The FCC and Food and Drug Administration signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at improving information exchange between the two and streamlining collaboration, the agencies said. The MOU was unveiled at the start of two days of discussions at the commission during a joint meeting with the FDA on mobile health (mhealth) issues. The two agencies also released a joint statement on wireless medical devices. The FCC National Broadband Plan, released in March, dedicated a chapter to healthcare issues. At its July meeting, the FCC began a rulemaking on a program that would provide up to $400 million per year on health connectivity.

The Senate may hotline a disabilities communications bill in a unanimous consent vote as soon as Tuesday, a Senate staffer told us. The House was expected to pass its own version Monday night, industry officials said. The House considered HR-3101 in the afternoon, but postponed votes until after our deadline. Monday was the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Career FCC staffers don’t support a wide-ranging deal between the two most active filers in a 2003 auction of translator stations to resolve a dispute between many operators of the facilities and low-power FM (LPFM) stations, said commission and industry officials. They said Media Bureau officials recently said they won’t move to codify a memorandum of understanding in an existing draft order on Auction No. 83. The agreement was submitted this month by Prometheus Radio Project, representing low-power FM stations, and Educational Media Foundation (EMF), which runs several hundred translators, with the support of two other major applicants for translators in the filing window (CD July 12 p10). Representatives of Prometheus and EMF said they will need to take another look at the agreement if the bureau doesn’t codify it.

The Copyright Office exempted “ripping” short snippets of video for remixes and “jailbreaking” cellphones from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s ban on circumvention of rights-protection technologies. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had requested the exemptions, called the decision Monday a victory for fair use. The law requires a review every three years of uses that should get three-year exemptions.

Internet Protocol networks are the way forward for emergency-services providers, said IPv6 Forum President Latif Ladid. Though some in public safety consider additional spectrum the answer, that would merely add access and connectivity without making it easier for services to talk to each other, he said in an interview Monday. But Jeppe Jepsen, Motorola’s director of international business relations and a board member of Europe’s Terrestrial Trunked Radio Association (TETRA), said wireless networks aren’t resilient or secure enough to deliver the required services.

Wireless issues have gotten some of the most attention at various meetings held by FCC Chief of Staff Eddie Lazarus with industry to discuss a possible legislative proposal for giving the commission authority over broadband, said people who attended the meetings or spoke to others who did. There seems to be more agreement among agency officials and meeting attendees on applying net neutrality rules to wireline broadband, though some issues remain unresolved, they said. Net neutrality advocates and opponents appear to agree on ISP privacy conditions and transparency on network practices, industry and public-interest group lawyers said.

Rural wireless carriers didn’t endorse but some may be open to Universal Service Fund overhaul legislation by House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb. The bill (HR-5828) is backed by major wireline associations, the cable industry and AT&T and Verizon (CD July 23 p1). Some expected a competitive bidding rule to alienate rural wireless carriers that compete for USF dollars as competitive eligible telecommunications carriers. Wireless CETCs have concerns, but believe Boucher and Terry listened hard to all stakeholders and came up with a “solid compromise,” said Rural Telecommunication Group General Counsel Carri Bennet.

Verizon had a Q2 loss of $198 million versus a profit of $1.48 billion a year earlier, mostly due to a $2.3 billion charge for job cuts. The company continues to look at tiered data pricing options as it moves to LTE, Chief Financial Officer John Killian said on a conference call Friday. Verizon’s headcount is down by nearly 25,000, to 210,000 at the end of the quarter.

There’s no “deep divide” between the FCC and many in public safety, just a “spirited discussion” on the future of a national wireless broadband network, APCO President Richard Mirgon said on an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators to air this weekend. Former FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Ed Thomas said on the program that the disagreement could hurt chances of Congress’s approving funding for the network soon.

Phone and cable companies are pulling out all the stops to defend their markets and defeat net neutrality rules, ColorOfChange.org Executive Director James Rucker said Thursday. At a panel on broadband at the Netroots Nation conference, attended by liberal activists from across the U.S., he called net neutrality a “modern civil rights issue.”