SAN FRANCISCO -- The formally independent FCC and FTC are in step with an administration strategy of pressing electronic communications industries to agree to enforceable codes of conduct to protect consumers, federal officials said Tuesday. The “bill shock” code that the FCC announced Monday with CTIA fits the pattern, Policy Director Danny Weitzner of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy said at the Web 2.0 Summit. His other example was a code, enforceable at the FTC, that the Department of Health and Human Services secured to close what he called a “critical privacy gap” concerning personal health records.

The FCC’s Universal Service Fund reform plan, of which many still await details, could hurt rural and tribal operators and investment in rural broadband, speakers said at a Broadband Breakfast Club panel Tuesday. Meanwhile, many broadband projects funded by the Rural Utilities Service are on track, said Undersecretary of Rural Development Dallas Tonsager.

Revisions to modernize the Electronic Communications Privacy Act are necessary, said lawmakers Tuesday at a Capitol Hill news event hosted by a coalition of privacy and citizens’ rights groups. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., stood beside a collection of vintage computers that were produced when the 25-year-old ECPA was first passed. “The laws that govern today’s new media are as old as some of the staffers that Senator Kirk and I hired to handle new media,” Wyden said.

BOULDER, Colo. -- Charging spectrum fees for terrestrial use of mobile satellite service spectrum is bad policy and could slow investment in services there, Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen said Monday at a Silicon Flatirons event. Dish is buying DBSD and TerreStar and hopes to make use of their terrestrial spectrum. The issue of spectrum fees was recently raised as a revenue generating component of President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act.

Paetec doesn’t pay interstate rates for its VoIP traffic, but the company is sometimes duped by third-party carriers that disguise long-distance calls as Internet Protocol traffic, company executives said Tuesday. It wants to stop the third-party carriers in their arbitrage, but stands by its decision to pay only local rates for VoIP. “That’s based on our understanding of current FCC rules on how the number is treated,” said Paetec Director of Carrier Access Tami Spocogee at an FCC panel on how to address lost calls in the rural U.S. She spoke after Toledo Telephone Chief Operating Officer Dale Merten showed a slide demonstrating that a call from Washington, D.C., and connected in rural Washington state was reclassified as a local call.

The 160 million set-top boxes installed in the U.S. consume 27 billion kilowatt hours a year and cost consumers more than $3 billion annually in electric bills, eight advocacy groups said. They urged federal standards to curb STB energy use. In comments to the Department of Energy, the groups cited a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council that found that the boxes consume as much power when they're turned off as when they're in use. The DOE made a tentative finding that set-tops and network equipment are covered products under the Energy Act, potentially subjecting them to energy conservation standards and labeling requirements.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he’s “very happy that The New York Times filed suit” under the Freedom of Information Act to get the Obama administration’s secret interpretation of the Patriot Act. In effect, “there are two Patriot Acts in America,” the law itself and the administration’s position, he said late Monday at the Web 2.0 Summit. “When the American people see what the secret interpretation is, … I think people are going to be surprised, and I think they are going to be angry. … The American people ought to be able to see this secret interpretation.” Wyden said he “had hoped that we would make more progress” when Barack Obama became president than has been made on expansive use of the law.

There’s the equivalent of a mini-DTV transition occurring through Nov. 9 by radio and TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors seeking to get the word out about a first-of-its-kind emergency message test set for 2 p.m. Eastern that day. Some executives, who along with the FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency are ramping up public outreach (CD Oct 14 p15) about the nationwide emergency alert system test, compared those EAS efforts to what occurred before the 2009 DTV transition. The extent of work among the FCC, FEMA, other government agencies and broadcasters and MVPDs resembles other cooperative efforts before the full-power analog broadcast cutoff, executives and government officials told us.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s proposed universal service order lacks a “clear vision or roadmap,” leaders of the largest rural telecom associations said in meetings with FCC staff last week. Leaders from OPASTCO, NTCA, the Western Telecom Alliance and the National Exchange Carrier Association, along with executives from rural telcos, said the proposed overhaul isn’t comprehensive enough. “Such ambiguity, together with the imposition of new near-term constraints and the overhang of additional constraints or reductions in support to be considered in a further notice of proposed rulemaking, would only chill investment by RLECs and deter lenders and outside investors by perpetuating regulatory uncertainty,” the rural leaders said, according to an ex parte notice posted on docket 10-90.

The FCC, CTIA and Consumers Union unveiled “Wireless Consumer Usage Notification Guidelines” as an alternative to bill shock rules proposed by the agency last year. The announcement Monday as expected (CD Oct 17 p10) was in keeping with the Obama administration’s broader move away from regulation where possible. But FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski warned that rules are still possible if voluntary guidelines don’t work. Other members of the commission were not given advanced notice of the agreement, agency officials said.