The wireless market is still in its early days, with much more to come, technology executives said Monday during a panel at the Silicon Valley Innovation Summit. The mobile market is “far from mature,” said Sanjay Poonen, global solutions president of SAP, a German software company. “I think we are, on the consumer side of it, in its early growth. … It’s a very, very early stage, but it’s probably one of the most exciting high growth spurts that we will see.”

Two decades of change in the video market warrant a fresh look at the Cable Act, House and Senate Republicans said ahead of Tuesday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the 1992 legislation. Retransmission consent, program carriage, compulsory copyright licenses and program access rules are likely subjects for consideration, said a minority memo that circulated ahead of the hearing. Cable groups will press the committee to rewrite the 20-year-old rules that govern broadcast signal fee contracts in a way that reflects the current video market.

Verizon Wireless and AT&T’s recently announced shared-data plans caused controversy and fostered a debate on how carriers should treat wireless data usage (CD July 19 p11). Despite public interest groups’ concerns about the costs, industry experts said it’s too early to judge how their plans will affect the U.S. wireless market. The plans are unlikely to significantly change the continuing spike in data usage, said some experts we interviewed.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The question of wither state regulation was a subtext on all the telecom panels in the initial days of the NARUC midyear meeting. State commissioners observed a declining regulatory role for years and enshrined quite clearly in legislation from the past year, as they said a recent report from the National Regulatory Research Institute (NRRI) made clear. The U.S. is in the midst of “deregulation fever,” concluded a June NRRI report on the various legislatures’ deregulation bills, which “will not subside” (CD June 19 p11). New services that draw on Internet Protocol create new challenges of definition, and regulation no longer covers them in the same way, said commissioners and staff who said they're trying to figure out their roles.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- State regulators axed the first proposed telecom resolution at their mid-year meeting. The NARUC telecom subcommittee spent much of the weekend poring over four draft resolutions, three of which passed out of staff negotiations and will now be assessed by telecom committee commissioners, and then potentially to the full NARUC board. One resolution died at its author’s wish.

The FTC urged the FCC to impose anti-cramming rules on wireless carriers, saying in reply comments to the FCC that voluntary industry efforts aren’t enough. Many industry filers reiterated earlier arguments (CD June 28 p9) that anti-cramming rules should not be expanded to cover wireless and VoIP. Consumer groups agreed with the FTC that the FCC should do more (CD July 23 p17). In April, the FCC adopted a further rulemaking notice asking whether its cramming rules should be expanded.

An FCC proposal to relax rules around non-commercial educational stations using airtime to raise funds for non-profit organizations received support from religious broadcasters and opposition from some university organizations, in early comments that were due by midnight Monday in docket 12-106. The proposal includes forgoing the waiver process to raise third-party funds and devoting no more than 1 percent of airtime to raise funds for non-profit entities (CD April 27 p8). The University Station Alliance and some public broadcasting stations opposed the change, claiming that the current system of obtaining a waiver is sufficient. Northwestern College in Minnesota supported earlier comments by National Religious Broadcasters (CD July 17 p16) that entities for which fundraising may be conducted should be limited to organizations that are recognized as non-profit tax exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- PBS CEO Paula Kerger worries about congressional discussions to completely end funding for public broadcasting by 2015, she told TV critics in a presentation. Kerger expressed frustration at the constant fight over funding, saying: “When you look at the value that the American people place on public broadcasting and the irony that in the same week that we're awarded 58 Emmy nominations again, the question of whether a federal investment in public broadcasting is appropriate is disappointing."

Energy efficiency efforts are spreading among the range of industries involved in TV programming, said government officials, consumer electronics and multichannel video programming distributor executives and those aligned with groups seeking less electricity consumption. With the specter of U.S. regulation of set-top box energy efficiency comes private stakeholder discussions of ways to voluntarily give MVPD customers more efficient boxes, with cable, telco and satellite-TV deployments under way for years in some cases. Executives said MVPDs are moving from set-tops to Internet Protocol streaming to networked TV sets and other CE devices, reducing household energy use through increasing what’s stored in data centers and other company facilities. So operators try to use less energy in data centers, as TV stations cut electricity use, executives said.

The President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) Friday released its report that asks the Obama administration to move to spectrum sharing and away from attempting to clear federal users off the radio band offering carriers “exclusive-use” licenses. Most of the components were unveiled in May when the report was approved by PCAST (CD May 29 p1). In a key conclusion, PCAST recommended that the administration direct agencies to identify 1,000 MHz of spectrum that could be shared with the private sector.