Two Colorado municipalities are moving forward with their fiber networks after successful referendums. The City of Centennial will be working with consultants to design the buildout of its network to reach all residents through its current fiber network, said Ken Lucas, District 3 Councilman and a broadband supporter. Longmont will be releasing a request for proposals in the “near future” to move forward with construction to build out to all homes in three years, said Vince Jordan, Longmont Power & Communications broadband services manager. Both of the open access networks are going to contract out their networks through RFPs to deliver reliable services to their residents as quickly as possible.

The insufficient enforcement of International Trade Commission exclusion orders is generating a spike in congressional and industry criticism directed at the ITC and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), said industry representatives in recent interviews. They said there are no immediately available options to improve the ITC and CBP exclusion order proceedings that industry maligns as costly and drawn out. Problems include opaque CBP enforcement proceedings, overly broad exclusion order language and inadequate CBP enforcement resources, industry lawyers said. Despite the criticism from Capitol Hill, there appears to be little hope of a legislative solution, said industry lawyers.

Dish Network will close the last of Blockbuster’s 300 company-owned U.S. brick-and-mortar stores and its DVD-by-mail business by January, Dish said, further shrinking a once-sprawling chain that fell victim to the sharp shift to digital streaming services.

VANCOUVER -- Reactions to the revelations of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden were a key feature of the Internet Engineering Task Force in Vancouver Wednesday. “We need to figure out a new Internet governance model; it has been run by the U.S. under the perception that the U.S. was acting in the best interest of all,” said encryption expert Bruce Schneier, author and fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School: “That’s over. And it needs to be something good or it will be the ITU.”

The same groups for and against elimination of the sports blackout rule will likely surface during the comment proceeding once the FCC launches a rulemaking, said some broadcast and public interest officials in interviews this week. A draft NPRM to end the nearly 40-year-old FCC rule preventing cable and satellite networks from delivering sports events to which a TV station was given exclusive broadcasting rights by the sports league began circulating at the commission last week (CD Nov 4 p3). So far, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel has voted for adoption of the NPRM, an FCC official said. “I support this rulemaking,” Rosenworcel said in a statement. “After 40 years it’s time to take a fresh look at these issues."

The FCC has not taken the controversial “Down from 51” reverse band plan for the 600 MHz band plan off the table completely, but has backed away from it because that variation doesn’t have much support, said Gary Epstein, head of the commission’s Incentive Auction Task Force. The agency is getting set to release several public notices on rules for the auction of TV spectrum, but industry should expect many calls to be a made in a single, major order, he told the Americas Spectrum Management Conference Wednesday. “We're going to do our best to do this right and it’s going to be successful."

DirecTV increased Q3 revenue by 6 percent to $7.88 billion compared with the same period last year. More customers paid for advanced services and the company had more renewals for its NFL Sunday Ticket last quarter, DirecTV executives said Tuesday during a conference call.

The role the FCC will play “in the changing communications landscape” will be a top focus of new Chairman Tom Wheeler, he said in a blog post Tuesday, based in part on his opening remarks to staff at the agency’s headquarters that day. Wheeler offered his first comments since taking office the previous day, though he didn’t address FCC policy at a more detailed level. Many industry observers are awaiting the Wheeler commission’s first big decisions to get more of a bead on the new chairman’s regulatory philosophy (CD Nov 1 p1). The speech itself was closed to the public.

There has been a flurry of support for YouTube in the Google unit’s copyright battle with Viacom, filings in the docket show. Those on both sides Viacom v. YouTube said in interviews that the case partly revolves around Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Backers of Viacom said they see the issue of inducement to copyright theft linked with the right to control such theft, while a copyright advocate who opposes the company’s position said a safe harbor applies. An unaligned law professor said the case shows the 1998 law is outdated.

Spectrum sharing is the “new reality” and is the only way U.S. industry and government agencies will be able to meet their long-term spectrum needs, said NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling Tuesday at a joint NTIA-National Institute of Standards and Technology event. Strickling and members of other federal agencies highlighted the importance of developing new technologies to make spectrum sharing as effective as possible. He urged stakeholders not to dismiss spectrum sharing as a “perfectly hopeless notion,” noting that in the 1920s then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover predicted that wireless telecom would work only as a means for mass communication, not for individual conversation. “Hoover failed miserably at predicting the future of wireless communications and the lesson we should all draw from that is that none of us will ever quite know where technology will take us in the end,” Strickling said.