The FCC appears to be leaning toward Title II-style regulation of broadband through its Universal Service Fund revamp, industry officials told us after examining the commission’s rulemaking notice on USF. “It’s clear to me that when you look at the questions they're asking around support, that seems where they're heading,” Voice of the Net Coalition Executive Director Glenn Richards said. “It’s a way to get broadband providers to agree to Title II-like obligations.” FCC officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

T-Mobile USA’s Q4 profit fell 12.4 percent year-over-year to $268 million. The carrier lost 318,000 contract customers in the quarter, though it more than doubled its smartphone users.

Use of the 4.9 GHz band by public safety has been a failure so far, former FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Ed Thomas said during a commission forum Friday. Thomas proposed that the band be opened up for commercial use, on a secondary basis to public safety.

NAB and the Association for Maximum Service Television asked the FCC to reject industry petitions seeking changes to the commission’s white-spaces rules filed in January (CD Jan 10 p 4). The Wi-Fi Alliance, meanwhile, opposed NCTA and Cellular South petitions for reconsideration that would tighten the rules.

Many organizations expressed support for a privacy-by-design principle, in their comments to the FTC on its privacy framework. The framework’s potential for heavy privacy restrictions was a point of contention. Comments were due Friday. The commission posted some last-minute submissions this week.

The American Trucking Associations (ATA) supported a ban on drivers’ use of hand-held cellphones while behind the wheel but said they should be able to talk using hands-free devices. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, another major trucking group, said a ban on hand-held use should not be imposed at this time. Both groups filed comments this week in response to a rulemaking notice by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

The FCC’s forthcoming rulemaking notice on the Lifeline/Link-Up funds would cap support -- and that’s already drawing resistance, industry and commission officials said. A group of Florida public officials wrote the commission this week, urging it to recognize that low-income support is “cyclical” and to focus on other ways of trimming the funds’ costs. TracFone Wireless “will oppose any capping of the fund,” said Greenberg Traurig telecom lawyer Mitchell Brecher, who represents that company. The agency will take up a rulemaking notice on the fund next week.

Audio descriptions of on-screen action would make a comeback, starting next year, under a draft rulemaking notice that the FCC is tentatively set to vote on at Thursday’s meeting (CD Feb 14 p6), said agency officials and an advocate for people with disabilities. They said the rulemaking largely proposes to implement last year’s Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act and would phase in compliance starting Oct. 8, the legislation’s first anniversary. As set forth in the CVAA, the commission proposes to require top-market Big Four broadcast network affiliates by Jan. 1 to start describing, using speech, what amounts to about four hours weekly of programming, FCC officials said. Cable, DBS and telco-TV providers would have obligations, too.

A fight over municipal broadband erupted for the fifth time in four years in the North Carolina Legislature. The “Level Playing Field” legislation, proposed by Rep. Marilyn Avila (R), seeking to put a ban on community fiber network efforts, violates the federal law, and could put state economic stimulus projects in jeopardy, said officials representing municipalities, in interviews. With a GOP-dominated General Assembly, fighting this year’s legislation could be tougher than ever, some said.

With fervent support from members of Congress, state legislators, local government leaders and public interest groups, “targeted reforms” of the system of designated market areas (DMAs) face “significant opposition” only “from the broadcasters,” Dish Network said in reply comments filed at the FCC. The NAB offers “unsupported doomsday scenarios” about the results of changes that “falsely equate improvements to the system” with “outright abandonment,” Dish said. Allowing a statewide license that would permit TV providers to provide in-state broadcast stations to “orphan counties” would be an “incremental” change that would deal with problems without disturbing the market, the company said. Dish was responding to the Media Bureau’s request for comments on in-state local broadcast programming information and ways to resolve the problem of orphan counties, those at least partly outside the borders of a designated market area. The bureau is putting together a report on the issue that will be provided to Congress by Aug. 27 under the Satellite TV Extension and Localism Act.