The media ownership order the FCC is drafting likely will stick with the provisions outlined in last year’s notice of proposed rulemaking for that quadrennial review, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn predicted Wednesday. With the caveat that she has not seen the draft, and none is circulating for a vote, she speculated at a conference that it won’t likely propose more deregulation than the NPRM. “It will probably retain many of the existing media ownership rules” including a ban on one company owning more than one broadcast network and existing limits on how many radio stations can be commonly owned in a market, Clyburn said. There may be “a minor modification or two” to existing rules, she said.

Broadband’s a civil right to Jesse Jackson, Sr., as are prison payphone rates, he said Tuesday in an annual ethics in telecom lecture. He cited many concerns voiced a day before by FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn on what prisoners and the people they call must pay. “Access to broadband at home and school is not a magic bullet” to solve a gap in education between minorities and other Americans, Jackson said. It’s “a civil rights issue” because “the technology is being positioned as a primary driver of economic opportunity” and social change, he said at the Washington event.

FCC staff targeting to finish work this year on an order letting Dish Network start a terrestrial wireless broadband network (CD Sept 12 p6) aim to protect a block of frequencies directly below part of the company’s network that a February spectrum law allows the commission to auction. So said agency and industry officials of a forthcoming waiver that would let Dish use spectrum it’s now allowed only to use with a network received by devices getting satellite signals. The lower end of the spectrum Dish needs a waiver to use terrestrially sits next to the H block that the agency must auction unless it finds the block would cause harmful interference to PCS spectrum. Wireless Bureau staff are considering whether to require Dish face what would amount in some eyes to a windfall penalty, because the DBS operator bought the spectrum in bankruptcy for far less than its value as a broadband network, so as to ameliorate interference concerns, agency and industry officials told us.

Progress in the rollout by two broadcaster technology coalitions of mobile DTV, now commercially available to about half of Americans, was cited by senior House Communications Subcommittee members of both parties. Speaking at a Capitol Hill mobile DTV and mobile emergency alert system (M-EAS) demo Thursday, they said those new technologies’ use of spectrum already allocated to broadcasters helps meet increasing consumer demand for streaming video. Lawmakers recognized consumption of mobile DTV -- TV stations sending live shows to portable devices and as of this summer one model of Samsung cellphone on MetroPCS (CD Aug 10 p10) -- doesn’t use wireless spectrum or incur data consumption charges to cellphone subscribers.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai wants the agency to communicate more with broadcasters to help eliminate what he said some executives perceive as a regulator disinterested in radio and TV station priorities (CD March 5 p2). In the 25 meetings he’s had in his four months as a commissioner, “I keep hearing the same thing,” he told the NAB radio show in Dallas Wednesday. “Unfortunately, it seems there’s a widespread perception that today’s FCC is largely indifferent to the fate of your business.” As FCC members are preliminarily slated to vote next week on a notice of proposed rulemaking to hold a voluntary incentive auction of TV station frequencies (CD Bulletin, Sept 7) to free up airwaves for mobile broadband, Pai sought deregulation of media ownership and foreign investment rules and an initiative focused on AM.

Shifting some spectrum Dish wants to use to start a wireless broadband network would cause so much interference from TV station and government use that S-band receivers couldn’t be protected, the company said in a study it commissioned and filed at the FCC. As Wireless Bureau staff work toward an order expected to let Dish use the 40 MHz of mobile satellite services (MSS) spectrum for terrestrial service, moving the uplink part of it up 5 MHz is getting attention at the agency and by industry, satellite officials told us. No order has circulated for a commissioner vote, though one’s still expected to (CD Sept 12 p6) soon, agency and industry officials said Tuesday.

Government agencies don’t distribute emergency alert system warnings to radio listeners and viewers of over-the-air and pay TV only via the Internet, state and federal originators of EAS alerts and industry executives said. During Hurricane Isaac, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s new Web-based EAS distribution system wasn’t used by agencies serving the Gulf Coast that responded to our survey. Instead, the traditional method of distributing storm and disaster alerts by broadcasting them to all radio and TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors in a region was used late last month, as it continues to be.

Opting out of any first-ever ITU Internet regulation may cause as many problems as proposals for Internet Protocol traffic’s cost to be borne by sending parties -- an idea some countries are pursuing at the World Conference on International Telecom, U.S. and industry officials said Wednesday. They discussed a scenario of nations or private parties sitting out International Telecom Regulations to be discussed in December when the update to the 1988 ITR is considered at a WCIT meeting in Dubai. The practical effect of what could amount to a boycott by some players, on the Internet and devices connected to Web networks, would be similar to the negative effect the regulations some developing and European countries are seeking could have on such systems. That’s according to speakers at a Media Institute event in Washington. A scenario where debate on a new ITR sees some countries escape the treaty entirely would “lead to fragmentation,” said Sally Wentworth of the Internet Society, an ITU “sector member."

Online video distributors don’t completely replace multichannel video programming distributor service, MVPDs and a top OVD told the FCC. Both industries outlined product improvements, in comments on a notice of inquiry for an upcoming commission report to Congress on MVPD competition covering the 52 weeks through June 30. Public Knowledge wants the agency to allow OVDs to operate as MVPDs, which some pay-TV companies oppose. The last, 14th MVPD competition report -- covering four years because annual documents weren’t released as the Telecom Act required -- for the first time reviewed OVDs, and the NOI asked questions about it (http://xrl.us/bnpcgy) for the 15th report (CD July 23 p6).

Cable operators would be able to buy CLECs in the same geographic area without getting both FCC permission and approval of the deals by sometimes multiple local franchise authorities, under a draft commission order, agency and industry officials said. They said the order would forbear from subjecting cable/CLEC combinations to the waiver process under Section 652(b) of the 1996 Telecom Act. The draft grants NCTA’s petition for forbearance, and if not approved by the middle of next month forbearance would automatically take effect because it would be considered to have been deemed granted (CD June 1 p19), commission and industry officials said.