SAN DIEGO -- The future role of the set-top box, standards for connected TV and preserving the traditional TV viewing experience while expanding the universe of TV apps were key topics at the “Connected TV Platforms” panel at the CEA Industry Forum Wednesday. In a world that’s becoming increasingly untethered, the question of whether the set-top box will be “disintermediated” by Internet delivery of TV programming was a recurring question.

Advertising buyers should bar discrimination against media companies they purchase ads from, the group representing such agencies recommended. The recommendation that members of the American Association of Advertising Agencies adopt a non-discrimination policy in picking vendors, and let those that feel they've been discriminated against complain about alleged violations, comes after the 4As worked for years on such an initiative, industry officials said. In 2007 the FCC banned discrimination in broadcast advertising (CD March 7/08 p9). The commission’s reach doesn’t go beyond radio and TV stations, and so the ban on so-called non-urban or non-Hispanic terms in contracts can’t be enforced for the companies that buy commercials and the agencies they use to make those purchases.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, introduced legislation Wednesday to stem online theft of intellectual property, to a mixed reception from industry stakeholders and copyright advocates. Smith said the Stop Online Piracy Act, HR-3261, promotes American jobs by giving law enforcement and copyright holders more tools to bring action against infringing websites. Opposition groups jumped on Smith’s bill, saying it would impose unfair mandates and federal regulation on the computer and Internet industries.

Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., prefers a comprehensive bill, rather than one that is piecemeal, to establish a cybersecurity policy, he said Wednesday at a Brookings Institution event: “I'd like to see a major piece of legislation make it through the Congress this year.” However, “I don’t know how realistic that is,” said Langevin, who co-chairs the House Cybersecurity Caucus and formerly chaired the House Homeland Cybersecurity Subcommittee: “We're waiting to see what the Senate will do.” The important thing is to get something done this year, he added.

Public safety believes it has enough GOP votes on the House Communications Subcommittee to approve an amendment there that would give them the 700 MHz D-block, a top Public Safety Alliance official said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. Dick Mirgon, the immediate past president of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, and John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted urged Commerce Committee leaders to stop delaying a spectrum markup in the Communications Subcommittee. “There is no reason” for the messing around that’s going on with this, Walsh said.

The Justice Department and FCC worked very closely together to review Comcast’s purchase of control in NBCUniversal, approved by the government and completed in January, officials from both agencies said during an American Bar Association webcast Wednesday. They laid out some behind-the-scenes interagency work in reviewing the multibillion-dollar deal, with collaboration that a lawyer for Comcast called “unprecedented.” Justice continues oversight of the joint venture Comcast and NBCUniversal created with former NBCU parent General Electric to house all of their programming assets. There are regular meetings of a committee overseeing Comcast’s compliance with terms of the department’s antitrust settlement with the company. That’s according to committee member and DOJ Antitrust Division attorney Yvette Tarlov.

Sprint Nextel reduced its net loss to $301 million in Q3 from $911 million it lost a year ago, and signed a non-binding cooperation agreement with Clearwire to work on specifications for the LTE network, CEO Dan Hesse said during a conference call Wednesday. Executives expect to sell one million iPhones in Q4 and predicted $7 billion to $8 billion in value from Sprint’s four-year contract with Apple.

SAN FRANCISCO -- An official of the U.S. government’s international-media agency explained Wednesday to a high-tech policy audience facts of Washington life and the frustrations they can produce. “It takes … a year to get 10,000 bucks out the door” for proxy-server technology to get around foreign blocking of the government’s news and views sites, said Michael Meehan, a public relations executive, member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and chairman of its Global Internet Freedom Committee.

The New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission is working with the state legislature on appropriate retail regulations for phone companies, said Katherine Bailey, telecom director with the agency. Among the issues under consideration is regulatory treatment for ILECs like FairPoint, which had service quality issues after it took over Verizon’s northern New England landlines in 2009, she told us. The company, which claimed it had made progress improving service quality, is asking regulators and legislators in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont to relax ILEC regulation, officials said.

AT&T is clinging “to an outdated and unworkable conception of intercarrier compensation” when it lobbies against cable operators’ request to allow CLECs to charge the same access rates as ILECs even when the CLECs don’t terminate calls, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable said in a letter filed Monday (CD Oct 24 p6). The dispute between the two companies flared up late last week, as the sunshine rules took effect and closed lobbying on the pending Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation system order. AT&T was trying “to maintain ILEC-centric rules,” but is striving “mightily to obscure a simple, fundamental point,” the cable companies said.