FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler made the broadcast incentive auction more feasible by delaying it Friday (CD Dec 9 p1), but the first-of-its-kind auction won’t be easy, according to interviews Monday with former chairmen of both parties, broadcast and wireless lawyers and public-interest officials. They said not holding the auction until mid-2015, later than the 2014 then-Chairman Julius Genachowski planned, gives Wheeler more time to resolve issues like limits on bidding for the top-two U.S. carriers and holding two other wireless spectrum auctions this year.

The House Commerce Committee now takes up and may well pass two major telecom bills this week, aides and members said Monday. Reps. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., introduced the Federal Spectrum Incentive Act of 2013 Monday, with support of a top committee Republican and Democrats. Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., also has revived the FCC Process Reform in amended form, and it is now expected to pass House Commerce due to compromise between Republicans and Democrats.

Sinclair’s $985 million deal to buy Allbritton would eliminate the grandfathered status of some of its existing sharing arrangements, causing some of the transactions involved in the deal to violate the FCC’s local ownership rules, said the Media Bureau in a letter to Sinclair released Friday. The deal involves nine Allbritton TV stations and Allbritton’s Washington, D.C.-area 24-hour local news cable channel, NewsChannel 8.

The FCC won’t hold its broadcast incentive auction until the middle of 2015, Chairman Tom Wheeler said Friday, amid some still hoping it might take place in 2014 as once planned. Observers have worried about the timeline and long suspected it would be a stretch to hold it in 2014. Wheeler has called holding a successful auction a top priority, and several stakeholders said in interviews and written statements delay reflected a realistic view of the auction challenges.

The FCC should move ahead with its plan for a three-tiered framework for managing users on the 3.5 GHz band, Verizon Communications said in a filing Friday. The FCC has proposed managing spectrum sharing on the band through the Spectrum Access System. The Priority Access Licenses-based framework would give incumbent government users the highest tier of access, followed by a tier for priority access licensees and a lower tier for general access users.

Pandora’s ditching support for the Internet Radio Fairness Act was a product of poor strategy and marketing, said IRFA critics in interviews Friday. Aimed at reducing royalty rates for online music streaming, the critics said the bill abandoned seeking terrestrial royalty rights for which performers have long fought and so alienated advocacy groups that might have otherwise supported the legislation. The idea that Pandora is “pulling out of the legislative process” is a “misunderstanding,” as the company is preparing to go before the Copyright Royalty Board next year, said a Capitol Hill aide who backs what the company seeks.

The FCC faces challenges regulating in the changing telecom landscape, said telecom policy experts Friday at a Practising Law Institute event in Washington. The transition of the communications marketplace since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 will be a challenge for the current FCC under Chairman Tom Wheeler, said consultant Earl Comstock, former Comptel president. The law isn’t as out-of-date as some professionals in the telecom industry claim, he said in a debate with Lawrence Spiwak, Phoenix Center president: “It was designed to set up the framework for exactly what we're seeing today.” The intersection of technology and regulation is a challenge for the commission, Comstock said. The rapid change in technology is true for applications but not for the underlying infrastructure, he said. Wireless and wireline are complementary, not competitive, he said: “If you want a strong wireless network, you've got to have a good wireline network.” This commission must deal with the fact that cable and phone networks are converged, he said.

Efforts to reform and streamline FCC processes are unlikely to extend to restructuring the commission’s bureau system, said Diane Cornell, special counsel to Chairman Tom Wheeler, at a panel of his staff at a Practising Law Institute event Friday. Cornell, who has been assigned the task of looking into reforming the commission’s administrative processes (CD Dec 6 p3), said changing the bureau system is “not necessarily on the table.”

Protecting against abuse in the Lifeline program is a worthwhile goal, but protecting against abuse of battered spouses should take priority, said several organizations in comments urging the FCC to drop its home address requirement for people in state confidentiality programs. The Wireline Bureau had sought comment on how the Lifeline accountability database could accommodate victims of domestic violence who wish to keep their residential address out of public records.

Negotiations on a treaty to update protection of copyrighted broadcast signals are set to resume Dec. 16 in the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR). Before delegates get to the meat of the agreement, however, an extraordinary Dec. 10-12 WIPO General Assembly (GA) meeting must decide what the SCCR will work on this year, a question left hanging after its October meeting. One proposal floated by central European and Baltic countries is to prioritize the broadcast treaty, a position backed by broadcasters, observers said. Talks on the actual language of the controversial treaty were supposed to take place in July but were postponed.