FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said he could not approve all aspects of the FCC’s proposed changes to media ownership rules, in commenting on what could be his final vote cast in office. “While I find a better level of analysis here than in previous Quadrennial Reviews, the item nevertheless provokes my dissent because it heads down a similar road that the two previous commissions travelled regarding newspaper-broadcast cross ownership,” he said in a statement Thursday (http://xrl.us/bmmosj). “Our media, and our public policy, need to head in a different direction.” He said the FCC should be further along in correcting the inequities of minority and women broadcast ownership. “While I am pleased to see the proposal for an incubator program teed up for comment in the NRPM before us, I would have preferred us to have already taken action on such proposals as ‘Overcoming Disadvantages’ and any number of other proposals submitted over the past several years to the Commission by our Diversity Advisory Committee.”

The FCC approved Spectrum Bridge as the first TV white spaces database operator and a device by Koos Technical Services as the first white spaces device, the commission said Thursday. Questions remain about when white spaces devices will hit the market in force, or whether the spectrum will meet the hype as a new kind of super Wi-Fi, industry officials told us in interviews. The completion of work on both has been a long time coming. The FCC approved the original white spaces order in November 2008, following years of often heated debate.

The FCC can expect to be flooded with petitions to reconsider its Universal Service Fund reforms (CD Oct 28 p1), telecom officials said and the public record showed. Petitions were expected from nearly every sector of the telecom industry, from state regulators to rate-of-return carriers, several telecom officials said. The commission is drafting a sua sponte -- of its own accord -- reconsideration in an effort to head off one of the thorniest issues in the docket -- whether local rates on local traffic exchanged between wireless and wireline companies should be subject to bill-and-keep immediately, FCC and telecom officials told us.

The introduction of TV industry deregulatory legislation (HR-3675, S-2008) and plans for Congressional hearings on the subject (CD Dec 22 p1) point to a desire for a marketplace closer to the Internet, said an industry executive. But such a marketplace may add confusion for the industries rather than lessen it, said others.

Verizon and several incumbents pushed back against competitors’ efforts to repeal forbearance granted to Verizon from Communications Act Title II regulatory obligations. Verizon and its allies, including CenturyLink, Hawaiian Telcom, FairPoint and Frontier, all argued in nearly identical language that pulling back the forbearance -- and the ILECs’ forbearances that followed Verizon’s victory -- would be, in CenturyLink’s words, “both unlawful and poor public policy.” On the other side were MegaPath, U.S. TelePacific and CompTel, all of which argued that the forbearance grants have created nightmarish disparities in the market for non-TDM-based packet switched broadband and optical transmission services. The comments were posted Tuesday in docket 11-188.

The House Communications Subcommittee is eying a series of hearings on the state of video competition next year, Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., told Communications Daily. The Senate Commerce Committee is also expected to have a hearing on the subject, Hill and industry officials said. The hearings are spurred at least in part by legislation (HR-3675, S-2008) introduced this month by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., broadcast and telecom industry lobbyists said. But the DeMint-Scalise bill itself is unlikely to pass as written, they said.

After several rounds of minor editing, FCC commissioners were set to approve a notice of proposed rulemaking for its 2010 Quadrennial media ownership review, industry and FCC sources said. No major changes had been made to the notice in recent weeks, as commissioners and their staff worked on its language, they said. Commissioners’ offices were finalizing their statements on proposed rules Wednesday as approval appeared imminent, FCC officials said. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.

CTIA, AT&T and Verizon Wireless urged the FCC to reverse course from the last two wireless competition reports and find in the 2012 edition that the industry is effectively competitive. Reply comments were due this week on a Nov. 3 Wireless Bureau public notice seeking data as it prepares the Sixteenth Annual Report on the State of Competition in Mobile Wireless. The 2011 and 2010 reports declined to find that the market is competitive. The arguments parallel many of those that dominated the debate over the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. There are no signs that the FCC will change the stance of the last two reports, both prepared under Chairman Julius Genachowski, agency officials concede.

LightSquared’s petition for declaratory ruling Tuesday (CD Dec 21 p8) seeks to hold the FCC’s and the GPS industry’s feet to the fire by dealing with the unresolved issue of L-band and GPS spectrum rights, said LightSquared Executive Vice President Jeff Carlisle in an interview Wednesday. The LightSquared filing seemed to show a new tone in dealing with the agency, perhaps reflecting frustration with the continued regulatory uncertainty and a coming network agreement deadline with Sprint, said industry executives. A GPS industry group accused LightSquared of constructing “revisionist” history, during a conference call with reporters.

AT&T and T-Mobile both face some tough decisions in the aftermath of their failure to consummate their merger. AT&T’s proposed buy of its smaller rival has preoccupied both companies since March, before it was officially ended Monday. AT&T had been soldiering on for almost four months after the Justice Department sued to block the deal in a surprisingly quick decision Aug. 31.