The FCC wants to know about the ease of signing deals to carry regional sports networks on multichannel video programming distributors. The Media Bureau asked about a dozen questions on RSNs in a public notice. It’s part of work on a report due Jan. 13 on access and carriage issues for those channels. That’s six months before the expiration of RSN conditions imposed by the commission in 2006 on Comcast and Time Warner Cable as part of letting them buy Adelphia Communications. “After issuing the report, the Commission, in its discretion, may determine if further action is warranted,” the bureau said Tuesday. The Adelphia order barred the top two U.S. cable operators from withholding access to RSNs they deliver without using satellites, other than Comcast’s SportsNet Philadelphia.

Device maker Wilson Electronics and Verizon Wireless filed at the FCC a joint agreement on cell boosters, which would create three classes of boosters, with many available for use without carrier permission. Their joint proposal was filed this week as the FCC took a final round of comments on an April notice of proposed rulemaking on new technical, operational, and coordination parameters for fixed and mobile signal boosters (http://xrl.us/bk28pb).

Cybersecurity is a “very important subject” to small business across the U.S., and is deserving of more attention, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., said during a field hearing of the Senate Small Business Committee late Monday in Laurel, Md. Cardin was joined by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. The hearing took place near Fort Meade, the headquarters for the new U.S. Cyber Command and also the National Security Agency.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The future of small cable operators is in providing broadband access to customers, young executives at family-owned companies told the National Cable and TV Cooperative’s annual conference Monday. “We still provide the cable TV product, but our main focus in the business is now broadband and moving that forward for the future,” said Kyle South, general manager of West Alabama TV Cable. As that happens, cable operators need to make sure the Internet doesn’t begin to mimic the cable-TV programming marketplace, said Levi Maaia, vice president of Full Channel TV, which operates in Rhode Island. “The primary issue I'm concerned with moving forward is the cable TV model” of cable operators paying programmers for the right to distribute their programming “being imposed on the Internet,” he said. “It concerns me that programmers could come into the Internet and drive up our cost of delivering affordable Internet access,” he said. They spoke on panel of younger executives poised to take the reigns of family-owned operations.

The FCC wouldn’t distribute Universal Service Fund cash for broadband in areas where any ISP already sells Internet service, under a USTelecom-brokered industry agreement that could be made public as early Friday (CD July 22 p3), industry and FCC officials told us. Talks are still going on, they said Monday. Under the agreement, which USTelecom has been calling a “framework,” VoIP wouldn’t be classified either as telecom or information service, and VoIP carriers would be required to pay interstate access rates for all non-local calls, the officials said. Comcast and other major cable operators continue to evaluate the USTelecom proposal, and it’s possible they'll join it, industry officials said.

Cutting the number of TV channels in major markets by 42 percent, as the FCC’s plan for spectrum auctions entails, would be a major barrier to the nascent service of broadcasting terrestrial programming to mobile devices, NAB executives said. There was some variation in executives’ assessment of the threat from voluntary incentive auctions the commission may get congressional authority to hold as part of a deal between the White House and Congress on lifting the debt ceiling (CD July 20 p1). The executives of the association, who spoke to reporters Monday in an effort to raise awareness about what they consider to be the shortfalls of the spectrum auction plan, agreed the mobile DTV hurdles would be major. And President Gordon Smith said the commission is withholding from the NAB and legislators a mathematical model that shows how stations’ coverage areas would be impacted by the repacking of TV channels to free up other frequencies to be auctioned for wireless broadband.

Wireless industry suggestions for pairing the 2 GHz mobile satellite service spectrum with other bands should only be based on the truly voluntary approach for incentive auctions, said S-band licensee TerreStar in reply comments in docket 10-142 (http://xrl.us/bk252q). The FCC sought input on how best to use that spectrum for terrestrial broadband. Any other context for pairing of the band “would present significant legal challenges,” said TerreStar, which Dish Network is buying. The emphasis must be on the voluntary approach to “allow the marketplace to make rational choices with regard to service deployment,” it said. Neither Dish nor DBSD, another S-band licensee that is also being bought by Dish Network, filed reply comments.

Comcast stepped up lobbying against a draft program carriage rule to make cable operators keep distributing independent channels while indies’ complaints are pending at the FCC. Lobbying last week at the offices of Chairman Julius Genachowski and Commissioner Robert McDowell came as the Republican is the only FCC member not to have voted on a draft Media Bureau order and further rulemaking notice. He’s concerned that the agency may violate the Administrative Procedure Act by issuing standstill rules before seeking specific comment on them (CD July 25 p8). The agency’s approach to the standstill requirement “is out of step with its general interest in engaging in predictable and orderly rulemaking,” Comcast Senior Vice President Kathy Zachem reported telling FCC Chief of Staff Eddie Lazarus.

AT&T filed two papers at the FCC addressing key questions raised about the company’s proposed buy of T-Mobile. One paper addresses the importance of local competition, while the second explains why carriers of all sizes will be able to get “cutting edge” LTE handsets at “reasonable prices” to sell to their subscribers. Both papers were heavily redacted for public release. Neither relates to the new competitive model recently offered by AT&T, which led FCC staff last week to halt the 180-day “shot clock” on the merger. AT&T is to release that model early this week, a spokesman said Monday.

Congressional Budget Office estimates of how much the government will raise through a proposed voluntary incentive auction of broadcast spectrum are no better than an educated guess, industry officials said last week. The CBO’s $24.5 billion estimate for revenue from proposed FCC auctions, after the cost of reimbursing broadcasters for their spectrum, has emerged as a key figure in the debate over spectrum legislation and even deficit reduction. But industry officials who closely track auctions say auction results are difficult to predict, especially at a time when the industry is changing.