Dish Network’s mission at this Consumer Electronics Show is to “top the Hopper,” the premium DVR it introduced at last year’s show and kept adding features to during 2012, CEO Joe Clayton told a recent New York media briefing. So Dish is using this CES to introduce a new “Hopper With Sling” DVR with twice the processing speed of the original Hopper set-top and with built-in Sling TV-anywhere functionality. The box will ship in January, Clayton said.

CenturyLink hopes to block Portland, Ore., from changing how it taxes landline phones. The legal challenge focuses on the Portland City Council’s Nov. 28 approval of changes to City Utility License Law, which “substantially increase taxes” on local wireline phone services of incumbent companies CenturyLink and Frontier Communications, effective Dec. 28, according to CenturyLink’s court document filed at the Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland. Other telecom providers don’t pay these fees, the injunction request said, mentioning wireless companies as an example.

The risks of collecting unique handset identifiers outweigh the potential benefits, FCC officials told members of its mobile broadband measurement group Friday. In December the commission considered collecting more detailed data from users who were “more comfortable” sharing stats that identify their phone at specific coordinates at a particular time (CD Dec 13 p14). But after talking with policymakers, researchers and stakeholders, agency staff have decided that “the risks outweigh the benefits of having a unique identifier."

Six of the largest media companies asked the FCC to review a Media Bureau order that gives Comcast access to confidential distribution agreements between content owners and online video distributors (OVDs). CBS, News Corp., Sony Pictures Entertainment, Time Warner, Viacom and Disney told the FCC that the bureau’s order suffered from procedural flaws, violated FCC precedent and federal law and was an arbitrary and capricious decision. The application for review filed Thursday (http://xrl.us/bn9eii) was preceded by a stay request last month. The order clarified the so-called “Benchmark Condition” of the FCC’s order approving Comcast’s takeover of NBCUniversal which gave OVDs the right to license Comcast-NBCU (C-NBCU) programming if they have reached a similar deal with an industry peer.

Consumers are using built-in apps for access to Web-enabled content “at a high rate,” according to a Consumer Electronics Association study, “Beyond 2D Viewing: Understanding the Demand for Advanced Television Features.” Roughly 20 percent of U.S. adults own a connected TV, according to CEA, and nearly 90 percent report using apps available on their display in some capacity. Over 40 percent of HDTV owners connect their primary displays to the Internet, and 76 percent connect at least one external device with smart app capability, according to the study.

The U.S. decision not to sign the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) means controversial changes to the treaty-level document will have no effect on U.S. law or the telecom sector’s work within the U.S. -- but the treaty’s effect on U.S. businesses’ dealings internationally remain far less clear, industry experts and insiders say. The U.S. was among 55 ITU member nations to not immediately sign onto the revised ITRs last month after they were adopted at the conclusion of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai. Another 89 nations signed the treaty (CD Dec 17 p1). Non-signatory nations will continue to follow the original ITRs enacted in 1988, Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. delegation to WCIT, told us. The original ITRs are “antiquated, but they're very high level, they don’t get into any Internet issues,” he said. The revised ITRs will take effect Jan. 1, 2015.

The FTC should have taken more drastic action against Google, said competitor Microsoft and a public interest group that has long sounded alarms on Google’s practices. At the same time, lawmakers representing Silicon Valley applauded the agency for not interfering more with Google’s business practices. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz predicted such differing opinions during last week’s press conference to announce the settlement. “Some may believe the commission should have done more in this case ... some may believe we should have done less,” he said of the agency’s critics.

Seeking to harness the momentum generated by last June’s World IPv6 Launch Day, big cable operators are speeding up their tests, trials and deployments of the IPv6 addressing protocol as the new year unfolds, officials said.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski needs to close the 2010 docket on whether the agency should reclassify broadband as a Title II common carrier service, because leaving the docket open is causing economic harm, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said Thursday at a Phoenix Center regulatory conference. Meanwhile, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., questioned whether some FCC staff are overpaid.

Completing the IP transition and adjusting the regulatory regime to take that change into account is one of the key challenges that will face the FCC in 2013, said AT&T Senior Vice President Bob Quinn and other industry officials Thursday at a symposium sponsored by the Phoenix Center.