GENEVA -- Administrations at the Radiocommunication Assembly geared up for the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference starting Jan. 23 by approving supporting ITU-R recommendations on various needed technical, operational and regulatory aspects, officials said at a press conference after the assembly, which ended Friday. Assembly agreement on studies for cognitive radio systems “excludes” regulatory matters, an executive said, but the systems will be considered under a WRC-12 agenda item. WRC-12 work on use of orbit and associated spectrum resources and a future conference agenda item on more spectrum for mobile broadband will be some of the “more difficult” WRC agenda items, said Francois Rancy, director of the Radiocommunication Bureau.

U.S. carriers are expected to replace their LTE technologies with LTE-Advanced starting 2013, standards experts told us. The enhancement of LTE technology was approved by the ITU Wednesday as an International Mobile Telecom-Advanced (IMT-Advanced) technology. The new specification is expected to bring better speeds, power consumption, capacity and spectrum efficiency. According to ITU, the target rates for IMT-Advanced were set at 100 Mbps when used in a high mobility environment, and 1 Gbps in a stationary environment.

Verizon Wireless and the cable companies behind SpectrumCo on Thursday voluntarily offered more details on their proposed deal, expected to be the subject of an intensive examination by the FCC (CD Jan 19 p1). SpectrumCo agreed in December to sell 133 AWS licenses to Verizon for $3.6 billion. Verizon is also buying several dozen AWS licenses from Cox. All the companies also announced various commercial agreements between the cable operators and Verizon Wireless, under which they would sell each others’ products. That part of the agreement has led to additional controversy.

The author of the PROTECT IP Act, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is considering substantial changes to the legislation, Senate staffers told us. Most of the remaining PROTECT IP cosponsors said they were still supporting the bill, but urged leadership to slow its pace and consider modifications to mollify the concerns of the technology sector. The chamber is still planning to take a cloture vote on the bill on Tuesday around 2:15 p.m., a Judiciary spokeswoman said.

The FCC may not deviate much in eventual draft media ownership rules from what the agency proposed last month (CD Dec 23 p1), fans and foes of broadcaster consolidation predicted. Chairman Julius Genachowski likely won’t circulate any draft quadrennial review order until late this year or early next, said industry, nonprofit group and commission officials. They said it appears Genachowski has an open mind on what final rules he'll seek, and the comment cycle on the rulemaking ends April 3. He seems inclined to stick closely to December’s rulemaking notice, which strikes a balance of sorts between what industry and nonprofits want, officials said.

Hosted payloads seem unlikely to become the norm in the satellite industry in the near future and the lack of government involvement is worrisome, Iridium CEO Matt Desch told the Washington Space Business Roundtable. While there’s hope for the hosted payloads in the future, the idea remains very much nascent, he said Thursday. Iridium, which had advertised a significant amount of space on its coming IridiumNEXT constellation but has so far been unable to fill it, likely has found a solution, he said. Iridium and the mobile satellite service (MSS) industry is fraught with misperceptions, he said.

A Washington state bill designed to allow public utility districts and rural port districts in areas with underserved areas to offer retail broadband services faced strong opposition from lawmakers and some private providers. As a result, a revision that would include the FCC’s definition of unserved and underserved is expected before a committee vote next week, bill sponsor state Rep. John McCoy (D) told us.

Coordinated website blackouts had a resounding impact Wednesday on both public and congressional support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). At our deadline at least five of the bill’s original 30 co-sponsors said they had either withdrawn or reconsidered their support for the bill. The bipartisan defections came after thousands of websites including Wikipedia, Reddit, Craigslist and others blacked out their pages and urged users to contact their representatives in protest of the legislation.

Officials behind SpectrumCo will face questions from the FCC Wireless Bureau after Comcast Chief Financial Officer Michael Angelakis told investors at a Citigroup conference that the company never planned to build out the AWS spectrum licenses it purchased in the 2006 auction. The questions are expected to come as part of the bureau’s analysis of Verizon Wireless’s pending buy of the licenses from SpectrumCo, FCC officials said Wednesday. Comcast likely will be asked to explain the comment in the initial interrogatory the bureau sends Comcast as it looks more closely at the deal, agency officials said.

Broadcasters’ high cost estimates for putting TV stations’ political file information online (CD Dec 27 p7) are unfounded and probably overblown, said LUC Media Group, an ad agency that specializes in getting political advertisers federally mandated rates during periods leading up to an election. “Stations and cable television systems have learned over the years that if they can limit the information that candidates have about availabilities and rates, they can get candidates to overpay for airtime that they buy,” LUC said in reply comments filed in the commission’s enhanced disclosure of TV stations’ public interest obligations proceeding. “Internet access to those files will enable more candidates to become better informed about the availabilities and pricing, and thus demand that they receive the lowest unit charge for the time they buy. That is the real reason that stations are voicing objections to having to upload their political files to the Internet."