Not all former FCC chairmen want Congress to overhaul the Communications Act, according to written testimony for a Wednesday House Communications Subcommittee hearing. The hearing begins at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn. The subcommittee has announced intentions to update the act, with hearings and white papers in 2014 and legislation in 2015. The former chairmen testifying before Congress are Michael Powell, Dick Wiley, Michael Copps and Reed Hundt; the latter two pushed back against the efforts and mentioned ongoing questions of net neutrality authority that should be clarified.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said small cells and sharing are both commission “priorities” and provide “new opportunities for innovators and for consumers,” at the opening of a workshop on a Spectrum Access System (SAS) for the 3.5 GHz band Tuesday. The band is targeted by the FCC for sharing particularly for use by small cells. Wheeler said the daylong workshop, which offered four panels on making an SAS work, should provide the kind of detailed discussion needed. “The vision stuff, I get, that’s not hard,” he said. “How you really pull it off, that’s tough. ... We take this very seriously."

A deal to get T-Mobile US the lower band spectrum it’s long sought doesn’t raise any competitive concerns and should be approved by the FCC, said T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless in a public interest statement filed Friday at the FCC and posted online Monday (http://bit.ly/1aie8ut). The deal was unveiled last week (CD Jan 7 p1). T-Mobile will pay Verizon $3.3 billion for 15 700 MHz A-block licenses. And the two agreed to a swap of full or partial licenses in the 700 MHz, AWS and PCS bands. The agreements are covered by nine applications filed by the carriers at the agency.

The threat of large-scale cable mergers involving vertically integrated providers has moved the American Cable Association to pressure lawmakers and the FCC to redefine buying groups to allow program access rules to apply to the National Cable Telecom Cooperative (NCTC), the ACA told us. ACA said it has been “educating members of Congress” and meeting with FCC officials to push the issue, which was addressed but not acted on in an FNPRM more than a year ago (CD Oct 9/12 p1). With vertically integrated providers Charter and Comcast rumored to be among the companies vying to buy Time Warner Cable, “there is a heightened need” to have program access protections extended to the operators who purchase content through the NCTC, said ACA in a presentation to FCC officials. NCTC membership includes nearly all small and medium multichannel video programming distributors, said ACA Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman.

An appeals court granted a partial stay of the FCC prison phone order (CD Aug 12 p1) Monday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit kept in place the interim rate cap of 21 cents per minute for debit and prepaid calls, and 25 cents a minute for collect calls. It put on hold three other sections of the FCC’s rules: the requirement that rates and ancillary services be “cost-based”; low safe-harbor rates that presume charges are reasonable; and the annual reporting requirement.

One of the overwhelming themes of this year’s CES was wireless everywhere and how, with the Internet of Things, spectrum demand will increase exponentially. Wireless devices dominated sections of the CES show floor, from drones to driverless cars to smart watches and other “wearables,” to a much larger section than in past years of wireless medical devices. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel made the same point at two CES sessions. “All I see on the show floor is mobile, mobile, mobile,” she said during a panel with other commissioners. Meanwhile there are recurring wireless industry warnings of a spectrum crisis.

Some cable-TV executives aren’t discouraged by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s comments that the commission has looked repeatedly into its authority on intervening in retransmission consent disputes. Wheeler made the comments in response to a question last week at CES in Las Vegas (CD Jan 10 p17), where he said he welcomed any new legal points of view. Cable executives whose companies engage in retrans negotiations pointed to the open proceeding that reconsiders retrans rules and efforts in Congress toward the reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA) as indicators that the issue on retrans isn’t closed.

NARUC’s Washington advocacy arm will eye all IP transition and broader FCC developments very closely, its new head told us. State regulators will also undoubtedly be watching what happens with any Communications Act update, a process that is largely welcomed, multiple commissioners told us, all stressing the need for a state role. Michigan Public Service Commission member Greg White was named chairman of the Washington Action Program group of commissioners last week and laid out plans for the group, which tracks all Capitol Hill and federal agency happenings in Washington for NARUC.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted cert on broadcasters’ appeal of their case seeking a preliminary injunction against streaming TV service Aereo, according to a court order released Friday. Justice Samuel Alito took no part in considering or issuing the decision, the order said, without disclosing why.

Top U.S. wireless carriers Verizon Wireless and AT&T told the FCC it should move forward with its original proposal to license the 600 MHz band and AWS-3 spectrum based on Economic Areas, rather than adopt the Competitive Carriers Association’s alternate proposal to license the spectrum based on Partial Economic Areas (PEAs). The PEAs, as proposed by CCA, would essentially be a subdivision of EAs and would be based on EA and Cellular Market Areas (CMA). The FCC had sought public input on the CCA proposal, which also has support from other rural carriers, and comments were posted online Thursday and Friday.