The FCC likely will request about ten media ownership studies from outside experts around the time it releases the forthcoming notice of inquiry (CD April 16 p3) formally starting the quadrennial review mandated by Congress for 2010, agency officials said. With revisions to the draft notice by commissioners’ offices nearing an end, it could be released within a week but may take longer, they said. The latest edition of the draft item, circulated last week, has many changes but none deemed likely to alter the course of the inquiry, they said.

Cable operators and programmers may look for a new vehicle to challenge rules granting mandatory cable carriage to TV stations, after the Supreme Court declined to hear Cablevision’s challenge to those rules in the context of a market modification proceeding, industry lawyers said. The Supreme Court Monday denied Cablevision’s petition for certiorari in Cablevision v. FCC without elaborating. Finding a new avenue to bring the rules back before the high court may not be easy, lawyers said.

Philips Healthcare Systems and the Land Mobile Communications Council disagreed sharply over whether the FCC should allow Wireless Medical Telemetry Service (WMTS) devices to operate on a secondary basis in the parts of the 1427-1432 MHz band not set aside for medical telemetry. On a second question that the Wireless and Public Safety bureaus also sought comments on in a March 16 notice, there was general support for a proposal by the Association of American Railroads that its members be allowed to operate end-of-train telemetry devices at transmit power of up to 8 watts.

The long-awaited Interphone study, looking at whether heavy cellphone use causes central nervous system tumors, produced no conclusive results, according to a report to be released Tuesday in Geneva. Wireless industry groups said the results largely confirm what other studies have shown.

LOS ANGELES -- Driven largely by competition from big telcos like AT&T and Verizon, large cable operators now offer DOCSIS 3.0 wideband service across most of North America. Speaking at the NCTA show last week, engineering executives from five major U.S. and Canadian cable companies cited progress in upgrading cable networks for DOCSIS 3.0 service, which enables data downstream speeds of 100 Mbps or more through virtual channel-bonding. Some plan to start leveraging DOCSIS 3.0 for faster data upstream speeds for the first time.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A radio station executive offered a bleak outlook Monday for his industry against Internet radio, and the founder of webcaster Pandora said the arrival of online programming in car dashes threatens Sirius XM. To illustrate a point about how far behind the curve terrestrial radio is in technology, Joe Barham, music director of KSAN(FM) San Francisco, asked how many in the audience at the SF MusicTech Summit had heard of HD Radio, which he called the industry’s big advance in recent years. Hardly any at the music technology conference had, and even fewer had listened to it.

In deciding to approve the Frontier/Verizon deal in West Virginia, the last state to weigh in on the transaction, its Public Service Commission focused on precedent, the official record, and its statutory obligations, the regulator said in the order issued last week (CD May 17 p5). Acknowledging that some intervenors “remain opposed to the proposal in any form,” the commission said its original review found some arguments for approval “vague and unsatisfactory.” Negotiations led Verizon and Frontier to offer conditions to which the commission added its own set of requirements. The commission granted approval knowing that uncertainties remain, it said.

LOS ANGELES -- Steering further away from long-time opposition to IPTV, the largest U.S. and Canadian cable operators are now openly embracing IP video technology as the prime way to deliver their growing video offerings to subscribers wherever they may be. Appearing together on a panel at the NCTA show last week, chief technology officers and senior engineering executives of five major North American cable operators confirmed they're all looking to migrate to IP video over the next couple of years. They cited the need to serve the growing array of IP-enabled consumer devices, provide Internet, mobile and non-traditional video fare to customers, and reduce infrastructure and delivery costs.

The video relay service (VRS) rates suggested to the FCC for the 2010-2011 fund year were opposed in comments from the hearing-impaired community and VRS providers. Last month the commission issued a public notice seeking comment on the payment formula and fund size estimate for the Interstate Telecommunications Relay Services Fund. The formula was submitted by the National Exchange Carrier Association for July 1, 2010-June 30, 2011. The three-tiered rates are based on “the 2009 average actual historical cost data submitted to NECA by VRS providers,” the commission said. In the notice, the rates are $5.77 for up to 50,000 minutes under Tier I; $6.03 for monthly minutes between 50,0001 and 500,000 for Tier II; and under Tier III, $3.89 for monthly minutes over 500,000.

The most hotly debated order at the FCC’s meeting Thursday is expected to be the annual wireless competition report, agency sources said Friday. The report is always controversial. The most contested part this year is that, unlike previous reports, it will not declare there’s effective competition in the U.S. wireless market, but it also won’t declare there isn’t.