House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said he will introduce legislation that would limit carriers’ liability in cybersecurity attacks. “We are working on it and we hope to have it soon,” Goodlatte said after hosting a luncheon at the State of the Net conference. “We need to be looking at ways to encourage folks to try new ideas in the area of cybersecurity.” He said he hoped legislation -- modeled on laws passed to calm fears of a Y2K meltdown -- would help businesses “step up their game.”

A group representing the leading industry players on tower siting asked the FCC to provide additional detail on what the commission is considering in a programmatic environmental assessment (PEA) on the antenna structure registration program. The FCC is examining its tower siting rules in response to a February 2008 remand from the U.S. Coyurt of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (CD Feb 20/08 p2). The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, meanwhile, proposed several steps the FCC could take to curb bird deaths from collisions with towers.

Congress is unlikely to take up a total rewrite of the Telecom Act until late this session at the earliest, telecom trade group executives said Tuesday on a Broadband Breakfast panel. USTelecom, CompTel and the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association will be busy early this year lobbying members on broadband issues, they said. But “the next two years are going to go by pretty fast,” and “there just won’t be enough time to address all the issues that we'd like to see addressed,” said Qwest spokesman Tom McMahon.

The U.S. government is making Comcast fulfill several Web conditions to complete its purchase of control in NBC Universal from General Electric and form a new joint venture with GE. The FCC and Justice Department said they're barring the cable operator, in its role as an ISP, from discriminating against competing content. A condition from the commission -- which some see as a form of net neutrality (CD Jan 12 p4) -- prohibits Comcast from giving priority on its broadband network to its content over competitors’, FCC officials said.

Europe’s satellite navigation systems are making progress but face “fresh challenges,” the European Commission said in a midterm report on Galileo and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System. The programs have been slowed by cost overruns, price increases and lack of competition in some contract awards, it said. The economic situation of the EU and its members has led the EC not to ask for additional money in the current budget, but that decision, too, is causing delays and increasing costs, the EC said. And political decisions on the governance and financing of the projects are needed, it said.

The House will overturn the FCC’s net neutrality order “shortly” and will use the Congressional Review Act and a formal bill to do it, said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. She blamed Congress in her Tuesday keynote at the Congressional Internet Caucus’s State of the Net Conference for the FCC’s “first-ever” regulation of the Internet. Neither Democrats nor Republicans set forth a national vision for technology policy, and “when Congress fails to move on an issue, the bureaucracy steps in,” Blackburn said. Legislators are focused on individual advances in technology, “an obsession with devices, and focus on the larger values driving innovation -- a free economy, protected property rights and free speech protections,” she said.

Net neutrality may no longer be a significant issue five or 10 years down the road, as long as broadband offerings are transparent and customers know what they're paying for, CEA President Gary Shapiro said during an episode scheduled to air over the weekend on C-SPAN’s The Communicators. “My view is if we have competition, and if get the spectrum … if you have as a consumer five different sources of competition, then net neutrality fades away as an issue.”

Frontier Communications, which took over Verizon’s lines in 14 states last July, is set to increase rates for its FiOS video products due to rising cost, executives said in an interview. Broadband deployment and other Verizon transaction obligations as well as access revamp will be Frontier’s priorities this year, they said.

Although Time Warner Cable and Sinclair extended their retransmission consent agreement by a day, the pact was still set to expire Saturday and the companies were bracing for a signal blackout. Sinclair wanted a longer extension, General Counsel Barry Faber said in an e-mail to reporters. “Time Warner has instead simply drawn an arbitrary line in the sand insisting that it will drop the stations if the agreement is not completed by midnight on Saturday,” he said. “Sinclair does not believe there is any realistic chance that this deadline … will be able to be met.” A Time Warner Cable spokeswoman said negotiations continue and the cable operator is working hard to reach an agreement. “We are still hoping to avoid a broadcaster blackout, but even if Sinclair pulls the plug on Saturday night, Time Warner Cable will continue to provide all available Big 4 network programming to its subscribers,” she said.

Level 3 has emerged has an unlikely -- and unwilling -- champion of Internet backbone carriers in its battle with Comcast, industry and public-interest officials told us. Level 3 was “certainly reluctant” to engage in a public battle, but “there is no way to route around Comcast,” said John Ryan, Level 3 chief legal officer. “It is not in our DNA to seek government assistance. Our strong preference is where markets exist, the markets should discipline behavior.”