FCC acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn circulated an order Thursday approving the SoftBank/Sprint Nextel/Clearwire deal, an agency spokesman said. “Softbank, Sprint, and Clearwire requested that the Federal Communications Commission approve their applications for transfer of control,” Clyburn said in a written statement. “At my direction, earlier today, staff circulated a proposed Order to the full Commission for a vote.” FCC approval has been one of the remaining hurdles to completing the larger transaction.

The order (http://fcc.us/1aRpmpa) makes several changes to Form 477 that the agency says will “streamline” reporting, reducing the burden on carriers and ISPs. It eliminates the requirement to file speed data in tiers; collects mobile coverage information using a standard geographic information system software format; and seeks mobile broadband deployment data by technology, minimum advertised speed, and spectrum band. As expected (CD June 7 p16) the order creates a uniform format for the collection of broadband deployment data, replacing the current separate state-by-state collections under different methodologies.

The five-member Iowa Telecommunications and Technology Commission unanimously voted to reject the two offers from Iowa Network Services for the purchase of the state’s Iowa Communications Network Wednesday. It will send that recommendation to the office of Republican Gov. Terry Branstad this week. Branstad and the Iowa Legislature will make the final call on whether to move forward with the offers. The state issued a request for proposals for sale or purchase of the municipal network in February, as a 2011 Iowa law mandated (CD Feb 19 p7).

Lengthy and repeated retransmission consent violations harming six TV stations owned by Disney, News Corp. and other major broadcasters led FCC members to approve a proposed $2.25 million fine against a master antenna operator. Affiliated companies known as TV Max and by other names violated retrans rules for more than a year in the Houston market, and continued after the Media Bureau in December (CD Jan 3 p11) required the firm to stop the alleged violations, said a commission notice of apparent liability Tuesday. The NAL said that after transactions to “evade responsibility for its ongoing violations,” the “flagrant,” “longstanding” and “egregious” violations didn’t lead to an even higher proposed fine because the company has “only” 10,000 customers, operates in a single market and isn’t part of a larger cable operator.

But several stakeholders expressed concern that utilities don’t have their own dedicated spectrum throughout the meeting. Utilities do not have access and “future situations must change,” UTC CEO Connie Durcsak said. Pepco Holdings desires exclusive networks in order to ensure secure communication for its crews but “what we found very quickly was there was not one block of spectrum available to PHI or any utility in the United States,” said Communications and Network Systems Engineering Manager Russ Ehrlich. After Superstorm Sandy, crews struggled to communicate and used devices that couldn’t easily interconnect, said PSEG Lead Senior Consultant Jeffrey Katz, who said the amount of spectrum available to utilities is “absolutely none.” Commercial networks failed, he added. “We have no access to broadband spectrum,” said Great River Energy Principal Telecom Engineer Kathleen Nelson. “Yet somehow we utilities are expected to operate our critical infrastructure under these circumstances.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Arlington ruling won’t have as strong an effect on court challenges to the authority of government agencies as expected, said several former FCC attorneys at an FCBA event on administrative law Wednesday. Last month’s ruling (CD May 24 p1) that government agencies should receive deference from courts in interpreting ambiguous laws about their own jurisdiction “won’t have the seismic significance some people give it,” said Wilmer Hale attorney Jonathan Nuecterlein. He was formerly an FCC deputy general counsel and recently named FTC general counsel. While the ruling ostensibly expands the authority of agencies like the FCC, determined courts will be able to work around it, he said. “When courts want to second-guess agencies’ interpretation of their jurisdiction, they're going to."

The scale of the Prism surveillance program shows “how fragile our open Internet is,” said Council of Europe (CoE) Information Society and Action against Crime Director Jan Kleijssen in an interview. While organized crime and terrorism are challenges that must be met, they can’t be allowed to compromise people’s freedoms, he said: Security and human rights “should be mutually reinforcing.” Kleijssen spoke Tuesday before this week’s European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) in Lisbon, Portugal. He also said the CoE is trying to mend fences with several of its members who signed the new International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) last year when most rejected it. How to keep the Internet open, free and safe remains elusive, speakers said at a Thursday EuroDIG debate.

FirstNet successfully negotiated the first of seven spectrum lease agreements with NTIA’s suspended broadband stimulus projects, pending FirstNet board approval. NTIA suspended these public safety broadband network infrastructure grantees, recipients in millions of dollars from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), in May 2012, fearing the projects would waste money after the federal government authorized the national $7 billion public broadband network. Los Angeles is home to the first project to negotiate an agreement, but in interviews, project leaders expressed hope that others are soon to follow.

Comments are due July 18, replies Aug. 2, after an NPRM on contraband cellphones in prisons was published in the Federal Register. “In this document, the Federal Communications Commission proposes rules to encourage the development of multiple technological solutions to combat the use of contraband wireless devices in correctional facilities nationwide,” the notice said (http://1.usa.gov/15g4zG2). “Specifically, the Commission proposes rule modifications to facilitate spectrum lease agreements between wireless providers and providers or operators of managed access systems.”

Julie Kitka, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, traveled more than 5,500 miles to get to a hearing on Capitol Hill on the effect of USF reforms on tribal areas. So did Steve Merriam, CEO of an Alaskan telephone cooperative. Alfred LaPaz of the Mescalero Apache Tribe traveled 2,800 miles. Which is why it’s “beyond my imagination,” said Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, that FCC officials weren’t willing to “travel the mile and a half up the road” to “answer the questions that I would like to ask them.”