Dish Network’s recent S-band acquisition efforts aren’t part of “a grand strategy at this point,” said Dish CEO Charlie Ergen during its Q4 conference call Thursday. Dish recently agreed to buy bankrupt S-band licensee DBSD, though the deal still needs bankruptcy court approval. “I think spectrum has value,” Ergen said. Using that spectrum and acquiring more spectrum that fits together are both ways to increase the value of that spectrum, he said. The recent acquisition efforts have raised speculation among analysts that Ergen is planning a wireless network and/or seeking new ways to complement the core DBS business with Internet-delivered programming.

Migrating to Next Generation 911 requires clarity on jurisdiction, funding and technical standards, speakers said during an FCBA Homeland Security and Emergency Communications Committee meeting Wednesday.

The state of civil rights at the FCC has worsened in the past year, said 23 groups representing minorities, women and African-American newspaper publishers that wrote the agency on the same subject Feb. 16, 2010. “We did not think it possible that a year later, the status of civil rights at the FCC would get even worse, but it has,” said a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Fourteen months after the regulator’s report on its work on lifting barriers that keep minorities from entering the media and telecom markets was due to Congress, it “still has not” been submitted, the letter said. The FCC this summer updated its draft of the report (CD Aug 19 p3), a document that’s required under Section 257 of the Telecom Act, but it remains on the list of items circulating for a vote and an agency official said it hasn’t been approved by all commissioners.

Broadcaster participation need not be high to raise nearly $28 billion from voluntary incentive auctions, said Phil Weiser, National Economic Council senior adviser to the director for technology and innovation. The White House estimated in its FY 2012 budget that the wireless effort could raise $27.8 billion. At a New America Foundation event Wednesday on the Hill, Weiser and other government officials acknowledged that the auctions and much else in Obama’s wireless plan rely on Congressional action. Meanwhile, speakers from industry and public interest groups urged government not to lose focus on spectrum sharing as it moves forward on auctions.

The FCC made the right decision by putting off a fight over contribution reform to focus on reforming the high-cost Universal Service Fund distribution system, said National Broadband Plan architect Blair Levin. There are “too many moving parts” in the debate over contribution factor, so the commission focused on “low-hanging fruit” in its recent rulemaking notice, Levin said on a panel Wednesday sponsored by the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee. He was having an exchange with fellow panelist National Telecommunications Cooperative Association CEO Shirley Bloomfield. She said she “would have liked to see the FCC wrestle with contribution.” NTCA members are seeing up to 10 percent of their bandwidth gobbled by companies like Netflix and the situation is critical, she said.

Changes to the retransmission consent process are likely in about a year, despite the FCC’s March 3 meeting where the agency will vote on a retrans rulemaking, said DirecTV CEO Mike White during the company’s Q4 earnings conference call. “Realistically, change comes slowly in this area in Washington, so while there is a hearing in March or they may talk about some things, I think you are a year away before you would see those things change.” DirecTV is part of the American Television Alliance, which seeks changes to retrans rules, and White discussed the issue in response to an analyst’s question.

The House approval of resolution HR-1, which cuts federal spending by $100 billion, including all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, has the public broadcasters trying to prevent that from passing the Senate, industry officials said. “We held no program harmless from our spending cuts, and virtually no area of government escaped this process unscathed,” said House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky. The House also rejected an amendment by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., that calls for restoring $460 million for CPB.

The public switched telephone network may be dwindling, but its intercarrier compensation regime has guaranteed high-quality voice service, and proponents of the broadband transition ought to take care that they don’t destroy service for the sake of their technological revolution, Free Conference Call CEO David Erickson said Tuesday. “We shouldn’t go out of our way to regulate out the old system just because some people on this call think it’s a dying business,” Erickson said in a conference call debate over the FCC’s proposed reforms of the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime. An AT&T executive said PSTN is quickly becoming a thing of the past, while the panel’s moderator said the transition away from that network is inevitable.

IVI TV is not a cable system under the Copyright Act, a federal judge in New York said in an order granting a temporary injunction against the company selling live online video streams of some broadcast stations and other programming. The injunction was sought by broadcasters, studios and sports leagues. Ivi had argued it was entitled to carry the stations under the statutory license in Section 111 of the act. “Many companies have constructed business models revolving around the use of new technologies and the statutory license,” U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald of New York wrote. “Some new technologies have been found to fall within Section 11. Others have motivated Congress to devise separate licensing schemes to address the unique issues they present."

AllVid rules could cut out cable and satellite providers because consumer electronics companies could take pay-TV content without having to share it with them or work directly with their systems, said DirecTV and NCTA executives. Requiring all multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to connect to a wide array of video devices shouldn’t be allowed to cut the MVPDs out of technological advances that they could use in their own systems, said DirecTV Vice President Stacy Fuller. AllVid could let CE companies “slice and dice” MVPD content without having a mandate to share it with pay TV, said NCTA Senior Vice President Rick Chessen. Both executives, speaking on a Tuesday D.C. Bar Association panel, said they support video device innovation. The FCC is working on an AllVid rulemaking notice.