The FCC’s meeting room was unusually cold Thursday, cold enough that Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said from the podium she “literally” could not feel her own feet. “It’s cold in here,” said Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. “That’s not a metaphor for anything. But it is cold in here."

The FCC is working on a new set of principles to help guide companies as the agency prepares to regulate net neutrality disputes on a case-by-case basis, Chairman Tom Wheeler confirmed in a Q-and-A session with reporters after Thursday’s commission meeting (see related stories in this issue). The FCC will “preserve and protect the open Internet,” Wheeler said. In a “relatively short time,” the agency will be “stepping out to put some more flesh around those basic principles,” he said. In response to a question about how the FCC would address due process concerns by providing potential guidance to ISPs, he said: “We will have some specifics coming out on this shortly” that will address those issues. Wheeler said again (CD Jan 29 p1) that he planned to accept the “invitation” offered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to regulate Internet disputes. He declined to elaborate on whether the commission would rely on Section 706 of the Communications Act, or proceed with Title II reclassification that would let it impose common carrier obligations. The agency will use “all of the tools in the toolbox,” and will “be forthcoming with our plan and rationale therefore shortly,” Wheeler said. The plan would be “addressing the construct for how we go forward, and that will use all of the vehicles at the agency,” Wheeler said. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said at a Minority Media and Telecom Council event earlier this month (CD Jan 17 p5) that she would support Wheeler as he lays out the next steps on a “high-level” set of principles to provide guidance to companies and consumers. Free Press Thursday delivered to the FCC a petition with more than 1 million signatures urging the agency to restore net neutrality (http://bit.ly/1eAD52r). “To preserve the open Internet, the FCC must reclassify the transmission component of broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service,” the petition said. “One of the reasons that Internet has to stay open is that it enables people to organize and express themselves to the government” and “therefore enables the government to do a better job,” Wheeler said in response to a question about that petition. “If there are a million people, that’s boffo! We want to hear from those million people.”

The FCC’s spectrum auction update should go beyond dates and timelines and dig into the substantive issues on the auction, said NAB Executive Vice President-Strategic Planning Rick Kaplan in a blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1aFEKrW). The time is “ripe” for FCC staff to reveal its approach to “hotly contested topics” on the auction, Kaplan said. NAB would like the commission to announce early which broadcasters will receive protection in the repacking, relocation and protection procedures for translators and low-power TV, and the eligibility constraints placed on forward auction bidders. The commission should also announce that all changes to repacking software OET-69 will be dropped, and form an expert group to evaluate the repacking software, he said. The FCC should also release more information about its work in resolving spectrum issues along the Canadian and Mexican borders, Kaplan said. Such a release would “not merely list the number of meetings with Canada and Mexico; but rather, will detail how the staff intends to proceed if it has no agreement in place with one or both countries,” he said. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told lawmakers he doesn’t expect to have such agreements, Kaplan said. “Assuming that it is even lawful to proceed with the auction without these agreements (and NAB believes it is not), how will a lack of meaningful coordination affect the auction and the amount of spectrum recovered across the country?” Kaplan asked. The update should also include updates from FCC staffers on their current thinking on the 600 MHz band plan and their plans for wireless microphones, and the FCC should release a public notice on co-channel interference, Kaplan said. Wheeler should also “publicly affirm” that the FCC won’t “take actions to harm broadcasters in unrelated proceedings to encourage participation in the auction,” Kaplan said. “If there was ever a time the Commission needed to develop trust with broadcasters, that time is now,” said the blog post.

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology asked for supplemental comment on a methodology for predicting potential interference between broadcast TV and licensed wireless services in the incentive auction. In response to the NPRM and the 600 MHz band plan supplemental public notice, some commenters raised concerns about co-channel and adjacent-channel interference between TV and wireless services in nearby markets as a result of accommodating market variation, OET said Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1ffr6KP). “Some commenters proposed separation distances between the two services. The most common approach commenters propose is to use a pre-defined separation distance between TV and mobile service areas. Commenters proposed distances that varied significantly -- ranging from 100 kilometers to 500 kilometers -- and generally provided limited technical analysis in support of these proposals.” Comments are due Feb. 28. Thursday’s FCC meeting will hear an update on the incentive auction. (See separate report in this issue.)

