China Telecom Americas wants to become a mobile virtual network provider in the U.S. through wholesale partnership, CEO Donald Tan said in an interview. The largest international subsidiary of China Telecom isn’t considering acquisition opportunities now, Tan said. Meanwhile, the House Intelligence Committee will investigate security threats posed by Chinese telecom companies working in the U.S. The probe includes everything related to the cellular supply chain but the scope may narrow later, a committee spokeswoman said.

The FCC’s proposed rules for broadband outage reporting “would go too far” and be too “burdensome,” NTCA and OPASTCO said in a letter posted to docket 11-82. The rural associations differed with the rest of industry by supporting “certain reasonable outage reporting requirements on interconnected VoIP.” NTCA and OPASTCO said this was a “significant” departure from the rest of industry (CD Nov 15 p3).

The FTC is making an effort to build its expertise on antitrust policy and enforcement concerning the technology industry, said Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “As the American economy and FTC portfolio become more and more focused on technology and e-commerce, our need for expertise is greater still,” he said Thursday during a Washington forum by the American Bar Association Antitrust Law Section. Technological platforms have come to play a central role in the economy, he said: Although they create great value, they raise “complex consumer protection and competition issues."

SAN FRANCISCO -- The legal system must recognize information law as a cohesive field crossing several traditional doctrines and the world’s many jurisdictions, to lay a good foundation for a long era of new rules supporting innovation, said Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel. “If you get that foundation wrong, the house is going to go off in a funky direction,” he said at the Corporate Counsel West Coast Conference. And in-house lawyers should stop being largely naysayers and become agents of change with regulators and those at other companies in addition to within their own, he said.

ATLANTA -- Taking its cue from such major cable operators as Cablevision Systems and Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications intends to start streaming live TV channels to iPads and possibly other computer tablets in subscribers’ homes before the year’s end.

The FCC is considering capping the Link Up program, requiring what it’s calling “full certification” that customers are actually poor and may require Lifeline vendors to offer bundled broadband and voice service, telecom officials said. Staff is trying to finish an order on Lifeline for the December meeting and lobbyists are flooding the eighth floor hoping to prevent a cap, certification and bundling requirements, ex parte notices in docket 11-42 showed.

Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., has recurring concerns about whether the FCC’s Universal Service Fund order, approved last month, does enough to spur the growth of wireless (CD Oct 28 p1), the vice chairman of the House Communications Subcommittee said Wednesday at a National Journal conference on the future of technology. Spectrum and regulatory reform largely dominated the discussions.

Many broadcasters and all wireless companies are sitting out a plan (CD Oct 21 p2) by some stations to act as Internet backhaul providers for carriers, our survey of those industries found. No carrier has agreed to join the efforts of the Coalition for Free TV and Broadband, though several have expressed an interest in the technology, members said. They said the coalition has been adding some broadcasters, including the owner of five stations in North Carolina, and the operator of another 36 outlets is likely to join. Other executives and engineers who consult for the TV industry said the technology changes needed for stations to become ISPs of a sort would be expensive. They're skeptical that what they called an initiative undertaken at a late date will pick up enough momentum to either delay the auction of TV stations’ channels the FCC wants to hold or gain carrier backing.

An amendment introduced Wednesday by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., would prevent the FCC from using any appropriated funds to allow LightSquared to begin terrestrial service. The amendment would be attached to the Financial Services and Government Affairs Appropriations Bill which is before the Senate. The amendment is similar to an amendment to a companion bill introduced in the House of Representatives earlier this year (CD June 24 p1).

The GOP overcame Democratic opposition to FCC process reform proposals, approving two bills Wednesday in the House Communications Subcommittee. On a party line vote, the subcommittee voted 14-9 on HR-3309, which requires rulemaking shot clocks, cost-benefit analyses and a variety of other process changes. However, Democrats supported HR-3310, a bill that would consolidate many FCC reports and eliminate others. The subcommittee approved that bill by voice vote but said more work needs to be done before the next markup in the full committee.