GENEVA -- Arab and African countries at WRC-12 backed allocations for mobile broadband below 790 MHz and a further identification for use by the standardized technology International Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced (IMT-Advanced). Europe won’t be able to make allocations, an official said. The United Arab Emirates appealed for cooperation in meeting “urgent requirements."

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must obtain a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. The ruling was the first by the court that tackled the constitutionality of GPS tracking. Privacy advocates were quick to hail the court’s decision in U.S. v Jones (http://xrl.us/bmpkkt) as a major win, though they acknowledged many difficult electronic privacy questions remain unsettled.

Google spent nearly as much as AT&T and Comcast on lobbying in Q4 2011, according to quarterly federal lobbying reports available last Friday. Facebook and Netflix also accelerated their Washington spending as debate over online copyright issues intensified in the fourth quarter. Spectrum legislation, the recently dissolved AT&T/T-Mobile transaction and controversy over possible LightSquared GPS interference also drove communications industry lobbying in the fourth quarter, the disclosure reports showed.

The FCC has denied the most ambitious multicasting must-carry proposal (CD Dec 31/08 p3). The Media Bureau said the petition to start a new TV network targeting urban, African-American audiences won’t fly. Using Urban TV as a multicast broadcast signal that would be guaranteed pay-TV carriage doesn’t comport with existing rules, Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman of the Media Bureau wrote Ion Media and billionaire Robert Johnson’s company. Urban TV’s proposal to “separate a multicast DTV channel currently controlled by ION and establish a new license for each programming stream” isn’t “consistent with our licensing rules,” Kreisman wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Dish Network’s petition that it review an appeals court decision awarding NDS $17.9 million in attorneys fees. The fees were granted by U.S. District Judge David Carter, Los Angeles, following a month-long trial in 2008 in which a jury awarded Dish Networks $1,500, not the $1.6 billion it sought from NDS for allegedly hiring hackers to crack its encryption system.

Trade associations look forward to finding solutions on cybersecurity in 2012, as legislation like SOPA and the OPEN Act remain important topics, officials said in response to questions about 2012 policy goals. Another common telecom focus this year, among groups we surveyed that do some FCC and FTC lobbying, are spectrum incentive auctions. Groups like CompTIA and the Distributed Computing Industry Association have different solutions in mind, and different opinions about how to achieve those solutions, their officials said. They keep general themes of balancing common goals like reform of the Federal Information Security Management Act and reaching an overall consensus with other stakeholders on the issues they work on.

Comcast criticized an FCC staff decision and an administrative law judge, who each ruled against the cable operator in its programming dispute with an independent channel. The full commission should overturn the 2010 Media Bureau order that sent the Tennis Channel’s program carriage complaint to the ALJ in the first place, Comcast said. And it asked the commission to find differently than a December order which said the cable operator violated program carriage rules.

Content groups offered an olive branch to the technology community Friday, after Congressional leaders slammed the brakes on anti-piracy legislation in the House and Senate. Film and music groups begrudgingly acknowledged the impact of Wednesday’s Web protest to the PROTECT IP and the Stop Online Piracy Acts and urged the technology community to help develop a meaningful solution to the theft of their members’ works.

The latest numbers emerging as the FCC pushes forward on an order addressing Lifeline funding reveal sharp growth in the cost of the Universal Service Fund program. Lifeline spending was up sharply in Q4 2011, ending in September, to $525 million, but it remains unclear whether that number is an anomaly or means real, across the board growth in the Lifeline program. Meanwhile, a senior FCC official said Chairman Julius Genachowski is committed to putting in place significant controls on the size of Lifeline program, which are projected to save $2 billion over a period of years versus the status quo.

Almost three months after the FCC approved a Universal Service Fund/intercarrier compensation reform plan, major industry players continue to seek significant changes. Comments were due last week on a further rulemaking notice approved as part of the order. How USF dollars ultimately will be divided as the fund is reconfigured to primarily pay for broadband is the key question addressed in most filings. They show that the FCC still has a huge job ahead as it continues to tackle changes to the USF. Numerous petitions for reconsideration have been filed in response to the Oct. 27 order. A second round of comments focusing on intercarrier compensation issues is due Feb. 24. Next week, the commission will begin to tackle Lifeline reform. Also looming are likely changes to the contribution side of USF.