The Rural Utilities Service will fund public safety programs through its Telecommunications Loan Program, the agency said Friday. The Agriculture Department published interim eligibility requirements for the construction of “interoperable, integrated public safety communications networks in rural areas” in the Federal Register (http://xrl.us/bmcxgi). RUS Administrator Jonathan Adelstein told us the money will be made available for a variety of projects, including build out of local networks in the 700 MHz band and next-generation 911 upgrades to emergency call centers.

The 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was expected to pass Sunday without congressional action on a public safety broadband network, despite the best efforts of first responders nationwide. The good news for public safety is that the administration took another shot at pushing the network, along with incentive auctions, in its $447 billion jobs plan, unveiled by President Barack Obama Thursday night during an address to Congress. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a member of Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, said Thursday be expects spectrum to be part of the debate as the group starts what is expected to be a long, contentious debate (CD Sept 9 p10).

LightSquared offered to make some operational adjustments to its rollout plans as part of the continued effort to mitigate the disruption of GPS signals. LightSquared filed a technical presentation Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bmcxfm) at the FCC detailing the changes as part of an ex parte filing and provided information on the filing to reporters Friday. GPS interests were still reviewing the proposed changes, but reacted with initial skepticism. A LightSquared executive, who refused to be identified, said the government agencies seem to be in a “decision-making mode,” based on recent interactions.

BART’s board president said a draft cellphone-cutoff policy from the regional rail agency’s general counsel is overbroad. In an interview Friday, President Bob Franklin of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District Board also said that getting responses from the FCC, the California Public Utilities Commission and the ACLU to a proposed policy probably will delay final action beyond the board’s next meeting, Sept. 22. He had planned to take a vote by then on what are expected to be the first rules on the subject in the U.S. (CD Aug 25 p6). “It’s my intention to wrap this up quickly,” Franklin said, but “because it’s the first policy, I think it’s an opportunity to get it right and serve as a model for other agencies.”

Commercial-free education advocacy groups began a campaign to take Channel One News out of schools. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and Obligation Inc. -- organizations that try to lessen the impact of ads on kids -- told us they're trying to convince companies to stop running ads on Channel One. Channel One came under fire from CCFC and similar advocates in 2006, when then Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., introduced a proposal calling for the FCC to study programs designed to transmit radio or TV shows on buses (CD June 26/06 p6). Channel One delivers its newscasts to almost 6 million teens in about 8,000 middle schools and high schools, it said on its website.

More LightSquared network testing “should be required” before the FCC allows the company to begin service, House Science Committee Chairman Ralph Hall, R-Texas, said at a hearing Thursday. Protecting GPS is “a vital national interest” and of “utmost concern” to the committee, Hall said. Ranking Member Eddie Johnson, D-Texas, highlighted the public benefits of a new national wireless network, but agreed that more tests may be needed to determine whether LightSquared and GPS systems can coexist. Witnesses from several government agencies also urged more tests.

Many hard questions remain about whether the FCC should impose rules to require more network resiliency and outage reporting for broadband networks, Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett said Thursday at the start of an agency workshop. He and other officials said the importance of communications during a disaster were driven home by the recent earthquake in Virginia, Hurricane Irene and this week’s torrential rains that have caused flooding on the East Coast.

An upcoming rulemaking notice asks about an FCC advisory group’s recommendations (CD July 15 p5) on putting online captioned programming from traditional sources, agency and industry officials said. They said the draft notice seeks to implement definitions of and rules for such captions once they go into Internet Protocol format. Many commissioners haven’t voted on the item, but are expected to do so soon, agency officials said.

Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, and Tom Ridge, the first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said Thursday they're extremely frustrated that, 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, first responders still lack effective, interoperable communications. Both testified at a hearing by the House Homeland Security Committee.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Cisco is pressing the FCC for a broad swath of “contiguous spectrum” in the 5 GHz band for unlicensed sharing for broadband, the chief technology officer of the company’s wireless networking unit said Thursday. But the executive, Bob Friday, said the effort is complicated by a need to accommodate weather radars on the band. Cisco wants to add 195 MHz total in the 5.350-5.470 and 5.850-5.925 GHz bands to the 455 MHz of spectrum now available to mobile communications in the 5 GHz, a spokeswoman said.