This year’s dole-out of Connect America Fund money for broadband buildout has a much higher acceptance rate by ILECs. AT&T, which accepted nothing last year, this year has requested up to $100 million to help fund broadband buildout. Verizon once again declined to accept any Phase I money.

A coalition of advocacy and consumer groups for deaf and blind persons opposed multiple provisions of the FCC’s June order that would institute changes to the Video Relay Service (VRS) program, saying in comments released Tuesday that the order “may cause harm to the quality of VRS” (http://bit.ly/12mKIrd). The VRS order would reduce compensation rates to various-sized providers and created interoperability provisions to give users power to more easily choose providers and equipment (CD June 11 p1). The groups said they believe there has been “no effort on the part of the Commission to compensate or reward providers for improving functional equivalency in VRS calls. The Commission needs to reward such competition-driven innovation even during any efforts to improve the efficiency of the VRS system.”

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- FirstNet presented its vision for next year Tuesday when General Manager Bill D'Agostino laid out what he deems the appropriate strategy for 2014 and beyond, expressing full confidence in the network’s deployment and future despite acknowledging funding shortfalls. He spoke at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials annual meeting. “FirstNet is not going to fail,” D'Agostino said: “This plan is going to take FirstNet from paper to reality in a very short time."

Lack of data made it “unusually challenging to come to sweeping and general conclusions,” the FCC’s Open Internet Advisory Committee said, releasing its first report Tuesday (http://bit.ly/156bfdh). The group cautioned that its report, planned to be annual, is best understood as an attempt to “lay out a useful spectrum of opinions associated with particular stakeholders, rather than to come to clear conclusions about next steps.” Observers on both sides questioned how useful the report will be to a commission that ultimately will have to collect the data and make the hard choices itself.

Former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth warned that the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee’s examination of spectrum sharing between commercial and federal users in the 1755-1850 MHz band leaves many questions unanswered. Comments by Furchtgott-Roth, a CSMAC member, were posted by NTIA this week, as CSMAC gears up for a major meeting next Wednesday to complete action on sharing reports that have been its focus for more than a year.

A host of tech industry groups gave the Obama administration a set of recommendations to address privacy and civil liberties concerns while “fostering technology innovation and economic growth,” in a letter sent to the White House and members of Congress Tuesday. The letter followed up on a set of meetings earlier this month with the administration in which the president asked for further recommendations, the groups said. Center for Democracy and Technology President Leslie Harris said the letter was “an important first step,” most notably for the industry’s united push for reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

ASPEN, Colo. -- The FCC is pursuing many goals through its upcoming incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, not to maximize any one thing, said FCC Senior Economic Adviser Evan Kwerel on a panel at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum. The “primary goal [is] to efficiently allocate spectrum from a lower value to a higher value use,” Kwerel said. But the auction faces pressure to “raise sufficient revenues to meet Congress’s objectives, including financing” FirstNet, he said.

The Public Interest Spectrum Coalition is questioning in a filing at the FCC whether the FCC needs to set aside two discrete channels everywhere for wireless mics. Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Project, who made the case at the FCC on behalf of PISC, told us the group instead wants the channels to be reserved where needed, but otherwise open for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed use.

ASPEN, Colo. -- The EU and U.S. differ in data protection implementation, not principles, and interoperability should be the focus of the ongoing work on the EU data protection regulation, FTC Commissioner Julie Brill said Tuesday during a panel at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum. The EU is aware of concerns that American companies have, including that the regulation may be too proscriptive and “may lack effective enforcement, particularly when it comes to the multiplicity of regimes,” Brill said, citing frequent communication with her EU counterparts.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- When 800 MHz rebanding goes wrong, it can go very wrong, both financially and for a community’s reputation, panelists said Monday at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials meeting. “We're the poster child, unfortunately,” said David Cruise, public safety systems adviser for the city of Oakland. The controversy over the post-rebanding radio interference has, throughout the last year, cost Oakland more than $240,000, he said.