The EAGLE-Net Alliance is still looking for a third-party network operator, Executive Vice President-Business Development Chip White told us Thursday night by email. The Colorado intergovernmental entity received a broadband stimulus grant of $100.6 million to connect Colorado schools with broadband, but the project has faced a federal partial suspension, lifted earlier this year, and accusations of overbuilding and mismanagement. EAGLE-Net had requested bids from network operators to run the network and requested at least $8 million in investment from any bidder. It predicted in May it would select an operator by the week of July 22. EAGLE-Net “will continue to have no comment” on the process while selecting the operator, White said Thursday. Federal and state lawmakers have pressed EAGLE-Net with questions, as some Colorado stakeholders worry the bidding process left out smaller telcos due to the required investment commitment (CD July 18 p6). Many of the same critics of EAGLE-Net from last year continued to repeat their claims of EAGLE-Net overbuilding private telco networks this week, according to emails shown to us. Blanca Telephone Manager Alan Wehe described EAGLE-Net “paralleling our fiber again.” His Thursday email showed photos of the parallel fiber and discussed the builds in Alamosa, a community of just under 9,000 residents in south-central Colorado. These emails have been circulated and sent to several stakeholders, including staff of Colorado legislators and other state telco executives. EAGLE-Net has disputed the way these critics have defined overbuilding and defended its actions throughout the last year. It has emphasized the statewide nature of its network and the advanced capabilities it will bring.

Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., will co-chair a new Privacy Working Group, begun Thursday by Chairman Lee Terry, R-Neb., and Ranking Member Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., of the House Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee. The group “will review a broad set of privacy issues and seek opportunities where Congress can forge bipartisan agreement to better protect consumers’ sensitive information and foster US-based innovation,” said Blackburn in a statement announcing the group (http://1.usa.gov/18ULukn).

RigNet, a remote communications provider, will acquire Inmarsat’s Energy Broadband business for $25 million. RigNet also will be a key distribution partner of Inmarsat’s planned Ka-band network and L-band services, RigNet said in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/18UZElt). The energy broadband assets sold to RigNet include very small aperture terminal interests in Russia, the U.K. and Canada, and a global L-band mobile satellite services retail energy business, it said.

Spreading consumer awareness of Ultra HD TVs and 4K content is the aim of the new “UK UHD Forum,” formed by the Digital TV Group, the British equivalent of the Advanced TV Systems Committee. The forum will be co-chaired by Chris Johns, chief engineer at BSkyB, and Andy Quested, head of technology at the BBC. Both have spearheaded their organizations’ moves into HD, 3D and now Ultra HD. Future TV displays not only will have increased resolution, like the 4K TVs on sale in the U.K., but also “will go much further, bringing a sense of exceptional immersion and depth through advances in colour, frame rate and dynamic range,” said the forum in a statement. “It is vital that the technology step-change demanded by Ultra HD be fully understood prior to any implementation of an ‘Ultra-HD Ready’ logo, to avoid the confusion still experienced by consumers to this day over ‘HD Ready.'"

Michael O'Rielly will be nominated to be an FCC member by President Barack Obama, said the White House in a news release Thursday night. O'Rielly had been expected to be nominated to fill the vacancy created earlier this year when GOP Commissioner Robert McDowell left the agency (CD July 17 p1). Policy advisor to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, since January, the White House said O'Rielly previously worked for then-Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., was an aide on the House Commerce Committee and worked for then-Rep. Tom Bliley, R-Va. O'Rielly’s “fresh perspective will be a tremendous asset to the Commission as we confront the many challenging issues on our agenda,” said Commissioner Ajit Pai in a separate statement.

