The FCC approved Tuesday by a unanimous vote a brief statement of principles on broadband. FCC Republicans Robert McDowell and Meredith Baker were sharply critical of some aspects of the plan itself, which was not put up for a vote before being submitted to Congress. Both found lots to like in the plan but said it must not be used as a lever for imposing more regulation. Agency officials said the FCC will offer a list in coming days of more than 40 rulemakings that will be begun as a follow-up to the plan.

Mediacom and Time Warner Cable have decided to phase out Sprint’s wholesale VoIP services and take their IP voice service operations in-house, the companies said. Cost is the primary reason that cable operators plan their own IP voice operations, companies and analysts said.

Maine regulators will spend three months reviewing a petition by FairPoint Communications to accept the company’s bankruptcy reorganization plan and to grant it relief from performance requirements. FairPoint petitioned March 5 for commission approval of its plan and to revise a 2008 order granting it the right to acquire Verizon’s phone network, the commission said.

TORONTO -- Despite a growing number of network monitoring tools at their disposal, Canadian cable operators admit they're still fumbling for ways to gauge and fix the plethora of digital signal problems that are bedeviling their best customers.

NASHVILLE -- The release of the National Broadband Plan signifies how “essential telecommunications is to our lives,” Jonathan Adelstein, the Rural Utilities Service administrator said in a CompTel keynote. “Broadband offers probably the greatest potential to advance our social and economic welfare since the rise of electricity. It’s that critical that everybody have it.” He credited the FCC and the White House with strong efforts toward broadband expansion. “It’s great to be part of an administration which has put broadband expansion at the very top of its agenda,” Adelstein said.

Governmental plans for broadband deployment in the U.S. and other countries should emphasize universal connectivity rather than a limited population’s reaching the highest speeds, David McGlade, Intelsat’s said Tuesday on a panel at the Satellite 2010 conference in National Harbor, Md. Speeds as high as 100 Mbps, although reachable, make sense only for the densest regions, he said.

Continued uncertainty in the launch market hurts the satellite industry’s ability to develop strategic business plans for investors, said Michael McDonnell, Intelsat’s chief financial officer. At the Satellite 2010 conference in National Harbor, Md., he joined other CFOs on a panel Monday in saying he hopes Sea Launch can emerge soon from bankruptcy to help keep the launch market competitive.

GENEVA -- Countries and the Internet registry community are discussing the possibilities of a global policy for reserving IPv6 addresses and of the ITU’s becoming an additional Regional Internet Registry, said participants at a group meeting about IPv6 that continues through Tuesday. The U.S. and some other participants said current mechanisms work well and can adapt to future needs.

NASHVILLE -- Much of what’s in the National Broadband Plan has been well-known, FCC Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett said as the CompTel convention got underway. FCC Strategic Planning Chief Paul de Sa said part of the plan’s value is “saying what’s part of our vision and what’s not part of our vision.” The commission will set a period to carry out the plan’s recommendations, to make the process open, Gillett said. The intent also is “to give the feeling of knowing when your stuff is going to be addressed,” she said. “People understand you can’t do everything on the first day of the National Broadband Plan.”

Verizon and Frontier laid out for the West Virginia Public Service Commission an extensive set of arguments in a filing late Friday summing up the companies’ case for approval of their proposed transaction. The deal would give Frontier ownership of Verizon landlines in 14 states. It ran into resistance last week when an administrative law judge with the Illinois Commerce Commission recommended against approval, saying consumers would be ill-served (CD March 11 p13). Illinois, West Virginia and Washington are the only states where approval of the transaction remains pending.