Look for stepped-up FCC enforcement of its ex parte rules, on which the first significant revision since 1997 takes effect June 1 (CD May 3 p5), commission officials said Friday. They said the revamp requiring filings to be made anytime agency officials are lobbied, and for more specific ex partes disclosures to be made, is part of making the agency more transparent. Those ex parte rules approved by commissioners in February needing Office of Management and Budget approval should get that OK soon, said Deputy General Counsel Julie Veach at an FCC and FCBA tutorial. The green light should come in time for those rules too to take effect June 1, she said. Other parts of the new rules don’t need OMB approval.

The FCC Media Bureau dismissed part of Dish Network’s program access complaint against Madison Square Garden and Cablevision. The bureau dismissed the third count of Dish’s complaint, in which Dish alleged Cablevision was using improper influence over MSG’s decisions on the licensing of regional sports networks to the DBS provider. Cablevision was dismissed as a defendant, said an order released Friday afternoon and signed by bureau Chief Bill Lake. Verizon and AT&T have filed program access complaints against Cablevision and MSG, though no decision has been made public.

Operators are expecting a wave of help desk calls from customers on World IPv6 Day June 8 because they will have difficulties reaching Google or Facebook that day, said Ruediger Volk, a Deutsche Telekom senior routing specialist. That day, several big content providers like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Akamai and Limelight Networks will serve their sites over IPv6 numbers, alongside the currently used IPv4.

The FCC should demand quarterly reports from AT&T on the company’s “especially aggressive” broadband pricing plan, said the New America Foundation and Public Knowledge Friday. “Unlike competitors whose caps appear to be at least nominally linked to congestions during peak-use periods, AT&T seeks to convert caps into a profit center by charging additional fees to customers who exceed the cap,” they said in an open letter to Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett. “In addition to concerns raised by broadband caps generally, such a practice produces a perverse incentive for AT&T to avoid raising its cap even as its own capacity expands."

T-Mobile USA’s Q1 profit dropped more than 60 percent year-over-year to $135 million as the carrier lost 99,000 subscribers. Parent company Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann blamed the decline in part on the intense competition in the U.S. market and said he’s confident the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile deal would get approved.

The Internet Society’s June 8 World Internet Protocol version 6 Day will be a “global-scale test flight,” aimed at nudging the Internet sector to prepare for the new technology as IPv4 addresses run out, ISOC Technology Program Manager Phil Roberts said Friday. Major industry players will enable IPv6 on their main websites for 24 hours, he said in an email. IPv4 access will also be still be available, he said. “Minor technical glitches” may occur, but the trial run will allow participating organizations to work with operating system manufacturers, home route vendors and ISPs to tackle them, he said. Several more tests will likely be needed as IPv6 is rolled out, said Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf.

Whether ISPs have free-speech rights was debated late Thursday at an FCBA continuing education panel on net neutrality. Opponents of the FCC’s December net neutrality order, which they noted hasn’t taken effect because it hasn’t been published in the Federal Register, focused on the rights of cable operators, telcos and other network operators. Rule proponents said they see net neutrality rules as protecting the rights of broadband subscribers to free speech.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Hopes for building a market for white-spaces devices rest in significant part on EU regulators’ following the expected lead of their U.K. counterparts with very flexible rules for use of vacant TV channels for broadband service, said a technology executive involved in wireless regulatory and standards work for about two decades. “I think the U.K. will come out with some very nice rules” soon, “and that will allow some very nice products,” said the executive, Jim Lansford, standards architect at CSR Technology of Cambridge, England. The company develops and sells platforms for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other technologies.

There’s need for state control over quality of retail and wholesale service regardless of technology platform, even though in some states incumbents have said the increased availability and types of service have made oversight unnecessary, state officials said during a conference call held by the National Regulatory Research Institute.

Montana Chief Information Office Dick Clark warned Thursday that in an era of state and federal government cutbacks, there’s no easy path to a nationwide public safety network in large states like his with small populations. Clark and New Jersey CTO Adel Ebeid elaborated on the challenges each of their states faces during discussion at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ midyear meeting.