The Obama administration is fully committed to getting legislation through Congress funding a national wireless broadband network for first responders, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday during a speech at the Old Executive Office Building. Biden shared the stage with Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, among other top officials, in a high-profile push for public safety broadband.

CHICAGO -- Comcast and Time Warner Cable have settled their months-long dispute over a prospective next-generation access architecture for the cable industry, clearing the way for cable operators and equipment vendors to develop denser, more powerful networks for broadband and IP video use. In a release pointedly issued during the Cable Show, CableLabs said it will consolidate the various technical and operational differences between the two dueling next-gen architectures: Comcast’s earlier Converged Multiservice Access Platform (CMAP) and Time Warner Cable’s later Converged Edge Services Access Router (CESAR) project. CableLabs said the new compromise standard, known as the Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP), will incorporate the main features of the proposed architectures of both cable operators.

CHICAGO -- Some of the nation’s leading cable operators, cable programmers, cable tech vendors and consumer electronics retailers said they were pleased and relieved by the initial results from last week’s global test of the Internet’s next-generation protocol, IPv6, which apparently went off without any major problems. Appearing on a special Cable Show forum on IPv6 this week, cable, CE and other officials said World IPv6 Day generated surprisingly few user glitches during the 24-hour period that stretched over parts of June 7 and 8 in North America. They also said IPv6 traffic climbed strongly on the world’s data networks that day and, while it still remains at relatively low levels, has continued to run much higher than its previous mark.

Discussions within the cellular subgroup have been some of the most complex and difficult to work through, as the larger GPS Working Group wraps up its report on interference issues, said officials involved in the discussions of whether LightSquared’s proposed terrestrial network would interfere with GPS. The full working group was required to submit its report to the FCC by the end of the day Wednesday. But in a late development, LightSquared sought a delay in the filing deadline until July 1.

Local online news is dominated by traditional media outlets such as TV, radio stations and newspapers, a study commissioned by the FCC said. The study by George Washington University Assistant Professor Matthew Hindman was one of five FCC-commissioned studies about media ownership released by the agency Wednesday. The FCC commissioned a total of 11 studies, the rest of which have yet to be released. It will take comments on the studies after it issues a notice of proposed rulemaking on its media ownership rules, the FCC said. That could be as soon as July, depending on when the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals rules on challenges to the last FCC ownership proceeding, an attorney following the proceeding said.

A pair of Senate bills aim to clarify the nebulous legal framework surrounding geolocation data and its interception, use and dissemination by companies and law enforcement agencies. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act Wednesday in order to resolve legal ambiguities over how geolocation data is treated, they said. On the same day, the Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced the Location Privacy Act of 2011.

A data protection draft bill took shots from the left and the right at a hearing Wednesday of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Manufacturing and Trade. Senior Democrats said the draft by Chairwoman Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., removed key consumer protection provisions from last Congress’ DATA Act proposal. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said he saw Bono Mack’s version as an overreaction to recent breaches of Sony and Epsilon. But both sides said they hoped to reach consensus.

CHICAGO -- FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said he’s puzzled why more U.S. ISPs don’t meter broadband usage, by charging for what subscribers consume as opposed to the current practice of sending monthly bills of similar amounts to each category of customers. The all-you-can-eat broadband model doesn’t make sense to him, and is unlike other services, he said during a Q-and-A at a Cable Show luncheon. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said she understands those who oppose usage-based pricing, while acknowledging that a certain number of broadband users consume a disproportionate share of capacity.

CHICAGO -- The FCC’s overhaul of the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation system may take a little longer than had previously been anticipated, an aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski said at the Cable Show in Chicago. Finishing an order on the subjects may take until the fall, said Sherrese Smith, who advises Genachowski on media issues. “I'm only talking about a month or two delay,” not a longer period of time, she told us during a Q-and-A Wednesday. She also said an item on program carriage will be out soon.

Dish Network was chosen to provide the stalking horse bid for bankrupt TerreStar, setting the minimum bid price for the S-band licensee at $1.375 billion, court documents filed Wednesday said. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York must still approve the bid. Charlie Ergen, chairman of Dish and EchoStar, had appeared to be the front-runner to win the TerreStar assets (CD April 15 p3) despite saying during an earnings call this year that EchoStar, which has some ownership in TerreStar, would not bid on the company.