LAS VEGAS -- Global interoperability and spectrum efficiency need to be the biggest cornerstones of any next-generation broadcast system if terrestrial broadcasters want to retake valuable competitive ground lost to wireless carriers, streaming services and other content-delivery rivals, various speakers said Sunday at the NAB Show’s Broadcast Engineering Conference. Though terrestrial Ultra HD and 3D TV are on the list of desired features of the next-gen system, they're nowhere as high on the priority scale as other attributes like mobility or interactivity, or so it appeared from the many speakers who gave presentations at the conference.

The FCC is failing to do enough to encourage diversity in media ownership, said former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and others at the National Conference for Media Reform Friday, as the FCC released a letter from members of Congress opposing changes to cross-ownership rules. “Minorities own 2.2 percent of full-power TV stations in this country,” said Copps: “How’s that for representing America?”

The FCC Media Bureau placed limits on the filing and processing of full-power and Class A TV station modification applications. The bureau’s action is aimed at facilitating analysis of repacking methodologies and assuring that the objectives of the broadcast TV incentive auction aren’t frustrated, it said Friday in a public notice (http://bit.ly/Z6T4yc). The bureau also said the move is warranted by a mandate in the Spectrum Act which requires the commission to “make all reasonable efforts to preserve, as of Feb. 22, 2012, the coverage area and population served of each broadcast television licensee,” it said.

A circulating draft order would “eliminate or streamline” more than 100 outdated regulations, as sought in the 2012 USTelecom petition for forbearance, FCC officials said Friday. The petition (CD Feb 17/11 p14) sought relief on an industry-wide basis from, by the FCC’s count, 141 unique requirements.

The recent back and forth in FCC filings between Charter Communications and CEA over acceptable conditions for granting the cable operator’s application for a waiver of CableCARD rules could indicate a decision on the matter is upcoming, several industry observers said. The sides have been trading opposing filings on the company’s request for a CableCARD waiver (CD March 26 p13) so it can deploy downloadable security to set-top boxes. With Julius Genachowski planning to leave as FCC chairman, he may want to grant the waiver before he departs, said some industry officials.

The FCC’s circulating draft order giving VoIP providers direct access to phone numbers contemplates a trial period of about a year, with conditions designed to evaluate the trials, said industry and agency officials. That’s in contrast with the blanket waiver Vonage has been seeking for the past several years, they said. Level 3 and Bandwidth.com, which have long warned about the potential harms of granting VoIP providers direct number access, said the proposed order poses “considerable risks.” A Wireline Bureau spokesman had no comment.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) emphasized a desire for deploying more broadband across the state, speaking at a press conference during the Wisconsin Public Service Commission’s two-day broadband symposium last week in Madison. He spoke of the significance of “high-speed Internet connections, both for uploads and downloads” for potential businesses in the state, citing competition from all over the world. The state rolled out multiple new tools to help achieve the broadband goals, part of a broader set of initiatives the state has launched to that end.

Public Knowledge and Dish Network filed petitions asking the FCC to reject a series of spectrum deals unveiled by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Grain Spectrum in January (CD Jan 28 p9). The Competitive Carriers Association, which objected when the transaction was announced, asked the FCC to impose what CCA called pro-competitive conditions, including a 700 MHz interoperability mandate.

DirecTV and the Weather Channel would get more time to comply with coming FCC requirements (CD March 29 p4) for on-screen emergency information to be carried in a format where it can be aurally relayed to those with vision problems, while some small cable operators could seek waivers, said agency and industry officials. They said Media Bureau staff recently proposed to other FCC officials making such changes to a draft order due under statute to be issued by Tuesday. Those changes address some of the concerns of DirecTV and the Weather Channel to give the DBS provider and the programmer a delay in making localized emergency information available on the secondary audio programming stream, or carrying that SAP information as video descriptions, said commission and industry officials. Those two companies and the American Cable Association had sought changes for passing along SAP to TV viewers to what’s in the Feb. 28 version of the draft order.

The FCC Wireline Bureau has chosen a “greenfield” model for Phase II of the Connect America Fund, said industry and agency officials. A greenfield approach estimates the full cost of building and operating a network from scratch. The ABC Coalition, consisting of USTelecom and several ILECs, supports the greenfield approach. The American Cable Association, a primary proponent of the competing brownfield model (CD Jan 16 p3), criticized the choice of a greenfield model as a “wasteful” move that will hurt consumers and small cable operators.