Verizon Wireless confirmed long-time rumors that the iPhone 4 will be available for use on its network in early February. The device will be priced similarly to AT&T’s at $199 for a 16 GB phone and $299.99 for 32 GB with a two-year contract. The Rural Cellular Association praised the non-exclusive agreement, urging Verizon’s support in making popular devices like iPhone available to all RCA members within six months of their release.

The Internet backbone is becoming the next telecom battleground as the demand for online video throws traditional peering agreements out of whack, industry officials said. “There are constant discussions about how backbone providers, content providers and access providers learn to coexist in this new, video-driven world,” said Dennis Brouwer, senior vice president and general manager of backbone provider Savvis. “The thing that people don’t realize or tend to gloss over is that, depending on how those conversations go, it'll determine who’s going to invest, how much and where."

Draft FCC conditions on Internet video and network management in Comcast’s planned purchase of control in NBC Universal are the subject of close scrutiny from some commissioners, agency officials said Tuesday. They said Internet conditions in the draft Media Bureau order on the deal are getting significant attention in general on the eighth floor. The two Republican commissioners seem skeptical about whether all the Internet conditions are needed, said FCC and industry officials. Commissioners are also giving attention to arbitration conditions, the subject of a filing Tuesday by the two U.S. DBS companies, a commission official said.

The satellite industry must remain nimble in its innovation and work hard to come up with a “big new idea” to propel market growth, Intelsat CEO Dave McGlade said Tuesday at the Washington Space Business Roundtable. The big question is “how to get to that next level,” he said, using Sirius XM as an example of the right kind of idea. Venture capital, which most industries use as a vehicle for innovation, doesn’t “have a huge interest in our industry,” so a different vehicle may be necessary, he said. McGlade raised the idea of “maybe a new role” for an association.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he hopes to strike a balance between defending against cyberattacks and protecting privacy online. Speaking Tuesday at the Newseum, Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy said he will direct his committee to modernize the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). He said he also wants to take up intellectual property theft and finish cybersecurity legislation.

Performance rights legislation and hearings on the FCC’s net neutrality order will be the IP issues Congress will tackle in the next 90 to 180 days, congressional staffers said Tuesday. Worries have been expressed that ISPs will use copyright law as a justification for not carrying certain content -- in effect, as a way to skirt net neutrality rules. Meanwhile, Congress will abandon a comprehensive approach to overhauling the patent system in favor of small changes that have bipartisan support, the aides said.

Wireless “bill shock” is “not remotely as large” a problem as the FCC suggested in a rulemaking notice, CTIA said in a filing Monday at the commission. The rules proposed would cost carriers, and therefore consumers, “tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to put into practice,” the association warned. CTIA also hinted that a legal challenge is likely if the FCC moves forward on rules. The FCC at its October meeting proposed rules to require carriers to provide usage alerts and related information to help consumers avoid unexpected charges.

Carriers and others involved in online and wireless payments risk regulation as banks, legal and industry experts said Tuesday. A rulemaking by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network will be important in sorting out any reporting and credentialing requirements triggered by peer-to-peer mobile transfers using mobile applications, said Kate Kingberger, CTIA wireless Internet development director, on a webcast of the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association.

A draft Comcast-NBC Universal FCC condition could help a growing group of websites specializing in local news and often staffed by journalists who left traditional media raise their profile and increase their funding from other sources, said broadcast and Internet executives and professors studying the issue that we interviewed. Part of the proposed order that commissioners are studying this week on Comcast’s agreement to buy control of NBC Universal would require an additional four NBC TV stations owned by the combined company to enter into news-sharing arrangements with nonprofit sites, agency officials said. Proposing conditions, which agency officials said the commission would require, Comcast and NBC Universal cited KNSD San Diego’s arrangement with VoiceofSanDiego.org.

So-called bill shock regulations offer a “common-sense approach” to consumer protection “in an increasingly complex and frequently confusing wireless marketplace,” consumer and public interest groups said in a filing at the FCC. But the groups said the rules proposed by the FCC in October don’t go far enough. Comments were due Monday at the FCC under the commission’s revised timetable. CTIA and the major carriers hadn’t filed comments at our deadline.