The Senate and the House late Thursday passed a 30-day extension for the license allowing satellite TV companies to import distant signals. The license was set to expire at the end of the month. The legislation (S-3186) gives DBS providers and legislators until the end of April to pass another extension or a longer-term reauthorization. It’s the third time the license, which was originally set to expire at the end of 2009, has gotten a reprieve. The measure was passed without debate in both houses. The Senate also passed a 10-year reauthorization of the distant signal license Friday.

The Commerce Department will have made more than $4 billion in grants by September to help connect to broadband communities that are unserved or underserved, Secretary Gary Locke said at a briefing Thursday run by the Democratic Leadership Council. The department is funding “middle-mile highways of high-speed Internet” connecting community anchor institutions like colleges, hospitals and government institutions, Locke said.

Comcast’s deal to buy control of NBC Universal has been discussed by the Department of Justice with some of those likely to be affected, at this early stage of antitrust review (CD March 10 p2), said some following the transaction and an opponent. An Asian American group that wants Comcast to pay $1 billion into a media diversity fund to be run by the FCC was the first to say in a commission filing that it has met with Justice. Others probably have discussed the deal with the department or will, analysts and a deal opponent said.

Debate over the FCC’s authority to regulate the Internet heated up at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Thursday on the National Broadband Plan. Republicans strongly opposed the FCC invoking Title II of the Communications Act if the commission loses an effort to persuade the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that it can regulate broadband under Title I. But Democrats seemed open to the possibility. Lawmakers from the two parties differed on plan details but praised the FCC for hard work and ambition. “Y'all have done as good as could be done,” said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the Commerce Committee’s ranking member.

Satellite broadband providers were pleased to find significant recognition of the role the technology could play in increasing the reach of broadband in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, executives from Hughes Networks and WildBlue said in interviews. While past government broadband initiatives, such as the first round of the broadband stimulus grants, largely discounted satellite broadband as a useful means for connectivity expansion, the FCC’s broadband task for took a new approach, they said.

LAS VEGAS -- Commissioners will next week get a calendar laying out basic timing of the rulemakings and other actions that follow up on the National Broadband Plan, FCC officials said at the spring CTIA meeting. Commissioners won’t vote on the schedule but it’s expected to be discussed at the April 22 meeting.

LAS VEGAS -- A week after the FCC released the National Broadband Plan, unjustified “panic” remains among broadcasters about the proposals to ask some to free up TV spectrum for wireless broadband, Blair Levin, executive director of the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative, said at the CTIA conference. For small broadcasters, in particular, the plan offers opportunity, he said.

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., believes it’s time for Congress to update telecom laws to account for technological convergence, he told us Wednesday. The House Communications Subcommittee chairman said he intends to work on comprehensive reform in the next Congress starting in January that would address some of the concerns raised by Verizon Executive Vice President Tom Tauke in a New Democrat Network keynote Wednesday. The company is “very much on target” when it says the time has come to overhaul the Telecommunications Act, Boucher said. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in another interview that her bills on broadband information and early termination fees (ETFs) would answer Tauke’s call to better inform and empower consumers.

The FCC is likely to stick close to its comment deadlines for Comcast’s purchase of control of NBC Universal after a request for a 45-day delay backed by a many advocacy and industry groups, agency and industry officials predicted. That the groups cite no reasons specific to the deal structure to extend a May 3 deadline to file oppositions make it unlikely that the Media Access Project (MAP) and supporters will succeed in getting approval to have final comments due Aug. 1, they said. The Media Bureau built in extra time for comments (CD March 19 p2) in part to rebut time-constraint criticisms, an agency official said. Initial work among staffers reviewing the deal continues, commission officials said.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- IPv6 is gaining momentum, said representatives of Comcast and Netflix on an Internet Society panel at the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting this week. But Geoff Huston, chief technology officer of the Asian Regional Internet Registry, APNIC, said uptake of IPv6 in the market is still much too slow, with IPv4 numbers (less than 10 percent of the 4.3 billion are unallocated) running out in 2012.