The Department of Transportation will likely need to determine whether additional interference protections are needed as it moves toward opening a proceeding on whether to allow cellphone calls on planes, some in-flight broadband providers said. The implementation of in-flight phone calls in other parts of the world also may have some influence, they said.

A U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C., opinion in the FCC’s favor may also be a bad omen for the commission’s must-carry regime, several attorneys told us Friday. In a unanimous decision in Agape Church v. FCC (http://1.usa.gov/19ojjp3), a three-judge panel upheld the commission’s authority to sunset its dual carriage “viewability” rule, which required cable operators to downconvert the digital signals of “must-carry” channels for subscribers with analog television sets.

Accounts of the status of a long-awaited surveillance bill differed drastically last week, with top Republicans suggesting the bill may hit the House floor in 2014 while a Democrat declared it dead. Don’t expect any major House Intelligence Committee surveillance proposals any time soon, a Democratic committee member told us. House Republican leadership killed an overhaul the committee was developing, choosing instead to defer to the House Judiciary Committee, where the more “aggressive” USA Freedom Act is under consideration, said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn. The Intelligence and Judiciary committees share jurisdiction over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). But Republicans have pushed back against this idea and insisted the bill will be alive and well in 2014.

U.S. civil society groups are in the early stages of deciding how they will participate in important ITU-led communications forums set to occur in 2014, industry experts told us. Federal agencies responsible for formulating the U.S. government’s position on ITU issues are continuing to prepare for the 2014 forums, which will culminate in the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference Oct. 20-Nov. 7 (CD Dec 23 p9).

The after-effects of the federal shutdown are still being felt more than two months later. In an order released Friday, the FCC Wireless Bureau granted a temporary waiver sought by the Enterprise Wireless Alliance, which allows applicants for new or modified stations in the 470-512 MHz, 806-824/851-866 MHz, and 896-901/935-940 MHz bands to operate while their applications are pending.

Under Chairman Tom Wheeler, the FCC has been approving what some observers see as a surprising number of big orders on delegated authority by the bureaus instead of by a vote of commissioners. The Media Bureau Dec. 20 approved Gannett’s $2.73 billion buy of Belo and Tribune’s $2.2 billion purchase of Local TV (CD Dec 23 p3). FCC officials said the Belo approval order was originally circulated as an order for a commissioner vote. The same day, the Wireless Bureau addressed Dish Network’s request for a waiver prior to January’s H-block auction (CD Dec 23 p1).

NCTA faces opposition to its request for the FCC to review the Wireline Bureau’s data collection order on the state of the special access marketplace. In comments filed Tuesday, USTelecom, the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance and Sprint argued against full commission review. NCTA had asked the commission to modify the data request “to reduce the burden on cable operators and other competitive providers” in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (http://bit.ly/18RlukP). NCTA also argued the bureau ignored “critical concerns” about the security of the data it would collect. The bureau submitted the data collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for PRA approval earlier this month.

Defections, dissatisfaction and a trove of government surveillance reports marred the year in Do Not Track, said DNT observers and working group participants in interviews in late December. Many members of a World Wide Web Consortium-backed DNT working group moved from supportive and hopeful to disillusioned over the year as the group stalled, leadership changed and little was accomplished. But a fall realignment of the W3C working group’s focus and process and a second DNT working group led by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), restored the faith of some that 2014 will bring a useful DNT standard, they said.

The spectrum access system (SAS) envisioned by the FCC for managing reallocated 3.5 GHz spectrum is highly complicated, offering “daunting technical and regulatory challenges” to get the rules right, AT&T warned the FCC. AT&T and others filed reply comments on a November Wireless Bureau public notice on alternative licensing proposals for the 3550-3650 MHz band, which is targeted for shared use and use by small cells.

After a perceived lack of goodwill between the FCC and broadcasters during Julius Genachowski’s tenure as chairman (CD March 5 p2), executives said there’s now guarded optimism that under Chairman Tom Wheeler the agency will have more open lines of communication with the industry. Wheeler’s comments on the importance of broadcasting and his decision a month into his tenure to delay the incentive auction of TV stations’ frequencies from 2014 to mid-2015 (CD Dec 9 p1) were among reasons for early hope cited by respondents to Communications Daily’s informal survey this month of station owners and associations. Under Genachowski, respondents said the agency had less goodwill than under previous chairmen like Kevin Martin from 2005-2009, so they hope opportunities resume for close communication between the agency and industry even when the two sides disagree.