SAN FRANCISCO - The long-promised advent of an interactive TV businesses may finally be upon the industry, executives said during a panel discussion. Advertisers are demanding more accountability and analysis of how their televised ad campaigns perform, and interactive TV executives at multichannel video programming distributors have finally proved the technology to offer that works, said Larry Samuels, general manager of advanced TV for Dish Network. “It’s no longer ‘wouldn’t it be cool if’ or ‘I wonder if this would work,'” he said at the TV of Tomorrow Conference. “We have stories to tell now with credibility."

Four Democratic senators pushed public safety legislation by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., at a news conference with Rockefeller Tuesday morning. A bipartisan draft of the comprehensive spectrum legislation written by Rockefeller and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, circulated Friday and the committee may vote on it at a scheduled May 25 markup (CD May 17 p1). At an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation lunch later in the day, National Broadband Plan architect Blair Levin said he wished legislators were not tying voluntary incentive auctions to the public safety network effort.

MetroPCS and Leap Wireless are interested in assets that AT&T might have to divest as a condition on its $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA if the deal gets approved, the prepaid carriers’ executives said during a J.P. Morgan conference with investors on Tuesday. Meanwhile, while panelists at a Broadband Breakfast Club event agreed that divestiture is highly likely, they debated over a possible approach to review the deal.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced a bill that would modernize the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Leahy, who helped write the 25-year-old law that restricts federal access to private electronic communications, announced the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments of 2011 (S-1011) via Twitter early Tuesday afternoon. Privacy groups called the bill a “good first step” but some questioned whether it can sufficiently address location-based data concerns.

Staff in the office of FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker was lobbied on more than a dozen occasions by Comcast, the NCTA, cable company rivals, nonprofit groups and others as she considered a job offer at Comcast, agency records show. Since April 18, when Baker privately recused herself from voting on anything at the FCC (CD May 16 p7), the lawyers who advise her also were visited by executives of AT&T, the CTIA, News Corp., Verizon and other companies and public interest groups. Baker’s not the first FCC member to directly leave for a large company regulated by the agency, though it’s been decades since that’s believed to have last occurred, said several who have long watched the commission.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has some real concerns with the FCC’s work on allowing LightSquared to begin service, potentially at the expense of important GPS services, he said in a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski dated April 27. Grassley, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said he was “dismayed” to learn of the “accelerated timetable” the FCC used when considering LightSquared’s waiver application that allows the company to provide terrestrial wireless service. The letter to Genachowski was recently made public.

Leaders of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association and the Iowa Telecommunications Association gave a cool reception on NCTA’s proposal to freeze the RUS broadband loan program. The RUS relaunched its troubled broadband loan program earlier this year and published interim rules. The comment period on the proposed rules closed last week. In its filing with RUS, the cable association said the broadband loan program was structured as if high-speed broadband suffered under geographic monopolies like old water and electric systems (CD May 16 p14). Offering broadband subsidies to telcos in areas where cable already offers it puts government in the “totally inappropriate role for a government agency,” by “picking winners and losers in the marketplace.”

The Obama cyberspace plan offers international Web norms that promote an open, interoperable, secure and reliable Internet, the administration said Monday. The administration released its international strategy for cyberspace at a White House press conference less than a week after it presented its cybersecurity proposals for Congress (CD May 13 p10). The estimate for small-business cybersecurity plans came from Symantec’s 2010 survey of information protection for small and medium-sized businesses.

Interoperability of traditional radio systems must remain a top priority even as public safety pushes forward on a national broadband network, two Department of Homeland Security officials said Monday at the National Public Safety Telecom Council’s Cross Border Interoperability Forum. Philip Verveer, deputy assistant secretary of State, said that, despite years of trying, public safety communications still isn’t interoperable enough.

The Senate is moving faster than the House to finish legislation to build a nationwide interoperable public safety network. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, late Friday circulated a bipartisan draft bill. Committee aides told the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officers Summit Monday that they're pushing hard to pass a bill before the 10th anniversary of 9/11. But a GOP aide for the House Commerce Committee said it will be difficult to pass a bill in that timeframe.