The House plans to vote next week on the CALM Act, which would require lowering the volume of TV commercials to that of regular programming. The House also plans to consider another continuing resolution to maintain funding for federal agencies until regular appropriations are approved, amid pleas from state regulators to provide additional funding to federal agencies charged with overseeing the broadband stimulus program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The FCC will vote on a notice of inquiry at its December meeting designed to push 911 into the broadband age, Chairman Julius Genachowski said Tuesday. The announcement answers in part the question of what will be on the agenda for December, the last open meeting of the year. The FCC also said the meeting is delayed from Dec. 15 to Dec. 21, amidst growing speculation that the main order of business will be a vote on net neutrality rules (CD Nov 22 p1).

Three spectrum items set for a vote Tuesday aren’t drawing much controversy within the FCC and seem likely to be unanimously approved in a final form that’s close to the first version of their drafts, agency officials we spoke with said. They said some commissioners are suggesting changes to a rulemaking notice on TV spectrum. Among the three items, that’s been drawing the most attention within the FCC and from the broadcast industry, which appears to have some concerns about it, agency officials said. Fewer changes are likely to be made to another rulemaking notice, on experimental licensing, and to a notice of inquiry on opportunistic use of spectrum, commission officials said. Altogether, the three items still aren’t likely to differ substantially from the first drafts from career commission staffers (CD Nov 16 p4), agency officials said.

The FCC changed the rules for carriage of significantly viewed (SV) stations by satellite TV providers as part of its implementation of the Satellite TV Extension and Localism Act Tuesday. As expected (CD Nov 23 p9), the agency issued three unanimously approved orders and a further rulemaking. Under STELA, the FCC was responsible for updating rules for SV stations and predictive models for determining broadcast signal strength. The orders were largely in line with proposed rulemakings from earlier this year. They revise rules from the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act (SHVERA) that STELA replaced.

Industry players on all sides expressed general support for FCC efforts to add spectrum for wireless backhaul. But reply comments on proposals to change FCC rules (CD Aug 6 p5) expressed reservations about several of the measures, especially one to allow fixed service (FS) operations to share several spectrum bands now used by the Broadcast Auxiliary Service (BAS) and the Cable TV Relay Service. Several of the proposals grew out of the National Broadband Plan.

Verizon Executive Vice President Tom Tauke questioned whether FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will proceed with a vote on net neutrality rules at the commission’s December meeting. He spoke after giving a speech Saturday to a Federalist Society conference, where Commissioner Robert McDowell said he has no idea what will happen in December or what Genachowski’s next step will be. Discussions were continuing Monday on a possible compromise that could lead to a December vote.

A disconnect remains between what the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in Comcast v. FCC and what the “headlines” said the court had decided, commission General Counsel Austin Schlick said at a Federalist Society conference. He also questioned whether Congress will be able to approve “technical” rules for the Internet or whether they would better be left to the FCC. Schlick’s remarks Saturday could be significant, since commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is reportedly weighing whether to push for net neutrality rules without reclassification of broadband as a Title II service (CD Nov 22 p1).

Cybersecurity legislation introduced Wednesday in the House Homeland Security Committee would give the Department of Homeland Security additional oversight of government and private infrastructure. The bill, sponsored by Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., is too bureaucratic and could have serious implications for business, some Internet advocates said.

The FCC “moved the goalposts back 20 yards” when it denied Qwest’s forbearance petition seeks permission to set its own rates and terms of service in Phoenix without permission from the FCC, the telco claimed in its appellate briefs. Qwest has “hemorrhaged market share to its rivals” and “easily meets” the standard for forbearance, the company claimed in its brief filed with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver late Friday. It said the commission ignored longstanding tradition and continues to treat Qwest as if it were a monopoly.

STANFORD, Calif. -- The “idea of a moratorium” on work toward a treaty to increase intellectual property protection of broadcasters is gaining momentum, said Richard Owens, director of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s copyright law division. The work “quite frankly has been languishing” on the agenda of WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright “for quite a few years,” he said Friday at a Stanford Law School conference. There are many questions about the nature of the effort, not least why broadcasters’ protections should be expanded, Owens said. It’s difficult to get such a point off the agenda because of the organization’s procedures, he said. “Progress” may be made on the matter in the “next six to eight months,” Owens said.