LightSquared urged the FCC to give it permission to start terrestrial uplink operations in the L band and rule that operation of terrestrial wireless handsets in the uplink portion of the band wouldn’t pose any risk to GPS receivers in the adjacent 1559-1610 MHz band. Comments were due last week in docket 12-340, a proceeding that stemmed from an ex parte filing in which LightSquared provided technical analysis of the potential interaction of its terrestrial wireless devices with GPS devices (http://bit.ly/165uvby). The GPS Innovation Alliance (GPSIA) opposed LightSquared’s analysis and urged the FCC to reject it.

Former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said he has never wavered in his belief he was right to vote “no” on a net neutrality order when it was before the commission in December 2010. With oral argument on the order scheduled for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Monday, the American Enterprise Institute held a webinar late Thursday afternoon, following an earlier discussion hosted by the New America Foundation. AEI panelists offered views that differed sharply from those at the NAF event (CD Sept 6 p3).

If a panel of appellate court judges decides the FCC has no authority to enforce its open Internet order, another federal agency could take its place, several industry officials said in recent interviews. With its expertise in consumer protection and antitrust issues, the FTC is ideally positioned to take over if the net neutrality rules fall, industry and FTC officials have said publicly and in interviews. It’s by no means a common assumption. Many fear that, with its more case-by-case approach to resolving competitive harms, the FTC would be an inadequate protector of an open Internet.

Net neutrality supporters argued in favor of the FCC open Internet order at a New America Foundation panel Thursday. “This is our basic general purpose transport network,” said Susan Crawford of the Cardozo School of Law, a former Obama administration official, echoing other panelists. “It’s the substitute for the telephone. It should be treated that way.”

The FCC should tell Congress it would be “premature” to expand requirements for video description for video delivered by TV and the Internet, said NCTA in comments filed in docket 11-43 Wednesday in response to a Media Bureau public notice issued in June (CD June 27 p22). The public notice sought comment on “the status, benefits, and costs of video description on television and Internet-provided video programming” for a July 1 report to Congress required under the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). Any report to Congress should reflect “the technical and operational issues to be overcome and the costs imposed to achieve carriage of video description in programming delivered via IP,” said DirecTV.

Congress never intended for Section 215 of the Patriot Act to authorize the phone surveillance the National Security Agency has engaged in, said an author of the 2001 law. House Judiciary Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., filed an amicus brief Wednesday in support of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director Keith Alexander, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller, filed in the U.S. District Court in New York in late August (CD Aug 29 p2). The NSA had asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit and defended its surveillance. Sensenbrenner plans to follow up his concerns with new surveillance legislation introduced once the congressional recess ends.

FCC radiofrequency exposure rules should be strengthened to protect children and pregnant women from the effects of long-term cellphone use, said the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in comments filed this week at the agency. But CTIA said the FCC’s current standards should be largely left as is. CTIA and other industry groups questioned whether there’s any real evidence that cellphone use causes cancer.

The Echelon interception system was a child’s toy compared to the National Security Agency’s Prism, the U.K.’s Tempora and other mass spying systems, said Jacob Appelbaum, a member of the Tor Project and investigative journalist. Speaking Tuesday at the first of a series of hearings on electronic mass surveillance of EU citizens before the European Parliament Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee, Appelbaum described the various spy systems, including another program, not yet revealed, that involves sending operatives to people’s homes to break into their wireless networks.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an FCC program carriage “standstill” rule on procedural grounds, but rejected a First Amendment challenge to the commission’s ability to regulate program carriage, in a unanimous decision in Time Warner Cable, NCTA v. FCC Wednesday. The 2nd Circuit’s opinion on the commission’s program carriage regime “stands as a ringing endorsement of the commission’s judgment as to the importance of the statute and how to apply it,” said Covington Burling cable lawyer Stephen Weiswasser in an interview. He represents the Game Show Network and Tennis Channel in an FCC administrative law case and court case respectively, both involving program carriage disputes.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said one of her key focuses in the incentive auction is to make certain that the broadcast TV spectrum resold for wireless broadband won’t all go to a single carrier and that all potential bidders will compete on an equal footing. Spectrum aggregation has been one of the biggest fights waged as the commission considers rules for the auction, pitting AT&T and Verizon Wireless against smaller competitors. Rosenworcel spoke Wednesday during a taping of C-SPAN’s The Communicators, slated to air this weekend.