The U.K. may be preparing to broaden Internet traffic data retention powers to include social networks, online gaming chat rooms and Skype, as well as real-time monitoring. The plan, expected to be announced next month in the Queen’s Speech, aims to maintain continued availability of communications data as technology changes, the Home Office said. But privacy advocates said the proposal, which was proposed several years ago by the Labor government and then scrapped due to strong opposition, would put the U.K. in the same surveillance league as China and Iran. Moreover, said one, it could be a back-stop if the European Commission decides to make major changes to the controversial EU data retention directive, which is currently under review.

Steps being taken may quicken the switch to all digital textbooks, said David Stevenson, educational software, systems and assessment provider Wireless Generation’s vice president of government affairs. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s goal for K-12 schools to use only digital textbooks within five years may be more reachable due to items discussed in closed meetings among Genachowski, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and education technology industry leaders on Thursday and Friday (CD Feb 30 p12), Stevenson said. In attendance were executives and leaders from Apple, Aruba Networks, Chegg, Discovery Education, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Idaho Department of Education, Inkling, Intel, Knewton, Kno, the Leading Education by Advancing Digital (LEAD) Commission, McGraw-Hill, News Corp., Pearson, Samsung, Sprint and T-Mobile.

The FCC’s Emergency Access Advisory Committee turned back a move for the group to approve a resolution calling on the FCC to adopt short message service (SMS) as a temporary solution for texting to 911, while various stakeholders develop a long-term fix. The motion came from Sheri Farinha, representing the Norcal Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing on the EAAC. The EAAC ultimately approved a resolution expressing general support for adoption of SMS, as a minimum standard, as well as “other technologies as appropriate, with a three-digit short code 911,” as an interim fix. A vote on the resolution came after a sometimes tense discussion, lasting almost an hour.

The FCC asked how it should interpret the terms “multichannel video programming distributor” and “channel” in the context of a program access dispute brought by Sky Angel against Discovery Communications. In a public notice released Friday (http://xrl.us/bmzw8r), the Media Bureau asked what would be the most appropriate interpretation of the terms and the larger policy implications. The notice puts up for comment two possible interpretations raised in the proceeding. In one, “channel” would be defined to include “the provision of a transmission path, thus treating MVPDs as only those entities that make available for purchase multiple streams of video programming, as well as the transmission path,” the notice said. In the other, “channel” would be defined as programming network, so that “any entity that makes multiple “video programming networks’ available for purchase is considered an ‘MVPD,'” whether or not it also provides the transmission path.

Wireline carriers are arguing over a proposal that would expand eligibility for incremental support funding under the Connect America Fund Phase I program. The American Cable Association and the NCTA came out Thursday against the proposal introduced in March by the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, CenturyLink, Frontier and Windstream (CD Mar 8 p10).

Class A stations are readying responses to orders to show why they shouldn’t lose FCC interference protection and face channel changes without reimbursement or go off the air for good because there will be fewer vacant frequencies, industry lawyers and executives said. Longtime attorneys from Fletcher Heald, Wiley Rein and other law firms whose clients got Media Bureau show-cause orders met last week to try to map out strategy, some said. The bureau has continued to send letters of inquiry (CD March 21 p3) to other low-power broadcasters asking them to answer why they're qualified to keep Class A status.

Smaller carriers face death from a thousand cuts if they can’t compete with dominant industry players Verizon Wireless and AT&T, CEOs from Rural Cellular Association member companies said Friday, the final day of RCA’s spring meeting. The CEOs stressed the importance of rules requiring interoperability across the 700 MHz band, the subject of a recent FCC notice of proposed rulemaking (CD March 22 p2).

Congress has made little headway on IP legislation the White House said amid glowing enforcement statistics in it’s annual IP report released Friday. Despite offering at least 11 copyright bills this session, Congress was only able to enact two of the administration’s 20 IP legislative recommendations in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the report said.

The retransmission agreement dispute between Tribune and DirecTV keeps the debate going about whether the FCC or Congress should get involved when there’s a threat of a blackout, some broadcast and cable analysts and attorneys said. The contract, which was to have expired Saturday before midnight, covered retransmission of 23 TV stations and cable network WGN America (CD March 28 p17). The two sides had no update late last week, after Tribune warned its viewers they might lose access to stations affiliated with the CW and Fox networks.

TORONTO -- Cable engineers are debating the best way to make the big transition to all-Internet Protocol service delivery, now that operators are starting to embrace IP video technology. Speaking at the Society of Cable Telecom Engineers’ Canadian meeting last week, senior cable technologists spelled out several different ways to use bonded DOCSIS 3.0 broadband channels to transmit IP video programming to customers’ homes. By bonding several channels together, operators believe they can cobble together the capacity needed to carry bandwidth-rich IP video content.