The Department of Justice will file a motion either to withdraw its antitrust case against AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile or to suspend the case indefinitely. Frustrated that AT&T withdrew its FCC petition to acquire T-Mobile (CD Nov 28 p1), U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle said she would entertain Justice’s motion in arguments Thursday. She also said she wanted to hear from FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick, who will be “invited” to Thursday’s hearing.

It will be “more of the same” for the FCC in 2012, Chief of Staff Eddie Lazarus told the Practising Law Institute conference Friday. The FCC still has significant work left expanding broadband adoption and addressing the country’s spectrum deficiencies, he said. Privacy experts on a separate panel said they expect the FTC and FCC to increase their focus on online privacy and cybersecurity issues in the coming year.

The FCC could use a procedural rulebook, former FCC chairman and current NCTA CEO Michael Powell said in an interview to air Saturday on C-SPAN’s The Communicators. It’s an issue Powell pushed during his time at the agency and one that still needs to be addressed, he said when asked about the need for legislation changing the way the FCC operates. “The FCC really doesn’t have a rules-of-procedure book,” he said. “Other agencies have a very clearly published set of rules about how things are done.” At other agencies, processes for voting on items and how commissioners can call up items from bureaus are clearly addressed in rules, he said.

An FCC International Bureau draft report on the competitiveness of the satellite market points to competitive concerns in the marketplace, said industry executives and an agency official. The report, which analyzes three years -- 2008, 2009 and 2010 -- is expected to voice some agency worry on satellite operator capacity pricing, they said. The report, which will be considered as part of the FCC’s Tuesday open meeting, is on circulation and could still see modification.

All sides of the AT&T/T-Mobile deal will be back in court Friday, and AT&T appears to have doubled-down on the ongoing litigation to preserve the embattled deal. Two cases, one between the Department of Justice and the other between AT&T and Sprint and C Spire, are set for status hearings in U.S. District Court in D.C. Friday morning. AT&T has spent much of the last two weeks in battles with the FCC over the commission’s decision to release a staff report on the proposed T-Mobile acquisition (CD Dec 2 p5) and the FCC’s spectrum screen standards (CD Dec 6 p1).

Outgoing Democratic FCC Commissioner Michael Copps sought an open proceeding to determine spectrum screen standards years before AT&T resurrected the issue in its battle with the FCC (CD Dec 6 p1), records show. In 2008, Verizon petitioned the FCC for permission to buy Alltel. Copps concurred in part and dissented in part, but in his statement (http://xrl.us/bmkh98) he criticized the commission for not putting its spectrum standards out for public comment.

Spectrum and cybersecurity are top priorities for Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate Commerce committees, committee aides said Thursday. On a panel at the Practising Law Institute conference, the aides said the House and Senate are close to consensus on a spectrum bill and agree on several areas related to cybersecurity. FCC process reform action will likely continue in the House, but Senate Democrats remain uninterested, the aides said.

Media and creative industry groups opposed a new bipartisan bill Thursday aimed at curbing online IP theft and copyright infringement. The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act offers a legislative alternative to the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act, giving the International Trade Commission (ITC) more power to target and sever funding to foreign websites that infringe copyrighted goods. But the MPAA said the legislation “fails to provide an effective way to target foreign rogue websites” and “goes easy on online piracy and counterfeiting.”

The Senate Commerce Committee unanimously approved FCC and FTC nominations, setting up votes by the full Senate before the chamber leaves for the year. Voting by voice off the floor in the President’s Room, the committee approved the nominations of Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai for the FCC and Jon Leibowitz and Maureen Ohlhausen for the FTC. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, threatened again to block the FCC nominations due to his ongoing concerns about the LightSquared network.

The Justice Department has seen Internet “bottlenecks,” justifying net neutrality actions, DOJ Acting Assistant Attorney General Sharis Pozen of the Antitrust Division said Wednesday at an antitrust oversight hearing in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Internet. She declined to name any of them. Also at the hearing, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz raised concerns with ICANN’s plan to roll out hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Pozen said nothing new on DOJ’s lawsuit to block the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile USA.