The FCC seems likely to concur with opposition to a cable channel’s request to escape closed captioning rules, said an opponent of the waiver. Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing expects the commission to concur with its joint opposition of The Africa Channel’s (TAC) request (CD Sept 19 p14) for a temporary waiver, TDI General Counsel Jim House said. TDI and several other deaf groups said in their opposition posted Thursday to docket 06-181 (http://xrl.us/bmooei) that the channel’s petition lacks sufficient proof of its need for the waiver. Six other deaf advocacy groups signed TDI’s opposition.

AT&T will ask the FCC to lift rules that require the company to be a default wireline Lifeline provider, Executive Vice President Bob Quinn said Friday. Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated a proposed order on Lifeline Tuesday (CD Jan 10 p1). “We're disappointed about what we're hearing,” Quinn said, saying company officials will meet with eighth floor officials next week to ask that decades-old rules requiring wireline incumbents to offer Lifeline service be lifted. Quinn said at least one-third of Lifeline customers have switched from wireline to wireless, and AT&T ought, therefore, not to be forced to offer the service.

NTIA would be swept up in a merger of government agencies proposed Friday by President Barack Obama. Obama proposed combining the U.S. Commerce Department’s “core business and trade functions” with the Small Business Administration, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corp. and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. The Commerce Department bucket includes NTIA and other subordinate agencies except NOAA, which would move to the Interior Department, White House officials said. Obama asked Congress to give him “consolidation authority” to make the proposed mergers and future reorganizations. Members of Congress appeared supportive of the plan, in statements Friday.

LAS VEGAS -- AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi said he hopes FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s remarks on spectrum legislation aren’t a sign the agency would oppose bills that limit the commission’s ability to place conditions on spectrum licenses sold during a voluntary incentive auction of TV spectrum (CD Jan 13 p1). House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., also raised concerns about Genachowski’s statements made in a CES keynote speech on Wednesday. Wireless Bureau Chief Rick Kaplan defended Genachowski, and T-Mobile backed the chairman, too.

LAS VEGAS -- Attendance at CES has become an annual ritual for most FCC commissioners, who fly in to spend hours walking the ever-massive show floor and to hold sometimes back-to-back meetings with other attendees. The commission even had a small booth on the CES floor, where staff gave away FCC Frisbees and plastic Slinkys, along with handouts with basic information about the agency. Most of Chairman Julius Genachowski’s aides made the trip, as did other top officials from the Wireless and Consumer and Government Affairs bureaus and the Office of Engineering and Technology.

Rural telcos have asked the White House to help save them from newly passed Universal Service Fund reforms. NARUC, meanwhile, decided to join the court challenge against October’s FCC USF reforms (CD Oct 28 p1), a state official told us.

Network operators such as cable companies and wireless carriers are increasingly focusing their capital spending on their broadband services, a fact that could bode well for network equipment company Sandvine in 2012, CEO Dave Caputo told investors Thursday during an earnings call. Capital outlays from the major operators have been concentrated “around the delivery of the consumer data experience,” he said. “If you look at cable, that’s becoming the key pillar. If you look at mobile, mobile data is becoming the key pillar of their offerings,” he said.

First Amendment aspects of extending program carriage regulations to more types of multichannel video programming distributors, and online video distributors’ (OVD) access to cable content, were debated by MVPDs and their allies opposing changes and rule-change backers. The FCC has proposed to extend program carriage rules to more types of MVPDs, so pay-TV companies can be found to have discriminated in favor of content affiliated with other subscription-video providers over independent networks. Nonprofits cited the entry of OVDs into the market as reason to extend the rules. Comcast and its main association said competition is plentiful.

LAS VEGAS -- Investment in infrastructure is critical to turning around a slumping U.S. economy, Rebecca Blank, acting deputy Commerce Secretary, told CES Thursday. Blank spoke during a discussion on how innovation can save the U.S., that took a sometimes pessimistic turn as panelists asked whether the nation is off its game. Panelists asked whether Angry Birds, a cellphone game which has gone viral, is now what passes for innovation in the U.S.

The U.S. is well prepared and positioned for the World Radiocommunications Conference 2012, U.S. Ambassador Decker Anstrom said in a telephone conference call Thursday. Anstrom predicted “strong regional support for the U.S. positions on a number of agenda items” planned for the WRC, which takes place in Geneva Jan. 23 to Feb. 17.