The spectrum provisions in the payroll tax extension will only get the Obama administration part of the way toward finding 500 MHz for wireless broadband. The legislation won’t free up nearly as much spectrum as expected, industry and government officials said. The FCC National Broadband Plan projected that voluntary incentive auctions of broadcast spectrum would yield 120 MHz for broadband. That figure appears now to be down to 60-80 MHz, with a big chunk of the 120 MHz lost in part because of language sought by the NAB protecting TV station signals along the Canadian and Mexican borders, industry and government officials said.

Debate intensified on whether cable operators should install radio frequency traps in all-digital systems so consumer electronics can get basic programming without using extra devices. NCTA Friday released a blog titled “it’s a trap” against the use of such technology. Meanwhile the CE company that has been most vocal against cable operators scrambling signals took aim at RCN for saying traps aren’t practical.

The House and Senate passed long-awaited spectrum legislation on Friday as a “pay-for” in the payroll tax cut extension bill. President Barack Obama praised the bill and was expected to sign it into law. The spectrum law (CD Feb 17 p1) authorizes the FCC to conduct voluntary incentive auctions, a recommendation from 2010’s National Broadband Plan. It also sets up national public safety wireless broadband network ten years after one was recommended by the 9/11 Commission.

GENEVA -- World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) decisions will safeguard spectrum needed to observe and understand the Earth, atmosphere and oceans and to reduce the risk of weather, climate and water-related disasters, the World Meteorological Organization said in a press release following the four-week conference. The growing importance of collecting and exchanging Earth observation data was an important issue before the conference, said Hamadoun Toure, ITU secretary-general, at a press conference. Toure was referring to boosting the accuracy of weather forecasting, climate change monitoring, disaster prediction and mitigation, and gains in other areas.

GENEVA -- ITU member governments made gains in clarifying the rules for bringing into use satellite network frequency assignments and set up a process of inquiries about the movement of satellites, sources said on the last day of the four-week World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC). Reducing the orbital arc used for determining the coordination requirements of satellite networks is one way to ease difficulties, but is “not sufficient by itself,” said Francois Rancy, director of the Radiocommunication Bureau, during a press conference.

GENEVA -- The World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) took major steps toward global harmonization for mobile applications, including wrapping up work on issues remaining after the 2007 conference, setting up a work program on future use of the 700 MHz band and agenda items for the 2015 conference that will follow up on decisions this month and consider spectrum allocations to the mobile service to spur broadband applications, officials said during a press conference on the last day of the four-week conference.

Dish Network lacks the legal standing to force the FCC to pull back encoding rules for set-top boxes adopted in 2003 as part of plug-and-play device implementation, the FCC and Justice Department said in a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Dish appeal, filed in 2004, was paused as the agency considered DirecTV’s petition for reconsideration of the plug-and-play order, which the commission denied in 2010. Dish argued in its brief last month that the agency’s application of plug-and-play rules to all multichannel video programming distributors, rather than just cable, goes beyond the congressional intent.

MUNICH -- Industry and regulators are grappling with the slow uptake of fiber-to-the-home networks in major Western European countries. Countries like Germany and the U.K. don’t even figure in the recent statistics of the Fibre to the Home (FTTH) Council Europe, the Council warned at its meeting this week.

FCC work on making all TV stations put political-ad files online, so campaign buys of spots around the time of elections can be more closely tracked, likely will be guided by the industry’s first proposal (CD Feb 15 p20) for how to manage the files, said agency and industry officials. Officials at public interest groups that have long wanted everything in station’s public files to go online said the plan from 11 companies is a start to a dialogue with industry. Industry officials said it’s unclear if other stations and the NAB will back the proposal for broadcasters to aggregate information on ad buys without disclosing how much campaigns spent on each commercial. At first glance the proposal’s an interesting one, and may add corporate backers, industry officials said.

An FTC report Thursday targets mobile applications stores and app developers for their inadequate disclosure of information parents need to determine what data is being collected from their children when they download and use apps, how it’s shared or who will have access to it. The report highlights “the lack of information available to parents prior to downloading mobile apps for their children, and calls on the industry to provide greater transparency about their data practices,” the FTC said. FTC staff also found that there isn’t enough information provided from apps available through stores from Apple and Google’s Android concerning apps that are integrated with social media and targeted advertising, the FTC said.