A consumer showcase of mobile DTV in Washington will begin May 3, the Open Mobile Video Coalition said Monday. Stations in the market have been broadcasting for weeks, and relatives and friends of employees of group members have been testing devices, but OMVC will begin recruiting consumers next week, said Executive Director Anne Schelle. The showcase will feature a mix of broadcast and cable programming, said Brandon Burgess, Ion Media’s CEO and the coalition’s chairman. “We're going to get some sober feedback about what works and what doesn’t work."

Even though the FCC delayed until April 26 the deadline for filing reply comments on its net neutrality rules, dozens of commenters weighed in last week. The original comment round was one of the most active ever, with the FCC cataloging more than 100,000 comments (CD Jan 19 p1). The early replies were filed mostly by smaller players on both sides of the question of whether the FCC should codify its current rules and expand the rules to cover wireless. The FCC saw similar divisions among grassroots groups in its first comment round in January.

Verizon representatives opposed proposed changes to the FCC’s in-market roaming exclusion in a series of meetings at the FCC. AT&T has also asked the commission not to eliminate the exclusion, in a series of meetings with FCC officials. The FCC is expected to consider an order that would pull back the exclusion at its April 21 meeting.

The FCC’s proposed network neutrality rules could have a negative effect on journalists, musicians, actors and others in creative industries, some attorneys said during a panel at an American Bar Association event. “The non-discrimination rules the FCC has proposed by their terms and on their face only apply to lawful content or lawfully distributed content,” said Markham Erickson of Holch and Erickson. If the content is unlawful, then the rules wouldn’t apply in the first place, he said. His clients think it potentially means “to either allow or mandate an ISP to block lawful content as long as it’s reasonable,” he said.

Spectrum inventory legislation is speeding to the finish line in the House and Senate. The Senate may soon pass by unanimous consent a bill (S-649) by Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., Senate aides told us Friday. And House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said late Thursday the House plans to vote Wednesday morning on a similar bill (HR-3125) by Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Also up for a House vote that day is a caller ID spoofing bill (HR-1258) by Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., that would ban manipulation of caller ID information.

Several Intelsat customers accused the company of anticompetitive behavior, ranging from refusing to provide capacity to companies directly competing for projects to retaliation and intimidation in FCC filings. Additional filings along the same lines are expected, said an industry executive. The companies making the allegations are Globecomm, Artel and CapRock. Spacenet also said it was concerned with the consolidation of satellite operators in the fixed satellite services (FSS) market.

Streamlining the process for access and use of infrastructure, also part of the recommendations in the National Broadband Plan, could be a key positive for Distributed Antenna System (DAS) operators, some of them large tower companies, company officials told us. But hurdles remain as operators gear up for 4G, they said.

The FCC Thursday put forward a list of 64 items for FCC action, along with time lines. The list includes most of what was recommended by the National Broadband Plan, released last month. The FCC had a similar list of items to work from when it implemented the 1996 Telecom Act, said a former FCC official. Eighth floor advisers were briefed on the plan Wednesday.

A new agreement on data protection standards for all data transfers between the EU and the U.S. is high on the agenda of the EU Commission, said Despina Vassiliadou from the EU Directorate General for Justice, Freedom and Security. Data transfers between the U.S. and the EU have led to heated debates in the European parliament for several years. Six different agreements have been negotiated between the EU and the U.S. since 2001 including for SWIFT banking data and the Passenger Name Record data transfers (PNR), which was challenged before the European Court and is being renegotiated, with a draft not well accepted by the EU Parliament.

Tribune and Schurz will share news content online under a deal to revamp Schurz’s websites using Tribune Interactive’s technology platform, the companies said. Combining content syndication with the technology platform helped convince Schurz of the deal said Kerry Oslund, vice president of digital. “There are lots of technology deals to be had out there, but none of them truly involve content,” he said. “When Tribune brought content to the table, along with technology, it was a differentiator that was just unmatchable."