The FCC has plenty of authority under the Communications Act to provide Universal Service Fund support for broadband deployment and move forward with other proceedings prompted by the National Broadband Plan, regardless of the decision last week in the Comcast v. FCC case by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, AT&T said in a filing Tuesday at the commission. The carrier asked the FCC to proceed with caution and reject advice that the decision means the commission must reregulate broadband as a Title II service.

Copyright industries’ view of service providers’ obligations would gut the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and return digital service to the “climate of uncertainty” that prevailed before the 1998 law, several groups said Tuesday in a friend-of-the-court filing in the Viacom-YouTube case. Content owners’ claim that “red flag” knowledge of infringement bars use of the safe harbor goes against the DMCA’s careful phrasing, groups said. The companies have filed motions for summary judgment (CD March 19 p8).

LAS VEGAS -- Broadcasters attacked recommendations in the FCC’s broadband plan to reallocate some of the TV band for mobile wireless use. “We've been trying to fight this for a long time and up until the publication of the National Broadband Plan, all we've had to go up against is rhetoric,” said Robert Hubbard, Association of Maximum Service TV chairman and Hubbard Broadcasting CEO. Now that broadcasters have had an opportunity to read the plan, it’s clear the details and rhetoric don’t match, he said.

An initiative to accelerate interoperability of the next release of WiMAX technology, WiMAX 2, is expected to deliver peak rates of more than 300 Mbps, comparable to LTE Advanced’s speeds, said Mohammad Shakouri, vice president of the WiMAX Forum. The effort, launched Sunday, is backed by WiMAX companies like Sprint Nextel, Clearwire, Motorola, Samsung, Intel and ZTE.

Twenty-one economists, including academics from universities across the U.S., filed a paper Monday at the FCC concluding that the economic evidence doesn’t justify the net neutrality rules the commission is considering. The paper builds on qualms expressed by Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Baker, the rule opponents on the FCC.

Motorola weighed in against a proposal in the National Broadband Plan to sell the 700 MHz D-block in an upcoming auction rather than reallocating the spectrum directly to public safety. The plan’s approach on a national interoperable network for public safety “falls short in several ways,” said Motorola, the latest party to express reservations about the plan.

A draft FCC rulemaking notice about CableCARDs probably will be changed before a vote scheduled for April 21 to deal with large cable systems’ use of HD-only set-top boxes, commission officials said Monday. The draft Media Bureau notice that’s circulating proposes exempting systems with 552 MHz or less activated capacity from a requirement that boxes use separate security and navigation functions for devices that can handle HD but not more advanced functions (CD April 6 p2). The NCTA and large cable operators sought a wider HD box exemption in recent ex parte meetings, filings in docket 97-80 show.

LAS VEGAS -- Most people who viewed 3D telecasts or highlight reels of Masters golf came away so impressed that they think the jump to 3D from HD will “be a bigger transition than it was from SD to HD,” said Dan Holden, chief scientist at the Comcast Media Center in Centennial, Colo. At the NAB Show’s Broadcast Engineering Conference on Saturday, he said Comcast plans to deliver 3D content in an “over-under” format at half the resolution per eye of full HD, which won’t require adding bandwidth. He thinks most other cable companies will do the same, he said.

Changes in the telecom industry spurred a partnership between the Telecommunications Industry Association and the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies, which was announced Monday, OPASTCO President John Rose said in an interview. “We want to get outside of being just a carrier [association]. Because of the future of IP networks we must broaden our base of who we work with.” The groups have signed a “friendship agreement” aimed at helping to inform their members and to collaborate on the conventions and trade shows of each association, he said. That “allows us to exchange ideas and information and understand each other’s policies and positions,” said TIA President Grant Seiffert. TIA has similar partnerships with the CEA and other organizations, he said.

LAS VEGAS -- The FCC’s broadband plan would “yank away” more than one-third of the spectrum used by TV and radio stations and would represent a “great spectrum grab,” NAB President Gordon Smith said in his first speech at an NAB convention. “This plan appears to be an example of unnecessary government intervention when technology in the marketplace is already working through the issue,” he said. With the many advances coming soon to wireless communications, “you have to ask what makes this spectrum grab -- and the destruction and loss of innovation it would cause -- really necessary."