The FCC should cancel or reduce the proposed $2.25 million fine for retransmission consent violations against master antenna operator TV Max, said a filing from the subjects of the Notice of Apparent Liability issued by the FCC in June. The “staggering” proposed forfeiture should be reduced or cancelled because it’s “grossly excessive” and based on erroneous information, and the respondents don’t have the ability to pay it, said the TV Max filing. The FCC proposed the fine after TV Max allegedly continued to broadcast the signals of six Houston TV stations owned by several major broadcasters for more than a year after retransmission consent agreements with the stations expired (CD June 26). TV Max has claimed that its retransmissions fell under the Master Antenna exception, and in Thursday’s filing disputed the amount of time it was in violation by retransmitting the broadcasters’ signals. TV Max said it was retransmitting the signals in violation of the rules for only 90 days for some of the stations, and just 29 days for one ABC affiliate. FCC claims that TV Max’s customers are receiving signals from an offsite cable headend rather than its MATV antennas are false, TV Max said. “There is nothing in the record that establishes” that TV Max subscribers are “receiving off-air programming from any source other than the installed antennas,” said TV Max. The company also challenged the FCC’s right to go after TV Max corporate officers individually, and the FCC’s claim that the many affiliates of TV Max are actually commonly controlled pieces of the same company. “Patching together stray items of information like common addresses or ‘indirect’ ownership cannot substitute for a careful analysis of corporate relationships,” said TV Max. The company and its officers aren’t doing well financially, and can’t pay the proposed forfeiture, TV Max also argued. “There is simply no ability on the part of the TV Max respondents to make any forfeiture payment,” said the filing. Along with asking for a reduction to the fine, TV Max also filed a statement of compliance, as directed in the NAL, saying it will be converting the 7,000 customers that had been receiving its content to Dish Network by the end of 2013.

Intelsat Q2 revenue rose 2 percent to $654 million from the year-ago quarter “on growth from network services and media customer sets,” said the company in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/11xC0WO). It said the contracted backlog is $10.4 billion. The quarterly net loss rose from $84.7 million to $408.3 million amid a loss on early extinguishment of debt. Total debt was reduced by $497 million from Dec. 31.

Telecommunications Law Professionals (TLP), created specifically to support MetroPCS, said Thursday it’s suing T-Mobile US for terminating the law firm’s contract when T-Mobile combined with MetroPCS earlier this year. TLP said the MetroPCS contract was major enough that the firm won’t be able to operate without it. The firm seeks nearly $7 million in fees it would have collected through June 30, 2015, as part of its contract. T-Mobile told TLP in May that it was ending the contract, which the law firm believes is a breach of the contract because T-Mobile didn’t object to the contract when it finalized the merger, said the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. TLP claimed T-Mobile knew about MetroPCS’s contract with TLP well before the deal closed. “There was no cause for the purported termination of the Retainer Agreement other than T-Mobile’s decision to use other legal counsel for its telecommunications law needs,” TLP said in the complaint (http://bit.ly/13qpGJ7). T-Mobile didn’t immediately comment.

The FCC request for long-form applications for 1,239 FM translators (CD Aug 1 p17) that were first sought in 2003 has some catches, said radio lawyers in blog posts Wednesday after a Media Bureau public notice that day. “The filing opportunity is not without its gotchas,” wrote Harry Cole of Fletcher Heald on the law firm’s blog (http://bit.ly/14lYuO9). Applicants can’t propose new facilities that would be considered a major change, he said. The public notice “makes clear” that low-power FM applications (see separate report in this issue) filed in a window to seek LPFM stations “will have precedence over any application that is amended in this window (or any other translator minor change for existing stations that was filed after the LPFM window was announced),” wrote Wilkinson Barker’s David Oxenford (http://bit.ly/13z3mJJ). “It is hard to believe that applicants who were pending for over 10 years may have even very minor changes precluded by applications that are not yet filed, but that seems to be the decision of the Commission."

The Missouri counties of the Pioneer Trails Regional Planning Commission used funding from a Homeland Security grant to purchase a fleet of Juniper Systems Mesa Rugged Notepads, said Juniper Systems on Thursday (http://bit.ly/18UG34Z). It said “one major use will be for mapping and collecting data on assets and infrastructure,” referring to the mobile applications of these rugged handheld devices. Missouri responders first used some of them after a tornado struck Joplin, Mo., in 2011, it said. The commission deemed the purchase “a critical equipment need,” said the company.