Dish Network’s request for flexibility to use its AWS-4 spectrum for downlink or uplink operations could let it use its spectrum more efficiently, and it could be viewed favorably by the FCC, some satellite experts said in interviews this week. The DBS company expects the flexibility to better position it to enter the wireless market and to commit to a $1.6 billion bid at the H block auction. It also requested an additional year to meet its final buildout requirement, which would allow it to offer terrestrial service within eight years.

Verizon’s reversal on Voice Link was a pragmatic decision driven less by political pressure than by customer demand, said industry observers in interviews Wednesday. The telco said Tuesday (CD Sept 11 p3) it will install fiber on Fire Island, N.Y., instead of serving it entirely with its fixed wireless product. Observers disagreed whether its decision to install fiber indicates Verizon is less than confident in its Voice Link product. State regulators and their allies backed the telco’s move, with some saying Voice Link isn’t as good as a wireline product.

Lawmakers on the House Communications Subcommittee urged an update to laws regulating the video market to ensure protections for consumer access to content, as Congress looks to reauthorize the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act, at a hearing Wednesday.

All three FCC commissioners told Congress the agency’s priorities range from spectrum auctions to the Internet Protocol transition to a forthcoming order to be circulated on rural call completion. They testified Wednesday before the Senate Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee, in a hearing that ranged well beyond the FY 2014 budget slated for discussion.

The recording industry is “optimistic about its future for the first time in a long time,” said RIAA President Cary Sherman at a Tuesday evening event on the digital future of the industry. He pointed to companies like Spotify and Vevo that have found new revenue streams by bringing music online. That helps to combat piracy and stabilize a drastically changing industry, he said.

The “Connected Continent” telecom overhaul package approved Wednesday by the European Commission would enshrine net neutrality into law, bar incoming roaming charges and require governments to coordinate their spectrum assignment plans. If adopted by the European Parliament and Council, the EC said it will be a major step toward creating a single European telecom market that could one day include an EU e-communications regulator. The proposal, subject of intense debate as various draft documents leaked, is likely to face strong opposition, based on early criticism. Before the final version emerged Wednesday, it was attacked by the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Council Europe, German Association of Telecommunications and Value-Added Service Providers (VATM) and French citizens’ advocacy group La Quadrature du Net.

Capitol Hill is divided on possible regulations on data privacy -- one camp believes the U.S. needs a new legal regime on data privacy and another believes regulation could injure the current data environment, said Senate Commerce Committee Senior Counsel Christian Fjeld. The pro-regulation camp, including committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., believes any regulations need to include baseline privacy protections based on giving users notice and choice on the collection of their data -- and secure retention of data where necessary, Fjeld said. Rockefeller and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced the Do-Not-Track Online Act (S-418) in March (CD March 4 p6) to create a “legal obligation” for companies to honor consumers’ Do Not Track requests, Fjeld said. Companies have no legal obligation to honor such requests, and the “balance needs to change” so such requests are honored, he said Tuesday during a Future of Privacy Forum and Stanford Center for Internet and Society event.

Verizon will start to install a fiber network in western Fire Island, N.Y., later this year, with the goal to provide the service “as quickly as possible,” a company spokesman told us. He said Verizon is installing a fiber network in response to comments to the FCC, the New York Public Service Commission and a PSC public hearing in Ocean Beach, N.Y., on Aug. 24 about Verizon’s Voice Link wireless service. “We heard the people’s comments and we understand that they want a solution,” said the spokesman. The company’s controversial Voice Link product mainly relies on wireless service, not fiber. Some opponents of the new product have said it may be less reliable than traditional landline phone service.

Acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn closed a deal on another of her big issues, with the FCC announcing Tuesday that AT&T and smaller carriers reached a settlement on interoperability in the lower 700 MHz band. The issue was long seen as one of Clyburn’s top focuses as acting chair. Industry officials said her decision last week not to put a 700 MHz order on the agenda for the commission’s Sept. 24 meeting and force a settlement showed in part that negotiations had reached a delicate stage and she believed an announcement was imminent (CD Sept 9 p1).

Cellphone users caught up in an emergency should use text messages rather than phone calls to let their loved ones know they're OK, said Len Pagano, president of Safe America, a nonprofit preparedness organization (http://bit.ly/P1plTA) working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS). Pagano spoke at a “strategic discussion” meeting Tuesday at FEMA about the nonprofit’s work with IPAWS. Text messages take up less bandwidth than phone calls, so widespread use of texting during emergencies could help alleviate the “communications logjams” that make calls difficult during incidents like the Boston Marathon bombings or the Sept. 11 attacks, he said. “Text first, talk second,” said Pagano, repeating Safe America’s motto for its emergency texting program. “In an emergency you shouldn’t expect to get on a cellphone and talk for an hour, you should be an efficient user of the space,” he said.