Use of the TV white spaces for mobile broadband likely won’t start anytime soon, FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp said Thursday of the technology that’s been likened to “super Wi-Fi.” Commissioner Robert McDowell, the agency’s senior Republican member, warned that delays could be even longer, given continuing questions about changes to the TV band. “We expect that we're probably still a couple of years away from seeing white space technology in portable devices because the technical challenges there are greater,” Knapp said. The first uses are likely to be fixed, such as broadband to schools, machine-to-machine communications and by local governments, he said. Knapp cited the recently unveiled AIR.U consortium. It plans to use the TV white spaces to provide broadband at colleges in small towns and rural areas (CD June 27 p4).

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, is working with lawmakers on a contingency plan in case the Senate fails to produce a cybersecurity bill this month, the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus co-chairman said during an event hosted by the American Foreign Policy Council. It’s “highly likely” that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to bring cybersecurity legislation to the floor for debate between now and the August recess, his spokesman told us separately, “but we still have to get through the outsourcing and Bush tax cut bills first.”

Challenges remain for women- and minority-owned businesses that seek to compete in telecom, but the larger carriers have expressed a desire for partnership and inclusion as supplier and procurement diversity have become stated goals for many executives, industry executives and lawyers said late Wednesday. Several speakers at the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council conference debated the best ways to create a competitive telecom market.

Management teams and lenders are important components of new and legacy media businesses as they seek to create business models, said panelists at a Minority Media and Telecommunications Council conference. The Internet’s business opportunities have raised the question of “how to create a new business plan in a world in which [traditional media’s] function can now be bypassed,” said Anna-Maria Kovacs, a senior policy scholar at Georgetown University. The online world’s disintermediation and ability to bypass traditional media has “substantially changed the business plans and the risk profiles of the legacy world,” she said.

The Telecom Act needs updating because the now outdated law is hurting all stakeholders, including minorities, the top Washington executives at the two largest telcos said Wednesday. What’s worse, large portions of the 1996 law are based on language in the original 1934 Communications Act, said AT&T’s Jim Cicconi. Verizon’s Tom Tauke said if lawmakers get the policy right, it will lead to the deployment of more infrastructure and services, and “therefore more economic opportunities made available for people who want to part of the industry infrastructure,” as well as for “everybody who uses it.” They spoke at Wednesday’s Minority Media and Telecommunications Council conference.

AT&T said it will roll out its own shared data plans. Wednesday’s announcement prompted further ire from public interest groups, who had earlier railed against speculation that the company may begin charging for use of the iPhone’s FaceTime app on its wireless network. AT&T’s forthcoming “Mobile Share” plans will be available in late August. The new plans will allow subscribers to buy a set amount of data -- up to 20 GB -- and share it among up to 10 devices, including smartphones and tablets. Verizon Wireless unveiled its similar “Share Everything” plans last month, which became available June 28 (CD June 13 p7). Both companies’ plans give subscribers unlimited voice minutes and text, charge a graduated fee depending on the amount of purchased data and an additional fee for each device that will use the plan’s data pool. Unlike Verizon, AT&T will still offer subscribers traditional individual and family plans as well.

The FCC must take steps to simplify and reduce the costs for small carriers to apply for waivers to the commission’s recent USF reform program, said members of the House Small Business Committee during a hearing Wednesday. Subcommittee Ranking Member Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., and Rep. Jeff Landry, R-La., said the waiver process is overly burdensome for small businesses, while Rep. Mark Critz, D-Pa., said small carriers are paying up to $300,000 to apply for the program.

"Regulatory uncertainty” from the FCC appears to be having a negative effect on the economy, hampering job growth, Commissioner Ajit Pai said in a speech in Pittsburgh Wednesday. His comments contrast sharply with those by Chairman Julius Genachowski, who has repeatedly linked broadband expansion, and a new apps economy, to jobs (CD June 4 p1). Job growth is expected to be a key focus of the coming presidential election. “To the extent that the commission leaves things uncertain as to the rules of the road ... that’s something that would impede job growth,” Pai told us. “The question is how can the commission work a little more quickly.”

In its first operating quarter as a pure-play broadcaster, Media General doesn’t anticipate selling any TV stations soon, and may not be a buyer in the current market, CEO Marshall Morton said Wednesday on the company’s earnings call. The company sold most of its newspapers to Berkshire Hathaway (CD May 18 p12) in a transaction that closed in June. “I don’t see us as a seller right now,” Morton said. “Maybe as an exchanger if we find a way to step up markets or tighten our focus."

Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile asked the FCC in a filing late Tuesday to reject the various challenges to their proposed spectrum swap. The transaction is in the public interest and should be approved, they told the FCC. Verizon Wireless warned that it faces spectrum exhaust in some markets in three years without the spectrum from T-Mobile.