The U.S. is unlikely to have a government-required radio transition to digital from the analog broadcasts that still predominate -- or at least at no time in the foreseeable future, some FCC and industry-engineer panelists said Thursday. One reason there hasn’t been a rapid switch by stations to HD Radio and away from analog transmissions is that, unlike with last year’s digital transition for full-power TV stations, there’s never been a “date-certain” for radio to go digital-only, said Senior Vice President Glynn Walden of CBS Radio, with about 130 stations. “These things don’t happen overnight” as effectively occurred for TV, he said at the NAB Radio Show in Washington.

The FCC unanimously approved a declaratory ruling and a report and order that clarify rules on broadcast auxiliary spectrum (BAS) relocation expenses incurred by Sprint Nextel. The ruling probably will help Sprint go ahead with a lawsuit against MSS licensees in the 2 GHz band, where the carrier cleared the spectrum. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who partially concurred, said she wishes the order had gone further in deciding liability. “The Commission has a strong institutional interest in ensuring that its relocation and cost reimbursement policies are correctly applied to the specific factual issues in this case,” she said. “I believe that the public interest would have been better advanced by having the Commission decide the particular issue of whether ICO Global is liable to Sprint Nextel."

The FCC’s “shot clock” proceeding “has been a dismal failure,” telco lawyer Jonathan Kramer told the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors conference in Washington Thursday. The so-called “shot clock” limited the time communities could spend reviewing mobile tower applications. “It just has not, in my opinion, served the public or the carriers,” he said. Kramer was responding to angry questions from NATOA attendees who wanted to know why, if communities had allegedly been stalling on mobile companies’ applications, there had been no further litigation since the shot clock idea was approved last year.

A House deal on net neutrality suffered a major setback Wednesday when House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, opposed a legislative effort by Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Waxman had been waiting for Republicans to sign off on his draft bill and didn’t introduce anything before our deadline. The House planned to adjourn Wednesday night, unless the Senate hadn’t wrapped up the continuing spending resolution, and it won’t return until after the November elections, a House leadership aide said. Committee members Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told us they don’t expect net neutrality action during the lame-duck session.

NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling declared victory Wednesday in the agency’s effort to manage the huge number of applications for grants that came in to the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and get the final awards out ahead of Thursday’s deadline. Strickling told us he regretted there wasn’t more money available for public safety networks but said the projects approved should help the government gather data for a national network. He said his agency will soon recommend the spectrum band to pair with the AWS-3 band for wireless broadband. Strickling was the keynoter at the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors annual meeting.

Requiring FM chips in cellphones is a “great idea,” Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., told the NAB radio show Wednesday. The retiring member of the House Commerce Committee also reemphasized his support for a commercial auction of the D-block and opposition to legislation imposing performance royalties on broadcasters. Earlier, departing Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said he doubted Congress would take up either the DISCLOSE Act or performance royalty legislation any time soon.

LightSquared said it will provide satellite phone service for healthcare providers in American Indian and Alaska Native communities through a partnership with the Indian Health Service. Participants may gain access to LightSquared’s wireless network once it’s built, depending on the program’s needs, a company spokesman said. LightSquared said it will donate up to 2,000 phones and provide free service through 2020.

The FCC seems unlikely to soon change retransmission consent rules as it considers a request for rulemaking by many multichannel video programming distributors, unless a contractual dispute between a TV station and an MVPD leads to an outage for subscribers, an analyst and an FCC aide suggested Wednesday. No executives at a USTelecom event on retransmission predicted quick commission action on the petition by 14 cable, satellite, telco-TV and nonprofit entities. That could change if there’s another instance in which MVPD customers can’t watch broadcasts because of a contractual dispute, as with the removal for less than a day of Disney’s WABC-TV New York from Cablevision’s lineup this year (CD March 9 p2), some said.

A New York measure by Sen. Brian Foley, D-Blue Point, would increase scrutiny of telecom mergers and “require a portion of the benefits” be “returned to the state’s ratepayers” in refunds or infrastructure investments. The bill would protect the consumers in light of service problems from telecom acquisitions, said James LaCarrubba, Foley’s chief of staff. It would cover any residential line acquisition or sale, he said. The measure is in the Senate after passing the Assembly, LaCarrubba said.

Talk at the FCC of Universal Service Fund reform to include broadband services has satellite companies concerned over the possibility of increased contribution rates without any subsidy in return, industry executives said. Under the current system, companies pay into the USF based on their interstate and international end-user telecom revenue and generally leave satellite companies out of the running for subsidies. If a future version of the USF includes broadband, as proposed by the FCC and tentatively named the Connect America Fund (CAF), satellite companies could be left paying for expansion of competing technologies again, executives said.