The FCC unanimously approved CenturyLink’s acquisition of Qwest, the commission said Friday. The deal was approved, as expected (CD March 18 p1), without net neutrality conditions. Chairman Julius Genachowski and his staff felt the conditions weren’t needed because it was a horizontal merger, unlike Comcast-NBC Universal’s vertical merger, and neither CenturyLink nor Qwest was producing content, an FCC official said. The commission imposed net neutrality conditions in the AT&T-BellSouth deal, but the CenturyLink-Qwest deal touches fewer Internet subscribers, the official said.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski plans to move forward on an ambitious agenda at the commission’s April 7 open meeting, he said Thursday, including a data roaming order that has strong support from many wireless carriers but is opposed by Verizon Wireless and AT&T. The agency will also take on pole attachment rules and increased regulation of wireless signal boosters, among other orders scheduled for a vote at the meeting.

The FCC spectrum dashboard has shortfalls that prevent it from being an authoritative and comprehensive inventory of who occupies what radio waves, broadcast lawyers and executives said. The dashboard has been promoted by Chairman Julius Genachowski and other top commission officials as providing the public with a way to easily track what spectrum has been licensed, so the agency can get congressional approval to hold an incentive auction. The tool doesn’t track low-power stations, even those that have the same obligations and rights as full-power broadcasters, industry lawyers noted. The dashboard excludes data from the NTIA, so it doesn’t track government spectrum, they noted.

CTIA will start a new collaborative website for the disabled, an industry official said. The National Federation for the Blind is looking for more. NFB asked the Justice Department to force universities to halt further adoption of Google Apps and other barriers to handicapped accessibility, it said in a complaint filed last week. The new website will be helpful, but the Google Apps and e-mail program disability access issues show a need for developers, institutions and companies to understand accessibility for all is a requirement, disability association leaders said.

The spectrum inventory discussed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Wednesday likely won’t satisfy calls on Capitol Hill for a more exhaustive inventory, industry and FCC officials said Thursday. An official in the chairman’s office clarified that Genachowski was referring to the extensive research the commission did as reflected in its LicenseView and Spectrum Dashboard initiatives when he discussed the FCC inventory Wednesday (CD March 17 p1). The official said different bills proposed in Congress differ on what would constitute an inventory. “The broadcasters are really pushing the need for an inventory before anything happens” and the inventory unveiled by Genachowski probably won’t fit that bill, a second FCC official said.

The House approved a bill that would eliminate taxpayer money for NPR. HR-1076 was approved 228-192 on Thursday, with the majority of votes from Republicans. During the debate on the House floor, many supporters pointed to the availability of multiple platforms of content and some alleged that NPR’s content is one-sided. Opponents of the bill said the measure won’t save federal money and is based on an ideological agenda.

The FCC may for the first time try to conclude whether the market for pay-TV is competitive, judging by questions in a draft notice of inquiry for an annual report to Congress, commission officials said. The structure of the notice is similar to an FCC report on wireless competition, they said. That report, issued in May, drew controversy inside the FCC and out (CD May 21 p1) for saying for the first time that the commission couldn’t conclude that the wireless market was competitive.

The FCC’s actions on net neutrality have made Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., skeptical of the commission’s proposal to hold voluntary incentive auctions, the House Communications Subcommittee chairman said in a keynote speech for the Media Institute. The subcommittee plans a spectrum hearing in April, he said. Earlier, speaking at a Consumer Federation of America event about a coming House floor vote on net neutrality, Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., of the parent Commerce Committee said Democrats hope to send a message that the GOP effort to reverse the FCC rules won’t withstand a presidential veto.

The FCC went on the defensive Wednesday, saying it had implemented 80 percent of the National Broadband Plan, countering media reports that more than half of the plan’s recommendations were lingering in the agency’s backlog. Of the action items released in April, 80 percent have been completed, a commission spokesman said Wednesday. The broadband plan’s first anniversary is Thursday. The plan carried 218 recommendations with it, but only about half involved the FCC’s jurisdiction, the spokesman said. Another quarter involved Congress and the rest went to state and local regulators, the spokesman said.

CTIA President Steve Largent is pleased with the amount of attention spectrum issues are getting at the FCC and of Capitol Hill, he said Wednesday, as the group prepares for its annual meeting next week in Orlando. Largent said he’s optimistic Congress will approve legislation authorizing the FCC to conduct incentive auctions for TV spectrum. “This really is a critical timeframe for the wireless industry,” Largent said in an interview. “We have a number of issues that are before policymakers, regulators and legislators alike, and we're working very, very hard on those."