LAS VEGAS -- While lead off speakers at the CTIA convention praised the FCC for proposing in the National Broadband Plan that 500 MHz of additional spectrum be allocated to wireless broadband over the next 10 years, the prospect that wireless carriers will face new net neutrality requirements also loomed large as the conference began Tuesday. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said imposing new regulation on carriers could chill investment at what otherwise is a time of record growth for the industry.

The lawyer handling YouTube’s copyright defense against Viacom said Tuesday she’s confident of her position because the company is known to be responsible, and defendants like that win infringement lawsuits. “The pope uses it,” Catherine Lacavera, senior litigation counsel for YouTube’s owner, Google, said on an American Bar Association webcast. “The Queen uses it. The president uses it. It’s so different from a site that was designed solely for infringement. … I feel good about our case, and I think that comes through in our brief.”

Services based on an all-IP network are where the traditional telco landline business is heading, carriers said in interviews. Rather than a stand-alone service, voice is becoming part of a converged communications offering, they said.

A Universal Service Fund revamp passed by Congress would do more than an FCC overhaul of the fund, and would leapfrog possible limits to the commission’s legal authority, said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., at a National Journal event Tuesday on Capitol Hill. The National Broadband Plan suggests an overhaul that wouldn’t require legislation. A USF bill may be passable on a bipartisan basis, said Ranking Member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla. Both legislators reaffirmed support for the FCC plan, but Stearns said he has concerns about how the FCC sees its role in spurring the marketplace.

Passage of health care reform legislation over the weekend frees Congress to finish the oft-delayed satellite TV reauthorization and may also loosen bottlenecks that held back other legislation, industry officials said Monday. But Congress won’t necessarily intensify telecom legislation efforts, they said. An ongoing debate among Hill leadership is whether, in the wake of passing health care, they should lay low or come out swinging, said an industry lobbyist.

The National Broadband Plan sets “an agenda for connecting all corners of the nation,” the FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett said Monday at a meeting of the Communications, Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council. It’s an “aggressive action plan to enhance the safety of the American people,” he said. In December, Chairman Julius Genachowski asked CSRIC to study how Americans communicate and how to promote cooperation among emergency communications (CD Dec 8 p1). The plan includes recommendations for a public safety broadband network and on cybersecurity and consumer matters, Deputy Bureau Chief Jennifer Manner said.

With the National Broadband Plan on the street and plans underway to try to find an additional 500 MHz of spectrum over the 10 years, questions remain about the actual spectrum needs of carriers. The broadband plan offered relatively little analysis on this critical issue. FCC officials said more is to come and the agency will release a technical paper offering more detail on the number crunching behind the plan’s spectrum chapter.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google defended its privacy practices at a session on setting policy for Californians to share detailed information about their power usage with online conservation companies and others. At a Public Utilities Commission workshop, Jeffrey Byron of the state Energy Commission told Google representative Ed Lu, advanced-projects program manager, late Friday that his company had been portrayed earlier at the event as a danger to privacy. The warning came from Zack Kaldveer, the communications director of the Consumer Federation of California, who cited privacy worries about Google Book Search and Google Buzz.

FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett played defense to skeptical police and fire department officials on the agencies’ recommendations for establishing a nationwide, interoperable public safety network. At a conference Friday of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), Barnett urged public safety to back calls in the National Broadband Plan for $12 to $16 billion in additional funding. But officials said they care more about getting spectrum “real estate” than money. Many officials said they were worried they can’t rely on shared commercial networks in emergency situations.

Inmarsat and ancillary terrestrial component (ATC) license partner SkyTerra will look for an outside “established player” to build a terrestrial network to work with the two companies’ satellite networks, Inmarsat CEO Andrew Sukawaty said in an interview. While “nothing has been signed,” the FCC National Broadband Plan recommendations for loosening some of the mobile satellite services/ATC requirements will allow Inmarsat and other ATC licensees to move forward without the expensive regulatory “tethers,” he said. The huge expense in developing a terrestrial network has been one major reason that ATC license holders haven’t been able to find a viable business model and the investment from a larger terrestrial wireless company would help move things forward, he said.