Core Communications appealed the FCC’s Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation order Friday. The USF/ICC appeal is apparently the first legal challenge to the commission’s USF overhaul (CD Oct 28 p1). But it will not be the last, telecom experts have predicted. It was filed in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. It’s a mere two pages.

A spectrum venture of three cable companies agreed to sell 122 AWS licenses to Verizon Wireless for $3.6 billion, the companies said Friday. SpectrumCo is a joint venture of Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, and the licenses cover 259 million POPs. The consortium was the third-highest bidder in the AWS-1 auction, which ended in September 2006, behind only T-Mobile and Verizon. The deal likely faces pushback similar to that aimed at AT&T for its proposed buy of 700 MHz spectrum from Qualcomm, a smaller deal now stalled at the commission. (See story in this issue.)

Smaller TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors get a break from having to test the noise levels of ads that others insert into shows they carry. MVPDs with fewer than 400,000 subscribers and TV stations with annual sales below $14 million won’t need to regularly test the volume levels of all ads, and only monitor those they insert into programming. Bigger stations and systems would need to do testing to ensure programming from national cable channels or broadcast networks meets the Advanced TV Systems Committee’s A/85 recommended practice for keeping ads not much louder than the regular programming they appear within.

AT&T’s proposed buy of 700 MHz spectrum licenses from Qualcomm faces hurdles, and possibly got more complicated Friday with the announcement that Verizon Wireless agreed to buy 122 AWS licenses from SpectrumCo, the cable consortium. The AT&T/Qualcomm order is still in the commission’s electronic voting system. Chairman Julius Genachowski has voted for the item and Commissioner Robert McDowell is likely to as well. But Genachowski would still need another vote from Commissioners Michael Copps or Mignon Clyburn. It isn’t clear either is prepared to vote yes, FCC officials said.

Media consolidation has taken a toll on the quality of journalism, FCC officials and media professionals said. Technological advances have given people better access to information, but much of that information isn’t as in-depth and unique to various communities as it used to be, said FCC Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps and other media professionals Thursday at a forum in Atlanta.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, may add spectrum auction authority to a larger spending package that’s to be voted on this week on the House floor, a Boehner spokesman told us Friday. Boehner is discussing using spectrum as a “pay-for” for a payroll tax extension, the yearly pay correction for doctors serving Medicare patients and other items in the package, the spokesman said. If the spectrum proposal goes straight to the floor, it would skip a vote by the full Commerce Committee that had also been expected for this week. The House Communications Subcommittee approved draft spectrum legislation on Thursday (CD Dec 2 p1) amid objections by Democrats.

The FCC will soon open a proceeding taking off from BART’s adoption of a policy for cutoffs of wireless service, a commission official said Friday. The Wireless and Public Safety bureaus and the general counsel have been involved in the issue and will continue to be, the official said in an interview. He wouldn’t specify the nature of the proceeding or when the notice might be issued. And he wouldn’t say whether it would wrap in the handling of petitions that have challenged a shutdown by BART in August, before it had a policy.

Spectrum legislation survived a lengthy House Communications Subcommittee markup in which the political parties squabbled over many details of the complicated bill. The subcommittee voted 17-6 to approve the GOP draft bill with amendments. Every Democrat voted no except Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga. The approved version would authorize voluntary incentive auctions and give public safety the 700 MHz D-block and $6.5 billion for a national wireless broadband network. The draft would not let the FCC provide for unlicensed use spectrum freed up by incentive auctions. States and a private company would play a large role in governance of the public safety network. And the bill would limit FCC authority to make rules in auctions.

Panelists differed on regulatory models for the future federal/state relationship over broadband and, during a conference call by the National Regulatory Research Institute Thursday, saw difficulties for federal regulators in classifying VoIP as a telecom service.

A top AT&T official accused FCC staff in comments released by the company Thursday of not giving the company’s proposed buy of T-Mobile a fair review. The statement by Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi came two days after the FCC released a staff memo on the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, while also allowing AT&T and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom to withdraw their merger application.