Five technology companies dropped motions jointly filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asking permission to release more data about FISC orders, said documents filed Monday with the FISC (http://1.usa.gov/M9TQub). The companies -- Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Yahoo -- received permission from the Justice Department Monday to release some information about how many national security orders they receive, and the number of customer accounts targeted with those orders (CD Jan 28 p10). The five companies said in a joint statement that they believe “the public has a right to know about the volume and type of national security requests we receive. We're pleased the Department of Justice has agreed that we and other providers can disclose this information.” The companies said they'll “continue to encourage Congress to take additional steps to address all of the reforms we believe are needed.” Privacy advocates welcomed the decision, in news releases after the administration’s announcement, but said the government could go further. “This is a victory for transparency and a critical step toward reining in excessive government surveillance,” said Alex Abdo, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project (http://bit.ly/MmGnQB). “Companies must be allowed to report basic information about what they're giving the government so that Americans can decide for themselves whether the NSA’s spying has gone too far.” The ACLU and four other consumer advocates -- the Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, First Amendment Coalition and TechFreedom -- filed an amicus brief to the FISC in support of the tech companies’ motions. TechFreedom President Berin Szoka wants the government to go further, he said (http://bit.ly/1k2fgWe). He said the concessions “go just far enough” so President Barack Obama can point to examples of specific surveillance reform in Tuesday’s State of the Union address “without providing Americans the full transparency we need to have a rational debate about balancing national security with privacy.” Szoka pointed to the six-month delay for reporting data, the two-year delay for reporting FISC data and the requirements that the reporting be done in ranges of 1,000: “The transparency allowed by the agreement will paint only a picture of surveillance in the broadest of brush strokes.” Abdo agreed that “even more is needed” on transparency. “Congress should require the government to publish basic information about the full extent of its surveillance,” he said, “including the significant amount of spying that happens without the tech companies’ involvement."

Iridium again said FCC’s mobile hearing aid compatibility rules aren’t needed or appropriate for the mobile satellite services industry. The company’s system has unique characteristics that include a limited amount of unpaired L-band spectrum in which it conducts both uplink and downlink operations, a truly global communications system covering the entire earth and “handset distribution through third party vendors and no direct to consumer sales,” it said, reporting in docket 07-250 on a meeting of company lawyers with acting Chief Roger Sherman and others in the Wireless Bureau (http://bit.ly/1edRhSH). There’s nothing in the record of the current proceeding to support a determination by the FCC that application of HAC obligations to non-ancillary terrestrial component MSS would be technologically feasible, it said. The costs and complexities inherent in developing new HAC-compliant non-ATC MSS devices “could cause difficulties in successfully marketing the devices,” it said.

The FCC filing last week in LightSquared’s bankruptcy proceeding likely wasn’t intended to shut the door on the company, said a Medley Global Advisors analyst. The commission said it’s not in a position to confirm whether it can complete the work required to approve LightSquared’s preferred bankruptcy exit plan by Dec. 31 (CD Jan 22 p6). “More likely, the FCC indicated it was keeping the door open (even if narrowly) without predicting which way it might swing in the future,” said analyst Jeff Silva in a research note. The statement, taken in isolation, was arguably not the ideal message LightSquared and its $4 billion reorganization backers wanted in front of the bankruptcy judge so late in the game, he said. “But neither was it necessarily lethal for LightSquared.” That the FCC, NTIA and other agencies in the Obama administration have chosen to remain engaged on the company “suggests some level of political will exists to contemplate reinstatement of LightSquared’s license” and ancillary terrestrial component waiver, he said.

Correction: Ex-Commerce Department General Counsel Cameron Kerry is now affiliated, in visiting capacities, with the Brookings Institution and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab (CD Jan 28 p7).

A move to give states USF money in line with what they pay in to the fund is understandable, but has some troubling implications, said Aspen Institute Fellow Blair Levin Monday in remarks to the Alaska Telephone Association. Levin reacted to legislation introduced in December by Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., which would ensure rural states get back 75 cents of every dollar they pay into the fund (http://1.usa.gov/M6dTts). “The troubling part is that if Senators look at the issue through the lens of their own state and only try to solve for the question of how to get their state more money or find a formula that works best for their own state, we will never improve Universal Service,” Levin said in prepared remarks. “Indeed, it is unlikely that Universal Service will survive, unless, like mythical Lake Woebegone, we can create a situation in which all states are above average in obtaining USF support.” The House Republican leadership is proposing to rewrite the Telecom Act, noted Levin, a Democrat and primary author of the FCC’s 2010 National Broadband Plan: “If the Republicans take the Senate, delivering a bill whose purpose will be dramatic deregulation is not unthinkable.”

Municipal broadband systems typically charge consumers substantially more than their private-sector rivals for similar triple-play offerings, the Phoenix Center found in a study released Monday (http://bit.ly/1mPncJN). “The evidence suggests that the government’s provision of broadband services does not lead to lower prices,” said Phoenix Center Chief Economist George Ford, in a statement. “While municipal entry may serve valid purposes, lower prices do not appear to be one of them.” The competitive price for a standard triple-play service is about $100 in the U.S., and “the expansion of municipal provision of broadband service won’t alone alter that reality,” the paper said. It’s also not possible to conclude that a lower price implies better consumer welfare, the paper said. The study said it sought to “correct the errors” in a Consumer Federation of America report urging governments to “intervene to protect the public” by building more municipal networks to compete with private-sector providers.