Having introduced a remote-storage DVR (RS-DVR) in its New York City system, Cablevision executives are looking at new products and service offerings the technology will let them introduce, they told investors Wednesday. Because the technology allows any digital cable box to function as a DVR, with storage taken care of at Cablevision’s headends, there are many possible new products, they said. “We could do free previews of DVR service. We could do very limited storage and include that as part of another package,” said Chief Operating Officer Thomas Rutledge. “Or we could expand the storage and sell that as an incremental price opportunity. There are a variety of ways of looking at the DVR currently in the market, breaking it into various components and selling it for less or more depending on how you put it together."

Some stimulus projects continue to face issues like environmental assessment, wage requirements and the procurement process, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners meeting Wednesday. But many projects are well under way and some major construction is expected this summer, he said.

Democratic legislators introduced a measure to push back against efforts to eliminate federal support for public broadcasting. Reps. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and other House legislators provided the measure as an amendment to the House Appropriations Committee’s continuing resolution (CR) that proposes zeroing out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The congressmen were joined at a news conference Wednesday by fellow Democratic Reps. Nita Lowey, Paul Tonko and Bill Owens of New York, Sam Farr of California, Betty McCollum of Minnesota and PBS character Arthur.

Lawmakers disagreed whether the Internet industry felt more or less certain as a result of the FCC’s December network neutrality order. At a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Wednesday, commission and Capitol Hill Republicans said the order created uncertainty, stifling investment and innovation. Democrats said the order was needed to encourage investment, and that Hill Republicans’ efforts to overturn the order would actually create more uncertainty.

Concerns over federal committee rules could delay efforts to address spectrum interference worries related to LightSquared’s service, the U.S. GPS Industry Council (GIC) said in an “emergency petition” filing at the FCC late Tuesday. The FCC International Bureau waiver that established a working group to address GPS-industry concerns with LightSquared’s coming service (CD Jan 27 p1) needs quick FCC clarification, said the GIC. That waiver lacked a description of “whether the working group lies outside the scope of the Federal Advisory Committee Act,” which includes federal requirements for establishing a working group, said the GIC in the filing -- http://xrl.us/bh969f. The GIC asked for clarification by Feb. 23, two days before the Feb. 25 deadline when LightSquared is required to submit its first report on the working group to the FCC.

Allocating the D-block for public safety is Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s “highest legislative priority” and “we will work to get this done before the 10th anniversary” of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the West Virginia Democrat said Wednesday. “We have a total possibility, opportunity right now, to provide our public safety officials with the spectrum they need,” he said in opening remarks at his Senate Commerce Committee’s hearing on S-28. “The moment is right, everybody’s here and this has great momentum."

The FCC will structure reverse auctions carefully so all carriers will have a shot at federal funding for broadband, Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett assured state regulators at the NARUC meeting Tuesday. “The intent is to be neutral,” she said. The commission’s recent rulemaking on the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation asks broad questions about reverse auctions but is essentially neutral about implementation -- focusing on census blocs, for instance, instead of geographic alignment, Gillett said.

The FCC confirmed that expanded-basic video prices continued to increase, in a report Tuesday detailing a survey of charges in 2008 by cable operators, city-owned video providers and telco-TV such as Verizon’s pay-TV service but not AT&T’s U-verse. That year, the average monthly bill for expanded-basic service rose 5.9 percent to $52.37, compared with a 0.1 percent rise in inflation. Over a 14-year period ended Jan. 1, 2009, cable rates rose 134 percent, while the consumer price index that measures inflation gained 39 percent. But bills rose 18 percent to 71 cents a channel during that period, for a 1.2 percent average annual increase. Industry officials and an economist whose group sometimes opposes regulation pointed out some of the report’s shortfalls, while a nonprofit group that’s concerned with rate increases said the survey supports its fears.

Antitrust law can better protect competition on the Internet than “heavy-handed, top-down” FCC regulations, said House Judiciary Internet Subcommittee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. At a hearing Tuesday of the subcommittee, Goodlatte supported updating antitrust laws with specific provisions on the Internet. The FCC didn’t testify but took shots from all corners on their controversial net neutrality order.

Issues of third-party access to smart grid data continue to be vigorously debated, despite broad agreement from regulators and stakeholders on best practices and guidelines, panelists said at the NARUC meeting Tuesday. Issues for which consensus is proving hard to achieve include how consumers should authorize third-party access and how utility liability should be limited when utilities are required to disclose data to authorized third parties, said Doug Michael, a senior adviser with Department of Energy. Another challenge is establishing the applicable complaint procedures once third-party access has been authorized, and the specific data that utilities should be required to disclose to authorized third-parties, he said.