Two of the three judges set to hear a challenge Tuesday of the FCC Connect America Fund order are no strangers to telecom appeals. Judge Jerome Holmes of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year ruled for the FCC in a case challenging its denial of a forbearance petition. Chief Judge Mary Beck Briscoe was on a 2005 panel overturning an FCC action on USF rules. Attorneys we spoke to said predicting outcomes based on past opinions is risky business. Some willing to venture a prediction said the panel’s history could bode favorably for the challengers, while others cautioned there weren’t enough cases to spot a reliable pattern. The 2011 order, which rewrote the rules of the $4.5 billion-a-year USF and set intercarrier compensation on a path toward bill-and-keep, will be the subject of several hours of oral argument that has had lawyers on all sides busily preparing (CD Nov 8 p10).

Carriers are expected to accede to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s demand (CD Nov 15 p14) that they work out a voluntary agreement on cellphone unlocking as part of the CTIA Consumer Code, industry observers said Friday. Wheeler in particular emphasized a requirement that they notify subscribers “when their devices are eligible for unlocking and/or automatically unlock devices when eligible, without an additional fee.” Industry observers also said Wheeler’s letter signals that he’s not afraid to get tough with the group he formerly led as longtime president of the CTIA.

As the FCC communications agenda advances, “we must continue to focus on access to affordable and reliable broadband networks,” Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said Friday at a Washington telecom event by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and Citizenship Education Fund. There’s an ecosystem around the mobile apps industry “generating billions of dollars” for the U.S. economy through the mobile apps marketplace, she said. People steeped in political strife leveraged social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter “to ask for help, to make us aware of what’s going on, [and] to report sometimes awful human rights abuses,” she said. What these platforms have in common is that “they rely on broadband networks,” she said. “We've got to do a better job to ensure that the teachers, students and millions of citizens who rely on libraries every day, take their kids to school every day … have the tools and the broadband capacity that they need to compete and succeed in this digital age."

Chairwoman Edith Ramirez defended the clarity of the FTC’s Section 5 authority and the agency’s ongoing research on patent assertion entities (PAEs), during a House Judiciary Antitrust Law Subcommittee hearing Friday. Several lawmakers asked Ramirez to issue further guidance on what the commission sees as its Section 5 authority, which allows the FTC to pursue what it considers unfair behavior without regard to the Clayton and Sherman acts. Others expressed concern at the commission’s administrative process, which seems “as if it’s somewhat stacked against the defendant,” said subcommittee Chairman Spencer Bachus, R-Ala. Lawmakers also sought more details on the FTC’s investigation into PAEs (CD Sept 30 p15).

Long overdue, Phase II of the Connect America Fund has several open questions about its implementation, attorneys told a Federal Communications Bar Association audience Thursday evening. Originally scheduled to be in place by the end of 2012, the second phase will provide five years of USF support to price cap carriers in return for a statewide commitment to build out networks that can provide voice and broadband service. But many questions are still up in the air, panelists said, from how the cost model will work to what approach the competitive bidding process will take.

It’s up to broadcasters to embrace the nascent rollout of mobile DTV, with the expense of adding equipment to transmit to portable consumer electronics using that standard being minor compared with the opportunity cost of not “lighting up,” said advocates of the technology. One backer told us he’s frustrated at the pace of adoption, while others said in interviews last week and at an NAB event that they expect more stations to adopt the technology. “Mobile TV is already available in nearly 40 markets serving approximately 60 percent of the U.S. population,” said NAB incentive auction pointman Rick Kaplan at the event Wednesday. “This is all before mobile TV proponents have ever launched a large-scale coordinated promotional campaign.”

The video marketplace has changed dramatically since the Cable Act of 1992 was passed, and it’s time for the FCC to “exercise regulatory humility” instead of ignoring the changes, Commissioner Ajit Pai told a Federalist Society audience Thursday. Continuing to apply the outdated regulations will create thorny First Amendment issues for the courts, he said.

As the media have become more consolidated and corporate, broadcasters do less to serve the public interest, said panelists Wednesday at a New America Foundation event. The event was centered around Broadcast Blues (http://bit.ly/rl7hWI), a 2009 film that blames a decline in journalism, increasingly divergent political parties and more indecency on TV on broadcast consolidation and lapses in FCC oversight.

The broadcast distribution industry is facing challenges in a landscape of over-the-top (OTT) offerings and increased viewing of content on portable devices, distribution and satellite company executives said Thursday at SATCON. The industry is undergoing a “sea change” in terms of delivery of TV media, said Bill Tillson, CEO of Encompass Digital Media, a company that provides distribution services to CBS affiliates and other customers. Encompass customers are challenged by more video choices, and “cord cutting is something we need to pay attention to,” he said. Customers are under “revenue stress,” and therefore, they want the company to figure out “how to distribute their media on a cheaper basis to more locations,” he said.

The PCS H-block auction will take place as planned in January, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said emphatically following his first meeting as chairman Thursday. The comments come days after both Sprint and T-Mobile made clear they were taking themselves out of contention for H-block spectrum, leaving Dish Network as the one self-identified competitor (CD Nov 14 p4). Wheeler said he still expected a competitive auction. Initial applications to participate in the auction are due at the commission Friday.