The FTC will bear down during the next six months on privacy disclosures for mobile applications, particularly for child users, an official said Thursday. Commission aides will study how companies have responded to a critical survey called “Mobile Apps for Kids,” released in February, and decide whether violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act have been committed, said Patricia Poss, the chief of the Consumer Protection Bureau’s Mobile Technology Unit.

LONDON -- It’s too soon to regulate the Internet, particularly in the area of net neutrality, speakers from telcos, Facebook and Skype said Thursday at the IIR telecom regulation forum. The Internet is only 20 years old, an adolescent “full of potential but also full of doubts,” said Jean-Jacques Sahel, Skype government and regulatory affairs director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The net neutrality debate, which shows no signs of abating, is part of a much larger discussion about commercial models in the Internet and telecom sectors, said Telefonica Group Regulatory Policy Director Robert Murik. It’s too early to regulate because no one knows where this is going, he said.

Outgoing voice traffic jumped 60-fold in the hours after the worst earthquake in Japan’s history, and NTT East officials had to scramble to implement traffic restrictions and ensure priority communication could go through, an NTT delegation told attendees at an NTCA event Wednesday in Washington. The real damage came not from the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake, but from the tsunami it caused. The tsunami reached as high as 50 feet, spread up to four miles inland, and covered 400 miles of coast -- the distance between Washington, D.C., and Boston. NTT East lost 65,000 poles, 1,900 miles of conduits, 5,000 miles of cables and 12 of its central offices were completely destroyed when the waves became higher than the offices’ flood barriers. That’s according to Takashi Ebihara, director of network service management in the core network center, who was working in the network operations center when the quake hit. “The situation was very chaotic,” he said. “Even our seasoned operators couldn’t find out what was going on in the network."

Verizon Wireless said it will sell part of the 700 MHz spectrum it owns if the FCC approves the carrier’s buy of advanced wireless service (AWS) licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox. Verizon said Wednesday that if the deals are approved it will offer for sale all of the 700 MHz A and B block licenses it bought in the 2008 auction of former TV spectrum. FCC officials have raised concerns about whether Verizon’s purchase of the AWS licenses would give the company too dominant of spectrum position versus its competitors (CD March 30 p1).

The departments of Defense and State released a final report to Congress Wednesday reassessing export controls on satellites and related technologies. It recommends freeing some types of satellites and their components from application of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) rules. The report (http://xrl.us/bm4esv) would allow “industry to compete in the global market,” including satellite exports, said Greg Schulte, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy. Shifting some items from the U.S. munitions list (USML) to the Commerce Control List (CCL) would allow government “to focus our controls and enforcement on technologies and the capabilities that are truly sensitive to our national security,” he said at the National Space Symposium in Colorado.

Chairman Charles Ergen said Dish Network took the right steps to move toward building out terrestrial service. “We create competition” and “we have credibility,” he said Tuesday at a Silicon Flatirons event at the University of Colorado. “There’s precedent for companies to be able to use their satellite spectrum terrestrially.” Dish did its homework and learned that there was interference and “we went after frequencies that are pretty clean,” he said.

A House panel urged more efficient use of spectrum to prevent a “crunch” caused by accelerating consumer demand. In a hearing Wednesday afternoon by the House Science Subcommittee on Technology Chairman Ben Quayle, R-Ariz., urged continued research and development, as well as a critical review of regulations. But witnesses for CTIA and Cisco said improving efficiency is no substitute for reallocating government spectrum.

Disney, Dish Network, NBCUniversal and NCTA weighed in for the first time on the FCC’s media ownership rulemaking, with replies reaching different conclusions. Disney questioned the very need for the review given the “realities of today’s market” that include the availability of new media. Dish, among those seeking changes to retransmission consent rules, wants the forthcoming order to bar separately owned stations in the same market from jointly negotiating retrans deals. Comcast’s NBCUniversal said local news sharing agreements shouldn’t be attributable under ownership rules. If required, that could bar LNS deals in some circumstances. The NCTA said a question in December’s rulemaking notice (CD Dec 23 p1) about extending carriage rights to a type of low-power TV station that must meet the same rules as regular broadcasters raised its concern.

The House Homeland Security Committee passed HR-3624, the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness (PrECISE) Act Wednesday, despite committee Democrats’ opposition to what they called a watered-down cybersecurity bill. The author of the bill, Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairman Dan Lungren, R-Calif., reluctantly endorsed his “slimmed-down version” of the bill that he said offered the greatest likelihood to pass a House vote.

News Corp.’s unprecedented step to suspend some shareholders’ voting rights puts it again beneath FCC ownership limits that were exceeded when the company’s foreign-investor base expanded in recent years. The company said Wednesday it immediately put on hold the rights to vote on matters for half of the portion of a class of stock that’s held by non-U.S. citizens and carry more votes than regular shares. The move means foreigners will no longer exceed the commission’s 25 percent threshold on the portion of voting power foreigners can exercise in the broadcaster, the owner of 27 Fox and MyNetworkTV stations (http://xrl.us/bm4ebg) said.