The state of Iowa is looking to sell or lease its fiber network. The government released a detailed request for proposals this month for the sale or lease of thousands of miles of the Iowa Communications Network (ICN), a request that the Legislature called for two years ago. Bids are due April 30, and it wants to “conduct the sale or lease process in a manner which will lead to execution of definitive agreements with the successful offeror to be submitted to the Governor’s Office for guidance no later than June 11, 2013,” according to the accompanying RFP memo (http://xrl.us/bog75d). The bill creating the Iowa network passed nearly a quarter century ago in 1989.

MPAA is a part of the conversation within the Obama administration on questions about gun violence, said Chairman Chris Dodd. “I care about it deeply,” he said Friday during a luncheon speech at the National Press Club in Washington (http://bit.ly/YwiWTg). Over the years, the MPAA content ratings system has evolved, he said: There are more descriptors involved and “a lot of the technology has changed.” The content platforms “provide so many more places where visual entertainment can be seen,” he said. “We're working to provide the assistance and support we can in that area.” It’s an important issue and “we're going to be working with the administration and others to find out the ways that we can be supportive,” he said.

Broadcasters again told the FCC to limit licensees’ ownership reporting requirements on FCC Form 323. The NAB said (http://bit.ly/ZfGVvY) the FCC should not require licensees to report ownership of those who hold nonattributable interests. If the commission moves ahead with requiring such reporting, it should let nonattributable owners use special-use FCC Registration Numbers (FRNs) rather than traditional FRNs, it said. Broadcasters in docket 07-294 said they are concerned that standard FRNs require individuals to submit their Social Security numbers to the FCC. In joint comments, Beasley, CBS and Emmis said the information collection requirements proposed in a December rulemaking notice would deter investments in broadcasting (http://bit.ly/VldzIZ).

BRUSSELS -- More sophisticated devices, more use of mobile applications and increased network speeds are expected to be the main drivers for commercial services over the next 10 years, executives working on a European Commission (EC) study said. Executives differed over the impact of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. Wi-Fi for network offloading and small cells may be integrated in the future, an Ericsson executive said. The study focuses on the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. with an extrapolation of results to the 27 countries in the EU.

DirecTV’s 2012 fourth-quarter revenue increased 8 percent to $8.05 billion, compared to the same period in 2011. The strength of DirecTV and the Sky Brasil premium brand continues to drive consumer demand, market share gains and top-line growth, said CEO Mike White. The full-year growth of the Latin America and U.S. markets “soared to all-time highs,” he said Thursday during a webcast. DirecTV had its largest annual net subscriber gain in history, at 3.8 million net customers added in 2012, he said. “We're exiting 2012 with over 35 million households throughout the Americas."

Discovery Communications has yet to give pay-TV distributors so-called “TV Everywhere” rights and has similarly turned down their offers to license the pay-TV programmer’s shows to Netflix-like subscription-VOD (SVOD) platforms, CEO David Zaslav told analysts Thursday. Though the company reached some carriage agreements in 2012, they did not include TV Everywhere rights, he said. “We could not determine what the right value was,” he said. “It was amicable but we agreed to in this case to table it.” Discovery has been among the few major programmers that doesn’t stream full-length shows online (CD Aug 15 p3).

As USTelecom waits for the FCC to act on the more controversial elements of its petition for forbearance from legacy dominant carrier regulations, the industry has been engaging in soul-searching about which 20th-century regulations should be brought into a modern world. A USTelecom event Thursday morning (http://bit.ly/WrdL8I) set out to determine “the point” of voice regulation. Panelists agreed the government has a role in ensuring 911 calls go through, but differed on how far the government should go in mandating reliability in general.

Replies in the FCC proceeding on streamlining Part 25 rules for earth and space station licensing showed overall support for the commission’s effort, with some disagreement on operational and technical aspects proposed in original comments (CD Jan 16 p8). Replies in docket 12-267 were due Wednesday on the rulemaking notice approved by the FCC Sept. 28, which proposed changing definitions of terms related to satellites and the equipment on the ground with which they communicate (CD Oct 1 p10). Among the goals is to “remove unnecessary reporting rules” and consolidate “remaining requirements for annual reporting, while improving reporting of emergency contacts,” the item said (http://bit.ly/VXlc5E).

Mobile privacy stakeholders received a proposed updated code of conduct for short-form notices, which would require apps that agree to the voluntary code to disclose to users what information they collect and with which entities they share the information. The code was authored by representatives from the Application Developers Alliance, ACLU, Consumer Federation of America and World Privacy Forum, and is being discussed through a multistakeholder process facilitated by NTIA. The newest version includes shortened “Data Elements Collected” and “Data Shared” lists that must be included in short-form notices telling users if an app collects certain data or shares user data with certain third parties. NTIA Director-Privacy Initiatives John Verdi sent the discussion draft to stakeholders last week (http://xrl.us/bogyqj).

President Barack Obama touted his executive order on cybersecurity during his State of the Union speech Tuesday as a step to “strengthen our cyberdefenses by increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs, and our privacy,” and urged Congress to pass legislation to further the order’s goals. Enemies of the U.S. are “seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems,” he said. “We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy."