T-Mobile USA brought CEO Philipp Humm to the FCC last week to push for FCC decisions granting T-Mobile the AWS licenses it got as part of the breakup fee when the AT&T/T-Mobile deal ended in December, and denying Verizon Wireless’s buy of AWS licenses from the cable companies. Humm met with Chairman Julius Genachowski, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Angela Giancarlo, the top aide to Commissioner Robert McDowell, and Rick Kaplan, chief of the Wireless Bureau, among other FCC officials. The visit was Humm’s second to the FCC this year.

Carriers uniformly support the launch of an integrated national database to address duplicate and eligibility concerns for the Lifeline program, according to comments filed in response to a further notice of proposed rulemaking in the FCC’s Lifeline Order. But several carriers, as well as state commissions, were wary of a proposal to use USF dollars to encourage digital literacy, questioning whether the FCC had such authority. States also expressed concerns over privacy issues, the expected cost of the national database, and AT&T’s proposal to let ILECs opt out of the Lifeline program.

Fundraising for communications policy nonprofits has been difficult since the recession hit, which contributed to the Media Access Project board’s decision to wind down the operation this month. “It’s been very hard for many of the public interest groups since the recession, and foundation funding is very hard to get,” said Andy Schwartzman, MAP’s policy director since 1978. MAP said Tuesday that it plans to suspend its operations May 1, ending a nearly 40-year run as one of the communications bar’s most effective public interest advocates.

Senate Privacy Subcommittee Chairman Al Franken, D-Minn., and several consumer privacy groups urged administration officials to create privacy rules to protect Americans’ personal data, in separate comments filed with the NTIA. But industry groups representing Internet companies and mobile application developers told the administration that data privacy laws are unnecessary and urged private discussions among some groups to deter proprietary or sensitive information leaks.

Members of Congress from Louisiana, a state still recovering from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, pressed the FCC to act on a waiver request allowing early construction of a public safety network in the 700 MHz band. The letter was signed by both senators and all seven representatives from the state. Baton Rouge filed the initial petition from the state asking for “expedited” action on a waiver in July 2010.

Tribune’s executives were overruled by the hedge funds that are poised to take over the long-bankrupt broadcaster, forcing the station group to renege on a tacit retransmission-consent agreement that would have kept Tribune’s TV stations on DirecTV’s service this weekend, DirecTV said in a complaint filed with the FCC Monday. Tribune has separately asked the commission for permission to transfer its licenses to a group of creditors, but “it nonetheless appears that Tribune may have already granted these entities control of at least its retransmission consent-negotiations,” the complaint said.

It’s incumbent carriers against the world in the latest round of comments regarding the development of an IP-to-IP policy framework, addressed in the further notice of proposed rulemaking as part of the USF/intercarrier compensation order. Commenters also addressed the FCC’s ongoing transition to a bill-and-keep framework. States urged the FCC to proceed at a slower pace or even pause the implementation of intercarrier compensation rules.

Dish, NCTA and the FCC filed their final briefs in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, concerning Dish’s petition to review whether the FCC has jurisdiction to adopt encoding rules for all MVPDs, including satellite. Dish reiterated its claim that Section 629 of the Communications Act does not give the commission jurisdiction to adopt the rules. NCTA further urged the court to deny Dish’s petition.

Concern over the rollout of a 4G LTE network in rural areas and mobile broadband investment were included in reply comments urging the FCC not to revoke LightSquared’s ancillary terrestrial component authority. Other replies in docket 11-109 claimed that revoking the ATC authority and withdrawing a conditional waiver allowing the company to offer terrestrial-only service would be in the public interest. Some of the companies responding also addressed NTIA’s conclusion that LightSquared’s proposed operations would impact aviation GPS receivers (CD Feb 15 p1). Replies were due Friday.

Ethics.gov could still use some improvements, experts say. The White House’s new transparency-promoting database appears to have some glitches, our research found. For example, if one were to search ethics.gov for AT&T and then limit the results to lobbying information, no information shows up. But AT&T lobbying data will show up when searched directly in the lobbying section. Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, experienced similar glitches on the site, he said. These issues probably occur because the site was just recently launched, he said.