Several stakeholders complained about and appealed the Colorado Public Utilities Commission’s deregulatory reform, which the PUC ordered and adopted in late December (CD Dec 18 p9). Many voiced concerns in interviews immediately after the PUC adopted the order (CD Dec 26 p8), reflecting loud debate that happened in the months leading up to the order, and filed their concerns formally this week. The PUC initiated its telecom reform in August and ultimately chose to cap its high-cost fund at $54 million, cut retail regulation and reduce high-cost funding in areas deemed effectively competitive, among other changes.

The updated Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rule is not meant to limit child-directed websites or include general audience websites, said Mamie Kresses, senior attorney at the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection. Kresses, during a Monday event on the updated FTC rule, outlined the ways in which the rule -- updated in December CD Dec 20 p10) -- gives operators flexibility, and encouraged attendees to ask questions of the commission.

Proposed changes to FCC forms used to report annual and quarterly revenue raise Paperwork Reduction Act concerns, Sprint Nextel said in comments filed Friday. Carriers also questioned whether the new language on reseller certification conflicts with the commission’s 2012 wholesaler-reseller clarification order. Most commenters commended the commission for soliciting suggestions on the instruction changes, but XO cautioned that even with comments the instructions lack the legal significance of an actual rule.

C-SPAN asked a federal court to dismiss antitrust allegations raised by Sky Angel, an online video distributor. Sky Angel sued C-SPAN In U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C. (CD Nov 14 p15), saying the cable network, a service of the major cable operators, refused to license its programming to Sky Angel’s Internet video service.

The Wi-Fi Alliance, Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) and other wireless groups urged the FCC to ensure that Globalstar further addresses issues in its petition for a rulemaking to use its Big low-earth orbit (LEO) spectrum for terrestrial use. Comments in docket RM-11685 were due Monday.

The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee’s push to delve deeper into spectrum sharing, especially in the 1755-1850 MHz, is starting to bear fruit. CSMAC is slated to hear reports at its meeting Thursday from several of its key working groups looking at the hundreds of issues that will arise if government users in the band share the spectrum with commercial operators. But several of the groups say they won’t meet a February due date for final reports.

Dish Network isn’t under the gun to immediately begin building out its terrestrial wireless network, but it must carefully decide whether it will proceed with a buildout and bid for the adjacent H block, said some wireless and satellite analysts. The FCC’s granting of AWS-4 spectrum to Dish, allowing it to use spectrum for a terrestrial service, put restrictions on its out-of-band-emissions limits to protect H block and buildout requirements (CD Dec 19 p5). The buildout timeframe isn’t tight and gives Dish time to plan its next move carefully, observers said.

The intellectual property (IP) market “cannot work effectively unless innovators know what a patented invention covers and know some reasonable amount about who owns it,” U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director David Kappos said during a roundtable at the USPTO with industry experts. “We need as much transparency as possible to get IP rights into the hands of those who are best able to make the investments and create the jobs and drive growth and generate economic activity that, after all, is the purpose of having a patent system in the first place.” Kappos and other USPTO officials held the roundtable to collect public input on how the the office should change its rules on collecting and publishing real-party-in-interest (RPI) patent ownership information.

The mission of the FCC Emergency Access Advisory Committee was extended for another six months, EAAC members learned at what they thought might be their last meeting Friday. They can take the time to finish reports and projects they've been investigating, FCC officials said, with much of the focus likely on next-generation 911 and the details of rolling out text-to-911. The two-year-old EAAC heard presentations from three of its seven subcommittees but declined voting upon learning of the extension. It opted to allow for more review and feedback of presentations over the next month.

A long-running dispute over what content and on what terms Comcast must license to a would-be online video distributor continues to play out at the FCC. Project Concord and Comcast/NBCUniversal each asked the commission to review aspects of a Media Bureau decision that denied Project Concord attorney’s fees that resulted from an arbitration that began in October 2011. The bureau also found Project Concord was entitled to Paramount-produced movies in the first year after they are released under a condition of the Comcast-NBCU merger order. And, in a reversal of the arbitration’s outcome, the bureau said NBCU showed its other contracts prevented it from licensing certain programming to Project Concord (CD Nov 15 p9). Part of the dispute appears to be over whether Project Concord’s business model is ad-supported.