Pandora’s decision to buy a terrestrial radio station is part of a “war on all fronts,” said the MusicFirst Coalition in a blog post. MusicFirst, which represents labels and artist organizations, has been critical of Pandora’s efforts to reduce its royalty rates in the past. This week, Pandora bought an FM radio station in an effort to become eligible for the same royalty rates as one of its major competitors, iHeartRadio, which Pandora said is subject to reduced royalty rates because parent Clear Channel owns terrestrial stations (http://bit.ly/17Kijiv). “Pandora continues to find new ways to give artists and songwriters a raw deal from the bottom of the deck,” MusicFirst said. “If they are willing to buy an FM station to game the system, who knows what they will do next?"

Content on screens other than TVs was a big theme of the Cable Show that ended Wednesday, said two attendees with different takes on what that meant. NCTA’s annual conference pointed up that the TV Everywhere initiative of operators and programmers, letting cable subscribers see channels on various devices (CD June 11 p10), “is a ‘process,’ not a product,” wrote Wachovia analyst Marci Ryvicker to investors Wednesday night. “Many in the industry criticize the pace of TV Everywhere.” It “continues to face a number of obstacles -- namely content rights (though this was stressed less than prior years); authentication/ease of use; and measurement (the biggest issue is the number of devices being used),” Ryvicker wrote. Vice President-Research Scott Wallsten of the Technology Policy Institute had another take, based on categories of exhibitors. “From 2010-2013 cable programming increased in representation more than any other category. Multi-screen content saw the second-largest increase, followed by mobile apps, new technology, and cloud services,” wrote the economist on TPI’s blog and in an email the institute sent Thursday (http://bit.ly/12JpeaD). “Telecommunications services and equipment has seen the biggest decrease in representation since 2010.” Exhibitors have declined 27 percent to 251 during the period, wrote Wallsten, citing NCTA’s website. Exhibitors at the show at the Washington Convention Center occupied approximately 120,000 square feet, an NCTA spokesman told us. He said the show had more than 12,000 attendees, similar to last year’s event in Boston.

United Launch Alliance successfully completed the preliminary design review and development testing for the Dual Engine Centaur portion of a launch vehicle, ULA said. The testing and review were done in support of NASA’s commercial crew program, ULA said in a news release (http://bit.ly/ZMlRvI). The Dual Engine Centaur rocket stage provides a performance improvement over Single Engine Centaur “that is extremely beneficial for low earth orbit missions,” it said. The DEC’s increased thrust allows the trajectory “to be ‘flattened’ to provide a safer re-entry environment for the crew in the unlikely event of a crew abort situation,” ULA said.

Almost 50 percent of all data traffic users generate over mobile phones, tablets and other devices using 3G and 4G -- 9,000 petabytes -- will be offloaded into Wi-Fi and small cell networks this year, Juniper Research said Wednesday in a report. Offloading will be strongest in North American and Western Europe, Juniper said. Although offloading is giving carriers a way to relieve burdens on their networks, it may also be costing them revenue from the lost data usage charges, the research firm said. But carriers are also partnering with existing Wi-Fi networks and launching their own Wi-Fi solutions in response, Juniper said (http://bit.ly/10fPQP0).

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) should be more transparent in its negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in a Thursday letter to Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs Michael Froman, recently nominated to be USTR by President Barack Obama (http://1.usa.gov/13F5H7X). USTR should publicly provide negotiation text that includes language proposed by participating countries, she said. “I appreciate the willingness of the USTR to make various documents available for review by members of Congress, but I do not believe that is a substitute for more robust public transparency,” the letter said. An expectation of public outcry to the negotiation text is not a sufficient reason to keep the text from the public, Warren wrote: “If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States.” Warren asked Froman whether, if confirmed to be USTR, he would publish the negotiation text or a version of the text that does not identify which country authored which language -- similar to text that the U.S. released during the 2001 Free Trade Area of the Americas process.

The New England Cable & Telecom Association maintains its objections to the rules proposed by the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, it said in comments posted Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/1bAfnCd). It has raised strong objections before, suggesting that the PUC’s proposed rules may have the effect of regulating VoIP providers rather than conforming to the state’s deregulatory law known as Senate Bill 48 (CD June 13 p11). NECTA said the PUC failed to provide enough time to properly address PUC staff’s redlined version of the rules, issued earlier this month, and asked for more time to comment and hash out concerns, while reiterating its objections to the rules. “The rules unlawfully treat VoIP providers the same as ELECs,” excepted local exchange carriers, a category created by SB-48, NECTA said. It also slammed some rules for being too broad. AT&T “generally agrees” with the comments of NECTA and Verizon, it said in comments also posted Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/12qiFs0). The New Hampshire Office of the Consumer Advocate also submitted comments, suggesting language devoted to consumer protection as well as voicing support for the comments of affordable housing nonprofit The Way Home (http://1.usa.gov/175ULVM). The comment deadline was Tuesday, and the PUC scheduled a technical hearing on the proposed rules and stakeholders’ concerns this coming Tuesday.

AT&T asked the FCC for a six-month extension of Wednesday’s deadline to meet buildout requirements for its lower 700 MHz B-block licenses. AT&T holds 245 B-block licenses and expects to meet the interim construction deadline for all but a handful, as many as 10, the carrier said in a petition (http://bit.ly/14z6Teb). “In some cases, temporary government moratoria or other restrictions have prevented AT&T from completing the deployment of cell sites,” AT&T said. “In other cases, AT&T has not yet received delivery of transport from its backhaul providers, often in mountainous or other hard-to-reach areas. In yet other cases, AT&T has been unable to procure the services of qualified third-party tower crews due to an unusual shortage currently afflicting the industry, as many different wireless broadband providers upgrade their networks to LTE all at the same time.” AT&T said granting the waiver would be in the public interest. “The purpose of the buildout requirements is to encourage the use of the spectrum and to prevent ‘warehousing,'” the carrier said. “That is not a concern here: AT&T has made B Block deployment a priority, devoting extraordinary resources to using its B Block spectrum to provide LTE service. For many of the licenses at issue, AT&T will likely miss the four-year deadline only by a matter of weeks.” The filing was dated Tuesday, but posted by the FCC Wednesday.

The Delaware Legislature passed a bill that would broadly change the code relating to the Delaware Public Service Commission and the obligations of telecom companies. The Senate passed House Bill 96 21-0 Wednesday. The House had passed the bill 41-0 on May 14. The bill summary said it “modernizes the rules governing such utilities and aligns them with the rapid competitive and technological changes affecting the industry.” The bill (http://bit.ly/11YyNel) also proposed the creation of the Delaware Broadband Fund, which would be “used to support and enhance broadband services in the State’s public schools and public libraries and for rural broadband initiatives in unserved areas of the State,” drawn from assessments on service providers and administered by the secretary of the Department of Technology and Information. All funds should be distributed by July 2018 when the fund would expire, it said. The bill would grant the PSC oversight over basic service but would implement deregulation measures in other instances. Specific sections of the bill text reaffirms Delaware’s lack of authority over Internet Protocol-enabled services, as Delaware has previously asserted and more than half of states have done in recent years. The PSC would have “no jurisdiction or regulatory authority” over VoIP and IP-enabled services, “including but not limited to, the imposition of regulatory fees, certification requirements, rates, terms or other conditions of service,” said the bill text. The bill also proposed ending certain obligations for traditional landline service. “A telecommunications service provider is not required to establish, construct, maintain, operate or extend its existing facilities where the potential customers to be served have service available from one or more alternative providers of wireline or wireless communications,” one provision proposed. VoIP providers would count as such an alternative.

Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), needs to clarify a claim he made Wednesday that a pair of NSA programs that collect phone metadata and data from online services had thwarted “dozens” of terrorist attacks, said Sens. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/19vlR8R). Alexander defended the programs Wednesday during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, claiming they safeguarded U.S. security and respected citizens’ civil liberties. Though Alexander declined to disclose detailed information on the programs during Wednesday’s hearing, he said he would provide that information to senators and wanted to also disclose information to the public, if possible (CD June 13 p1). Udall and Wyden told Alexander Thursday “we have not yet seen any evidence showing that the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records has produced any uniquely valuable intelligence. ... In our view, a key measure of the effectiveness of the bulk collection program will be whether it provided any intelligence that couldn’t be obtained through other methods.” Alexander was among the officials who spoke at a classified Senate Intelligence Committee-organized briefing Thursday afternoon.

The FCC Media Bureau set aside a previously granted application from BVM Helping Hands to modify a noncommercial educational FM construction permit. The bureau had granted BVM, Grayslake, Ill., a limited waiver to allow WSFI Antioch, Ill., to overlap with WBSD(FM) Burlington, Wis. (CD June 10 p13). The modification authorization isn’t grantable “until BVM has completed the environmental review process through the Antenna Structure Registration [ASR] system,” the bureau’s Audio Division said in a letter to BVM’s attorney (http://bit.ly/196vubd). BVM’s ASR application is on environmental national notice, said the letter. The modification application will be returned to pending status “until the environmental review process is complete, it said.