ASPEN, Colo. -- A LightSquared spectrum swap with the Department of Defense remains a possibility but would likely “take some time,” said founder Philip Falcone of the bankrupt owner of mobile satellite frequency licenses, which he said Monday still hopes to use for terrestrial wireless service. In the short term, LightSquared is more focused on spectrum sharing scenarios, said Falcone, CEO of Harbinger Capital Partners, the hedge fund that’s the biggest investor in LightSquared. It will emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy “in a better place” with respect to the U.S. regulatory environment, Falcone told a dinner at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen conference. The FCC has proposed rescinding a waiver to LightSquared, no longer letting it build out the terrestrial service.

Moving to end a backlog of captioning exemption requests built up since 2006, the FCC this year rejected several hundred, about three quarters of the total. That came after requiring many of the broadcast-TV programmers to update their requests. Those that didn’t do so had them rejected, and some of those hired lawyers to refile. That’s according to our review of applications, commission data and interviews with waiver seekers and those opposing them. Efforts by the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau to decide on hundreds of requests led CGB to dismiss 851 without prejudice against refiling in 2012, bureau data show. They show 58 requests first made in 2006, 2005 or earlier and rescinded Oct. 20 to correct procedural flaws in waiver handling during the chairmanship of Kevin Martin were reapplied for (CD Oct 6 p5), and 100 requests predating October 2010 were updated. There are now about 245 requests pending.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Nineteen months after a national wireless network for first responders was proposed in the 2011 State of the Union address, the FirstNet’s board of directors was named Monday at the opening session of the Association of Public Communications Officials annual conference. After commending President Barack Obama for calling for the creation of the national wireless network for first responders, Acting Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank revealed the dozen selections. Most were pleased with the selections, though the National Governors Association said it was “disappointed” by the lack of representation by current state officials.

The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs isn’t transparent or effective enough, some said at a panel Monday. Hosted by the Sunlight Foundation’s Advisory Committee on Transparency, panelists discussed the future of the “super-regulators” at OIRA. OIRA doesn’t do enough to encourage regulation, said Public Citizen President Robert Weissman. Instead, he said, the agency plays a role in a “fundamentally broken system” of regulating that has “an industry bias from the start to the end.”

ASPEN, Colo. -- Tom Tauke critiqued what he called U.S. government’s “backwards looking” perspective on telecommunications regulatory policies. His comments came at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum Monday. Tauke, Verizon executive vice president-public affairs, policy and communications, urged lawmakers to revise the “obsolete” 1996 Telecom Act and focus on policies that encourage growth and innovation. Representatives from Comcast and Google, speaking on the same panel, said they're encouraged by both presidential candidates’ perspective on technology, and Congress’ appetite to tackle legacy regulations.

Verizon is endangering Prairie Mountain, a small town in central Texas, with bad service, two representatives of the town told the Texas Public Utility Commission during a Friday hearing. The carrier has provided a “continuous decline” in service over the last decade or so, said resident Wallace Klussman. The population of Llano County, home to the town, is just above 19,000.

ASPEN, Colo. -- The ITU is not the right place to consider new rules for the Web, said Fiona Alexander, NTIA’s associate administrator-office of international affairs. “It is the wrong venue … because it brings broader harm,” she said during a panel Monday at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum. Luigi Gambardella, chairman of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) disagreed, saying telcos require the international forum of the ITU to address the international nature of the Internet.

The Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) recommended testing requirements for backup power in light of 911 problems following the June 29 derecho wind storm that hit parts of the Northeast and Midwest. APCO also raised questions about Verizon’s response after problems emerged, the subject of an FCC investigation (CD July 3 p1). But industry commenters counseled the FCC against imposing backup power requirements or other new regulations on carriers as a result of the problems that followed the storm.

The FCC’s Media Bureau granted a limited waiver of some Internet Protocol video closed captioning requirements sought by the Digital Media Association. But the bureau denied a separate waiver petition from DiMA that would have pushed back the deadline for requiring the “rendering” of captions under the Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010. In an order released Friday (http://xrl.us/bnk5h7), the bureau said the Sept. 30, 2012, captioning rendering deadline is consistent with the recommendations of the Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee and denied DiMA’s request to push it back to Jan. 1, 2014.

Comcast’s NBCUniversal broke the non-disclosure obligation in a program licensing arbitration with Project Concord Inc. (PCI), the startup online video distributor said in a pleading with the FCC. Project Concord had sought to license NBCU programming under the OVD program access conditions of the FCC’s Comcast-NBCU merger order, which required Comcast and NBCU to work with new distributors that had deals with peer media companies. But NBCU “blatantly violated the non-disclosure obligation ... by attempting to interfere with the peer deal through a third-party partner,” Project Concord said in a heavily redacted filing published Friday (http://xrl.us/bnk47r).