on how to improve the notice-and-takedown system instituted as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), said PTO Chief Policy Officer and Director of International Affairs Shira Perlmutter during a speech Wednesday. The multistakeholder consultation on notice and takedown was one of several recommendations PTO included in a green paper on Internet-related copyright policy issues it released in July (http://1.usa.gov/1bySZcG).

The broadband stimulus grantee known as Eagle-Net may have overbuilt private networks to the tune of millions of dollars and has fallen short of the goals it once set, Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser told Republican lawmakers in a long document released this week (http://1.usa.gov/MgYE0W). But NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling questioned the findings and the way overbuilding has been talked about, sending Zinser a letter outlining many concerns.

FirstNet is making real progress after getting off to a bumpy start, FirstNet board member Kevin McGinnis told a meeting of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council Wednesday. McGinnis, CEO of North East Mobile Health Services and a member of NPSTC, said “things are a lot further along than they were."

There’s a growing concern that allowing new stations in the AM band will further stifle operations and incumbent stations in that band, broadcast engineering consultants said. In comments in the ongoing proceeding to revitalize the AM band, some engineering firms said new licenses are granted in areas that are cluttered with other stations and many new stations tend to operate at substandard levels.

The FCC said e-readers need not include accessibility features for the disabled for advanced communications services (ACS) because the devices are primarily designed for reading text-based digital titles and not for ACS. Giving an OK to a waiver sought last year by Amazon, Kobo and Sony, the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau granted an exemption from 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act rules for a year, but not the indefinite period the companies sought (CD Oct 15 p5). That time frame comported with the fears of groups representing those with vision impairments, said one such advocate.