The FCC’s “shot clock” proceeding “has been a dismal failure,” telco lawyer Jonathan Kramer told the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors conference in Washington Thursday. The so-called “shot clock” limited the time communities could spend reviewing mobile tower applications. “It just has not, in my opinion, served the public or the carriers,” he said. Kramer was responding to angry questions from NATOA attendees who wanted to know why, if communities had allegedly been stalling on mobile companies’ applications, there had been no further litigation since the shot clock idea was approved last year.

A House deal on net neutrality suffered a major setback Wednesday when House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, opposed a legislative effort by Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Waxman had been waiting for Republicans to sign off on his draft bill and didn’t introduce anything before our deadline. The House planned to adjourn Wednesday night, unless the Senate hadn’t wrapped up the continuing spending resolution, and it won’t return until after the November elections, a House leadership aide said. Committee members Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told us they don’t expect net neutrality action during the lame-duck session.

NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling declared victory Wednesday in the agency’s effort to manage the huge number of applications for grants that came in to the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and get the final awards out ahead of Thursday’s deadline. Strickling told us he regretted there wasn’t more money available for public safety networks but said the projects approved should help the government gather data for a national network. He said his agency will soon recommend the spectrum band to pair with the AWS-3 band for wireless broadband. Strickling was the keynoter at the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors annual meeting.

Requiring FM chips in cellphones is a “great idea,” Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., told the NAB radio show Wednesday. The retiring member of the House Commerce Committee also reemphasized his support for a commercial auction of the D-block and opposition to legislation imposing performance royalties on broadcasters. Earlier, departing Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said he doubted Congress would take up either the DISCLOSE Act or performance royalty legislation any time soon.

LightSquared said it will provide satellite phone service for healthcare providers in American Indian and Alaska Native communities through a partnership with the Indian Health Service. Participants may gain access to LightSquared’s wireless network once it’s built, depending on the program’s needs, a company spokesman said. LightSquared said it will donate up to 2,000 phones and provide free service through 2020.

The FCC seems unlikely to soon change retransmission consent rules as it considers a request for rulemaking by many multichannel video programming distributors, unless a contractual dispute between a TV station and an MVPD leads to an outage for subscribers, an analyst and an FCC aide suggested Wednesday. No executives at a USTelecom event on retransmission predicted quick commission action on the petition by 14 cable, satellite, telco-TV and nonprofit entities. That could change if there’s another instance in which MVPD customers can’t watch broadcasts because of a contractual dispute, as with the removal for less than a day of Disney’s WABC-TV New York from Cablevision’s lineup this year (CD March 9 p2), some said.

A New York measure by Sen. Brian Foley, D-Blue Point, would increase scrutiny of telecom mergers and “require a portion of the benefits” be “returned to the state’s ratepayers” in refunds or infrastructure investments. The bill would protect the consumers in light of service problems from telecom acquisitions, said James LaCarrubba, Foley’s chief of staff. It would cover any residential line acquisition or sale, he said. The measure is in the Senate after passing the Assembly, LaCarrubba said.

Talk at the FCC of Universal Service Fund reform to include broadband services has satellite companies concerned over the possibility of increased contribution rates without any subsidy in return, industry executives said. Under the current system, companies pay into the USF based on their interstate and international end-user telecom revenue and generally leave satellite companies out of the running for subsidies. If a future version of the USF includes broadband, as proposed by the FCC and tentatively named the Connect America Fund (CAF), satellite companies could be left paying for expansion of competing technologies again, executives said.

The NTIA awarded the last of grants under the Broadband Technologies Program, closing out awards for the program created by broad economic stimulus legislation that cleared Congress shortly after President Barack Obama took office last year. NTIA beat Thursday’s deadline to complete awards for the $4 billion program. The Rural Utilities Service will announce final awards by the same deadline for its part of the broadband stimulus program, spokesman Bart Kendrick said Tuesday. The agency was still finalizing the review of a few applications, he said.

House Democrats are now eyeing lame-duck passage of their net neutrality bill, two House staffers said Tuesday. House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., may introduce the measure Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, they said Tuesday afternoon. Republicans were still reviewing the net neutrality draft bill Tuesday afternoon, House and industry officials said. Observers don’t expect Congress to pass the bill, but it could send a message to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that he shouldn’t reclassify broadband under Title II of the Communications Act (CD Sept 28 p1).