Spectrum conditions restricting the sale or lease of Dish Network’s S-band spectrum to other wireless carriers are very unlikely at this point, said FCC and industry officials. The FCC approval of Harbinger Capital Partners’ purchase of SkyTerra, which created LightSquared, included conditions requiring agency approval for spectrum deals with the top two carriers. Public interest groups have sought similar conditions for Dish. The FCC is reviewing Dish’s request to control the S-band spectrum and use it for terrestrial service.

The FCC’s new closed-captioning regulations for TV programs that are streamed using Internet Protocol exempt some shortened versions of the shows from captioning requirements, and that’s causing heartburn at the agency, said Karen Peltz Strauss, deputy chief, FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, at an FCBA conference Wednesday.

Distributed antenna systems (DAS) and small cell technologies will play a big role in meeting the FCC’s goals of expanding the reach of wireless broadband, Wireless Bureau Chief Rick Kaplan said Wednesday, at the start of an FCC workshop. The all-day workshop gave the commission a broad overview of a topic likely to get increasing attention, with DAS offering one of the best alternatives to installing cell towers in hard to reach areas.

The FCC’s delay in approving a waiver for the state of Oklahoma so it can build out an early public safety network in the 700 MHz band is putting the network at risk, a delegation from the state, led by Chief Technology Officer Alex Pettit, said in a meeting with top FCC officials. The state got a high-profile hearing, with state officials meeting with Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett and Angela Giancarlo, chief of staff to Commissioner Robert McDowell.

The PBS emergency alert system pilot project using mobile DTV (CD June 6 p11) has been expanded to include a commercial TV station (KOMO-TV in Seattle), and organizers said they intend to bring the project to the ATSC for standards approval in May. The alerts developed by the four broadcasters involved in the pilot were shown at CES last month. This month, the partners begin a road show, with plans to bring the technology to WGBH-TV Boston, Alabama Public TV in Birmingham and Montgomery, Seattle and possibly Washington, D.C., said Jay Adrick, vice president of broadcast technology at Harris Corp., one of the partners in the pilot with LG, Roundbox and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Then, an improved demonstration will be brought to NAB in April, with additional use cases and functionality.

The House Cybersecurity Subcommittee unanimously approved in a one-hour markup Tuesday a cybersecurity bill authored by Chairman Dan Lungren, R-Calif. Members considered slight tweaks to the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness (PrECISE) Act and agreed to report the bill to the full Homeland Security Committee. Lungren told reporters afterward that the bill is in line with the recommendations of the House Republican Cyber Security Task Force and is “on the same track” as the House Intelligence Committee’s Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.

GENEVA -- Wider discussions on cybercrime are ramping up to evaluate existing legal instruments and to assess whether new measures are needed, speakers said at a high-level panel on cybersecurity and cybercrime Tuesday. A “universal convention on cooperation” is needed for the fight against cybercrime, a Russian official said. “Divergence of views” between governments is “very significant,” a U.N. official said. The panel was organized by the U.N. Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the ITU and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Creation of a next-generation public safety communications network will require leadership “from a single non-profit organization devoted to this purpose,” said a report released Tuesday by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT). The report also said any network should “incorporate commercial technology where appropriate” and find ways to “extend commercial technology to achieve robustness.” It emphasized the importance of ease of use and affordability in any network used by public safety (http://xrl.us/bmqc8z).

A New York State appeals court rejected Dish Networks’ challenge to sanctions a lower court imposed on Dish for allegedly destroying evidence tied to Cablevision’s $2.5 billion suit against it. The New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division upheld Judge Richard Lowe’s ruling that he could tell jurors about erased emails in an upcoming trial into Cablevision’s claims that it breached a contract to carry the defunct Voom network. Jurors could assume the email evidence would benefit Cablevision, Lowe said. Cablevision sued EchoStar in 2008, but Dish assumed related litigation when EchoStar was spun off as a separate hardware company.

Comcast said it will expand the pool of customers eligible for its discount broadband program to households that have a school-age student receiving a free or reduced school lunch. And Comcast said it will double the download speed it offers for the Internet Essentials service to 3 Mbps. Those were among the changes Comcast said it plans to make to the program after five months operating it. Other changes include working to drop the price of the subsidized computers it offers, increase its efforts to market the program through local partners and print more digital literacy material to distribute, said Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen during a call with reporters.