PHILADELPHIA -- LightSquared faced tough questions from public safety officials late Monday after a presentation at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials annual conference. The same question came up repeatedly: Will LightSquared be another Nextel, which caused so much interference to public safety systems in the 800 MHz band that ultimately the FCC had to broker the restructuring of that band. That process still is unfolding seven years after the commission approved its landmark 800 MHz rebanding order.

PHILADELPHIA -- Hope remains that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., will manage to bring his version of public safety legislation to the Senate floor after the body returns to Washington Sept. 6 and before the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. That’s according to public safety officials at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials’ annual meeting, which got underway over the weekend. Hill officials who spoke Monday held out some hope that legislation could move in the few days Congress meets before Sept. 11.

Gray TV is set for a watershed retransmission consent season, as about 45 percent of multichannel video programming distributor agreements expire at the end of the year, executives said on its Q2 earnings call Monday. “We'll be actively negotiating through the fourth quarter and we've got over 200 cable systems” to reach deals with, said President Bob Prather. In 2012 and the following years, Gray will have to reach new affiliation agreements with its major broadcast network partners, he said.

Contract negotiations between Verizon and unions representing wireline workers continued Monday. The Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) called a strike after the contract for 45,000 employees throughout the mid-Atlantic region expired 11:59 p.m. Saturday without agreement on issues like healthcare and pensions. Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., “is monitoring the situation and encouraging the parties to work towards an agreement,” his spokeswoman said.

A proposal to delay FCC enforcement of emergency alert system rules doesn’t go far enough for many broadcasters seeking a longer extension, while EAS equipment makers said the plan makes sense. The comments in interviews came after the Federal Emergency Management Agency asked the commission to delay by four months until Jan. 31 penalizing broadcasters that can’t encode and decode alerts in FEMA’s new format (CD Aug 8 p3). Public TV stations, state broadcasters and the NAB, among those seeking a delay, want it to apply to the rules taking effect, their representatives said. Executives of equipment makers said FEMA’s proposal could be a workable compromise for their industry and for all EAS participants.

Dropping disclosure of a radiation measurement from a San Francisco ordinance on cellphone sales “removes any reasonable legal objection that CTIA could have” to the legislation, said a city lawyer. The association’s announcement that enactment of a new version of the ordinance would prompt revival of a suspended court challenge (CD Aug 5 p7) came as no surprise, said Deputy City Attorney Vince Chhabria: CTIA had made it clear that the lawsuit would go away only if the regulation did. “Even if they have a 2 percent chance of winning, it’s worth the pocket change” of perhaps $500,000 in legal costs for the association to pursue the First Amendment and federal preemption case in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, he said.

Windstream’s Q2 profit was $93.2 million, up from $79 million in the same period last year. Though more work needs to be done, the USTelecom-brokered USF proposal is a good start, CEO Jeff Gardner said during an investor call Friday.

The agency that developed a new alerting standard sought a delay in the FCC enforcing compliance with it among radio and TV stations. The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked the FCC to hold off for four additional months in enforcing compliance with FEMA’s Common Alerting Protocol for emergency alert systems. The current EAS deadline, which a wide array of multichannel video programming distributors and commercial and nonprofit broadcasters want extended (CD Aug 2 p12), shouldn’t be enforced until Jan. 1, FEMA said. The industry entities want the deadline that’s now set at Sept. 30 extended by at least six months after the commission comes up with certification standards for CAP. Google said more time than the current deadline may be needed.

The U.S. GPS Industry Council used its reply comments in the broadband for native nations proceeding to take a swipe at LightSquared in docket 11-41 (http://xrl.us/bk5o48). “In its comments, LightSquared takes credit for the planned distribution of up to 2,000 MSS satellite phones to units of the Indian Health Service. … LightSquared then closes its comments with a request that the Commission consider extending waivers to cover LightSquared’s 4G LTE terrestrial mobile service base stations in order to facilitate deployment of satellite infrastructure on Tribal Lands,” the council said in its comments. “These two aspects of LightSquared’s comments are fundamentally at odds.”

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a vigorous opponent of the FCC’s net neutrality order -- approved over his dissent Dec. 21 -- said last week he hopes the Office of Management and Budget will examine the costs of the order for businesses large and small. McDowell noted questions raised by some Congressional Republicans, including Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida (CD July 8 p5), about the cost of the rules.