LTE’s real benefits kick in when a large chunk of spectrum is available, Neville Ray, T-Mobile USA chief technology officer, said at a Wells Fargo Securities investor conference Wednesday. The carrier will move to LTE eventually, but the technology still faces challenges, he said.

"Telco issues will have a higher profile” next Congress than they have in the current one, Ranking Member Joe Barton, R-Texas, of the House Commerce Committee said after a speech Wednesday at the Heritage Foundation. He told us he’s open to hearings to find bipartisan consensus for rewriting the Telecom Act. But if the GOP allows Barton to be committee chairman, repealing the healthcare reform law would be his immediate priority, he said.

SAN FRANCISCO -- As TV programmers online increasingly seek subscription revenue from Internet video distributors, the industry has overlooked the importance of ads to financing the development of premium content, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said Wednesday. For content owners “the leading source of how you get a return on your investment is through advertising,” he said at the NewTeeVee Live conference. “That’s going to play a very big role in terms of the future of television.” So Hulu is working on offering better ad options for marketers and consumers, he said. The company is on track to sell more than $240 million in ads in 2010, up from $108 million last year and $25 million in 2008, Kilar said. He declined to comment on the prospects for an initial public offering by Hulu.

Canada’s privacy commissioner said Wednesday she expects to seek increased enforcement authority next year. “I am probably going to ask for greater powers, in terms of having new tools,” Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said on an American Bar Association teleconference. She provided few specifics. She did say that “some of us” privacy authorities only “talk a good talk” on enforcement.

The FCC’s order Friday that requires nomadic VoIP providers to pay into state Universal Service Funds and federal USF could lead to more regulatory activities in some states, officials said in interviews. The order (CD Nov 8 p2) had been expected since September, when Kansas and Nebraska amended their petition to the FCC by deleting language that would have allowed states to assess fees retroactively.

Justices indicated skepticism over AT&T’s position Tuesday, as the Supreme Court heard oral argument over whether a state can prohibit wireless contracts that allow only arbitration, not class action lawsuits. Conventional wisdom, some observers say, has been that the court, which is generally perceived as pro-business, would side with AT&T in a decision with implications well beyond the telecom sector. But Andrew Pincus, attorney for AT&T, faced many more pointed questions than the attorney for the California couple who brought the case,

The FCC will set a precedent however it decides a complaint that a new cartoon on a Viacom channel violates children’s media rules because it’s based on characters used elsewhere to advertise athletic shoes, supporters and critics of the show agreed in interviews and recent filings. Those seeking commission approval of a petition for declaratory ruling on the show Zevo-3, which began airing Oct. 11 on the Nicktoons channel, believe that granting the request (CD Oct 26 p5) would prevent any further shows from being based entirely on characters that sell goods in other media venues. Opponents of the petition said its approval would not only stop future shows but also limit current ones.

GOP and tea party movement gains from the election could mean more support for a commercial auction of the 700 MHz D-block, officials of conservative think tanks said in interviews. Giving the D-block away to public safety would not be consistent with the cost-cutting platform that many winning GOP candidates ran on, they said. Building a national interoperable public safety network is expected to be a key issue for Congress in 2011, which will mark the 10-year anniversary of 9/11.

The leverage broadcasters enjoy in retransmission consent negotiations with pay-TV distributors comes from the popular content they have, not because of the FCC license that stations operate under, CBS Chief Financial Officer Joseph Iannello said Tuesday. His comments at a Wells Fargo conference came in reaction to assertions by an investor that broadcasters would have no leverage without their licenses. “I don’t need the FCC license to have the negotiation,” Iannello said. It’s no different from when a cable network negotiates with a distributor, he said. But if distributors “want to charge your customer and not pay us, that business model is gone."

BEIJING -- Preparing for the IPv6 rollout is a pressing issue in China, Chinese telecom operators and a representative of the China Internet Network Information Center said at the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting Monday. IPv4 addresses are scarce, said Zhao Huiling, research vice president of China Telecom. China Telecom is “facing a gap of 20 million IPv4 addresses,” Zhao said in what she called personal comments.