AT&T could have to accept a mandate the company has long sought to avoid if it wants to win quick approval from the FCC of its proposed buy of 700 MHz spectrum from Qualcomm. Two members of the FCC, Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps, are both asking whether the purchase should be conditioned on AT&T’s agreement to abide by a 700 MHz interoperability requirement, agency and industry officials said Monday.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act could “break a fundamental aspect of the Internet,” Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told reporters Monday after a luncheon hosted by the Washington, D.C. Economic Club. “What these bills do is they force you to take content off the Internet. By doing so, it’s a form of censorship, it’s not a good thing.” Schmidt scoffed at the mobile-phone patent battle being waged in the International Trade Commission (ITC) and said he expects to hear a decision from European antitrust regulators sometime in the first half of 2012.

CBS said it agreed to buy WLNY-TV Riverhead, N.Y. a full power DTV station on Long Island. The station has pay-TV distribution around the New York, Connecticut and New Jersey region, and is not affiliated with a major broadcast network. CBS also owns WCBS-TV New York. Terms weren’t disclosed, but Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker said the transaction was a smart one for CBS to make. Owning two stations in the largest U.S. media market, CBS could probably increase margins at the two stations by 10 basis points, and potentially increase revenue at WLNY-TV by adding new programming and through retransmission consent revenue, she said.

AT&T’s buy of T-Mobile is officially on hold, after U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle agreed to stay the Justice Department’s lawsuit against the deal until Jan. 18. AT&T and DOJ jointly sought the delay in a motion filed Monday. Huvelle acted quickly, issuing an order putting off other deadlines in the case and scheduling the next status conference in her courtroom on that date. DOJ and AT&T were due back in court Thursday.

LightSquared complained bitterly Monday about what it called a distorted leak from government interference tests of the company’s planned wholesale wireless network. “This came from someone inside the government process, and it is an outrage,” Martin Harriman, the company’s executive vice president for ecosystem development and satellite business, told reporters. He was responding to a Bloomberg News report that LightSquared’s technology had failed tests with three-quarters of general navigation devices. Executives expressed confidence that the FCC will by March approve its operation. They said they will make fallback plans only in the event of an unexpected rejection.

NTCA held a flurry of last-minute meetings with FCC staff just days before the group filed an appeal of the commission’s Universal Service Fund order (CD Dec 12 p7), records on docket 10-90 showed. NTCA Vice President Michael Romano joined executives from Vantage Point Solutions and TDS in two meetings with Wireline Bureau staff on Wednesday, one meeting addressing the costs of meeting increased speed standards and the second meeting addressing traffic exchanges, according to an ex parte dated Friday and released Monday (http://xrl.us/bmks85). A day later, Romano joined executives from the National Exchange Carrier Association, OPASTCO and TDS Telecom to discuss caps on operating and capital expenses, a separate ex parte notice showed (http://xrl.us/bmktat).

Draft FCC orders would make it a bit easier for radio stations to move to urban areas from suburban and rural communities and also ease the process for U.S. tribes to seek new allotments, agency officials said. Those draft Media Bureau orders follow up on one approved at March’s commission meeting that made such station move-ins to urban areas harder and that allowed tribes without government-recognized lands to get stations more easily (CD March 4 p10). The two current drafts are moving on two different tracks, agency officials said. The move-in order is likely to change, possibly significantly, and won’t be voted on right away. The tribal order will be approved in coming weeks, likely without significant changes.

House Republicans as expected included the draft spectrum bill by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., in spending legislation to extend the payroll tax cut and other items. The House GOP unveiled the text of the “extenders” bill Friday morning (http://xrl.us/bmkks2). The chamber is likely to vote on the package this week, the House Rules Committee said. The extenders bill is unlikely to survive in its current form, but could foreshadow a final deal that includes spectrum, said telecom lobbyists and analysts. Also Friday, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., condemned House proposals to provide $3 billion for broadcaster relocation and to force public safety to return narrowband spectrum.

Friday saw at least four more appeals of the Universal Service Fund order (CD Oct 28 p1), as AT&T, NTCA, NASUCA and the Vermont Public Service Board filed in three different appellate circuits. NTCA and NASUCA each filed in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.; Vermont filed in the 2nd Circuit in New York; and AT&T filed its appeal in the D.C. Circuit. They join earlier appeals, one from CLEC Core Communications in Richmond (CD Dec 5 p11) and another from Pennsylvania regulators filed in the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia (CD Dec 6 p2).

Broadcasters and multichannel video programming distributors exchanged more words on retransmission consent deals late last week. Mediacom, which has criticized the FCC for not issuing an order changing retrans rules (CD Sept 2 p3), sent a letter to the agency saying broadcasters’ efforts to head off the changes are works of fiction. No retrans order is circulating at the commission, and none seems poised to soon, an agency official said.