Congress is poised to approve as early as Friday legislation extending the payroll tax cut, which also gives the FCC authority to hold voluntary incentive auctions of broadcast spectrum. The agreement on the spectrum provisions was a win for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski who had made a push on the bill one of his top priorities, industry and FCC observers said, and a victory for public safety. A wireless industry official said he expects the FCC to move quickly to start developing rules for an auction, but an actual auction could be four to six years away.

GENEVA -- U.S. objectives, including a broadly defined 2015 agenda item to spur mobile broadband, were largely met during the four-week World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC), which ends Friday, officials said. The conference has been “very successful,” said Decker Anstrom, head of the U.S. delegation. The work by more than 150 countries to resolve each of the 33 agenda items was “effective and collaborative,” he said, and U.S. objectives have been “largely realized.” The U.S. is pleased with the agenda provisionally set for the 2015 conference, he said.

SILICON VALLEY -- Strapped state and local governments must move to the cloud for economies, but “with a lot of trepidation and very carefully,” said California Technology Secretary Carlos Ramos Thursday. Constituents “don’t trust government” but it requires them to entrust it “with critical and sensitive information,” and security “really is a big challenge, especially in government,” he said at an event to release a cloud-adoption report by a TechAmerica Foundation work group. The State & Local Government Cloud Commission includes representatives of AT&T, Google, Microsoft and Verizon.

Universal Service Fund contribution reform is on the way, but likely at a slower pace than expected last year, after the commission wrapped up distribution reform. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told the House Communications Subcommittee Thursday he expects work to start within six months.

Online social networks can’t be forced to monitor users to prevent piracy, the European Court of Justice said in a major ruling Thursday. Requiring hosting providers to install a general filtering system would violate the rule that there be a fair balance between protecting copyright and the freedom to conduct business, safeguard personal data and receive information, the high court said. The decision should make EU bodies and national governments think twice about attempting to make private companies responsible for copyright breaches in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and upcoming revisions to the intellectual property rights enforcement directive, digital rights activists said.

The Senate Cybersecurity Act, S-2105, gained momentum Wednesday following endorsements from the White House, Joint Chiefs of Staff and some technology groups. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said there’s “no reason for further delay” on cybersecurity legislation. His remarks came in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday evening.

The FCC proposed to change how the cellular service is licensed -- from a site-based to a geographically based regime. The spectrum covered, in the 800 MHz band, was the first used for cellphones. The FCC also proposed eliminating data filing requirements in seven areas. The proposed rules approved by commissioners at Wednesday’s meeting would put cellular licensees on the same footing as other bands, including PCS, AWS and the 700 MHz band. CTIA sought the rule changes in an October 2008 petition. The notice and an accompanying order were not controversial and didn’t spark much discussion on the eighth floor prior the vote, agency officials said.

Several cable operators awaiting FCC approval of basic-tier encryption likely will get an order approving it industrywide, officials said. Cable, consumer electronics and nonprofit officials said the Media Bureau continues work toward an order (CD Feb 14 p7) that would OK encryption by any operator that takes certain steps to make subscribers with older TVs whole after scrambling, such as by giving them a CableCARD for free for a period of time. The coming order would let all-digital systems scramble signals of TV stations and pay networks to cut down on theft and perhaps help the environment by eliminating service calls.

Among the most significant after-effects of the FCC’s rejection of LightSquared’s proposal for terrestrial use of satellite frequencies is likely to be a renewed focus on receiver standards, officials said. The likely next step is release of a public notice by the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology aimed at trying to find some consensus, an FCC official said Wednesday. A workshop on the issue is also likely. A document requesting guidance on how to tackle the many issues presented has been in the works for some time and is likely to be released shortly, the official said. The FCC took on receiver standards one time before, formally ending an inquiry five years ago.

The FCC unanimously approved an order Wednesday extending outage reporting rules to interconnected VoIP service providers. As expected (CD Feb 15 p3), the order imposes rules similar to those that already apply to legacy systems, is limited to the complete outage of a company’s own interconnected VoIP services, and doesn’t contemplate broadband reporting. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the new rules would close a “glaring gap” that has prevented the commission from obtaining the information it needs to analyze major VoIP outages.