Dish Network’s waiver request for flexible use of its AWS-4 spectrum can still be granted in time for the company to participate in the H-block auction if the partial government shutdown ends within a few weeks, said analysts and attorneys in recent interviews. Other industry analysts, though, said a prolonged stalemate could prove disruptive to the proceeding. They said that with reply comments in the proceeding due Thursday and commenters unlikely to access the FCC’s website to submit replies since the site is down, the commission still has time to approve Dish’s waiver by Dish’s desired deadline of Dec. 14. If the petition is approved by then, Dish agreed to bid the reserve price, nearly $1.6 billion, adopted by the agency in the H-block auction starting Jan. 14 (CD Sept 16 p1).

It’s clear that the Safe Harbor agreement for transfer of personal data doesn’t offer any protection against mass U.S. surveillance of Europeans’ telephone and Internet traffic and that the European Commission should be directed to suspend it until changes are made, the author of an upcoming European Parliament Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee report on the spying said Monday. Data protection officials from Germany, France and the European Data Protection Supervisor, however, all said Safe Harbor needs to be reworked rather than scuttled but, more importantly, a new data protection regulation must be approved as quickly as possible. But rapporteur Claude Moraes, of the Socialists and Democrats and U.K., said at session six of the LIBE probe that Safe Harbor is useless against the U.S. Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Committee members criticized Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Commissioner Viviane Reding for not appearing at the hearing.

The rise of international digital protectionism and insufficient digital trade disciplines in global trade pacts are preventing benefits associated with the free flow of information, said international experts on Monday. While Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations remain opaque and unresolved, TPP has the potential to include the most progressive digital trade language ever, they said on a George Washington University Institute for International Economic Policy panel. U.S. trade officials continue to target TPP negotiation conclusion by year’s end. Due to the ongoing government shutdown, President Barack Obama was unable to attend a TPP negotiation round this week (CD Oct 7 p11) on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bali, opting to send Secretary of State John Kerry in his place. International Trade Commission analyst Martha Lawless couldn’t attend and participate on Monday’s GWU panel due to the partial government shutdown.

The FCC pole attachment order survived judicial review, as the Supreme Court on the first day of its term declined to hear the case. American Electric Power had appealed the February decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which upheld the rules (CD Feb 27 p9). It’s a big win for telcos and cable providers, which will soon see lower costs and reduced delays when attaching lines to utility poles, said Stifel Nicolaus. AEP and other electric utilities had said the rules, if upheld, could shift hundreds of millions of dollars in cost to electric ratepayers. DTE Electric, Minnesota Power, National Grid and South Carolina Electric & Gas told the Supreme Court in seeking review that the new rules could mean “billions of dollars” in pole ownership and maintenance costs are shifted from ILECs to electric utilities (CD July 8 p3).

FirstNet is especially critical to emergency medical services, among all first responders, said board member Kevin McGinnis at a half-day workshop Monday on the emergency network at the Telecommunications Industry Association’s annual conference in National Harbor, Md. McGinnis, president of North East Mobile Health Services, represents EMS on the board. FirstNet was a rare joint effort of police, fire and EMS working together on a single project, he said.

The government shutdown’s freeze on filing documents with the FCC makes transactions difficult to complete, but it’s unlikely to have much of an effect on them in the long term, said satellite, cable and broadcast brokers and analysts in interviews. “I don’t think [the shutdown] will lead to less deals, it'll just lead to less announced deals,” said BIA/Kelsey analyst Mark Fratrik. “Once the shutdown ends, we'll have a flurry of deal announcements.” The shutdown is likely to delay mergers and acquisitions rather than kill M&A, but that delay could have consequences for buyers and sellers banking on deals occurring in a specific time frame, several brokers said. “There may be some very unhappy people involved in transactions” if the shutdown lasts for a long time, said broadcast broker Robert Heymann, Chicago director of Media Services Group.

Efforts to close the digital divide need to focus on usage, in addition to broadband adoption, said panelists at Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies event Monday. More groups are competing to close the digital divide, said Harold Ford, Broadband for America co-chair, in his keynote remarks. Programs such as Comcast’s Internet Essentials need to be replicated and top cable providers are investing in building out their networks, said Ford.

CEA is hopeful Congress might be within “striking distance” of meaningful legislation to address patent litigation abuse, said Michael Petricone, senior vice president-government and regulatory affairs. Momentum to address patent litigation abuse has increased quickly over the course of 2013, with many on Capitol Hill still viewing it as a “niche problem” at the beginning of the year, Petricone said at an event Monday meant to address legislative issues of importance to U.S. startups. “Now, they see that it’s impacting the entire economy.” Legislation to address patent litigation abuse during the 112th Congress -- including the Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act -- focused on technology companies, but bills in the current 113th include all sectors.

U.S. surveillance law needs broad changes that tap both transparency and expertise, stakeholders told the five-member surveillance review group appointed by the White House. President Barack Obama created the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and named the members -- Richard Clarke, Michael Morell, Geoffrey Stone, Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire -- in August (CD Aug 29 p2). The group has operated amid strong congressional pressure to amend or outright end the government’s bulk collection of phone metadata, an ongoing debate in Congress even during the shutdown. The group is scheduled to submit final recommendations to the White House by Dec. 15.

The Obama administration is trying to build congressional support for yet-to-be released language, currently under review by the Office of Management and Budget, the White House hopes will be the basis for a consumer privacy bill, privacy advocates told us Friday. The draft, in the works since President Barack Obama called for it in February 2012, has been derailed multiple times, most significantly after this summer’s revelations about secret government surveillance programs. But recent European Union efforts at similar data privacy legislation have spurred on the U.S. they said.