The FCC faces a risky day in court if it adopts net neutrality rules without reclassifying broadband as a telecom service, as Chairman Julius Genachowski proposes, the commission’s senior member and communications law professors watching the order’s development but not privy to internal deliberations told us. Copps and some professors said Genachowski’s plan, made public Wednesday, to keep broadband under Title I of the Communications Act appears to pose more risk than does reclassification of being thrown out in an appeal that many industry and commission officials believe is inevitable. While not relying solely on ancillary authority (CD Dec 3 p1) may help the regulator’s prospects in any case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it’s unclear whether that will be enough for the FCC to win any lawsuit, said law professors we asked. Commission officials have said reliance on both ancillary and direct authority may make for a stronger order.

Commissioner Michael Copps is hopeful broadcasters and the FCC itself will engage with him in a dialogue on the types of requirements radio and TV stations should meet to renew their licenses, he told us after proposing a seven-point public value test. The senior commissioner on the FCC acknowledged he hasn’t yet gotten the momentum to move forward that he'd like from his agency or from the industry in his quest to shorten license terms and make broadcasters do more to get them. “I think we have the potential vote to do something,” Copps said Friday. He’s long sought beefed-up licensing procedures for broadcasters, and when he was interim chairman he wanted to reduce license terms to three years from eight (CD May 15/09 p1).

The American Public Communications Council will ask the FCC for an emergency subsidy from Universal Service Fund cash to help keep its pay phone company members from collapsing, the group told us. The emergency petition will be accompanied by a petition for rulemaking asking the commission to consider using its Lifeline program to subsidize pay phones. The petitions could come as early as Monday afternoon, APCC President Willard Nichols said.

What was initially filed at the FCC International Bureau as a routine license modification request by LightSquared has drawn significant attention and complaint from major wireless companies and associations. Carrier interests including CTIA, Verizon Wireless and AT&T said LightSquared’s request for mobile satellite service/ancillary terrestrial component authority modification seeks what amounts to a major policy change for MSS/ATC and should be handled through a rulemaking. The filings are at http://xrl.us/bh969f.

Telecom ministers Friday preliminarily rejected a European Commission call for all EU members to make the 800 MHz band, freed by digital switchover, available for wireless broadband by 2013. The proposal is part of the EC’s first multiyear radio spectrum policy program (RSPP). Government officials -- who discussed the plan but didn’t vote on it during a Telecommunications Council session in Brussels -- said they generally favor the EC effort, but the timetable for rollout of “digital dividend” spectrum is one of several provisions that raise national sovereignty concerns.

Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., hopes to bring certainty to industry next year on long-brewing telecom issues like net neutrality and Universal Service Fund reform, the House Communications Subcommittee member said in an interview last week. Providing subsidies to make broadband more affordable for low-income Americans and addressing fears about lack of privacy online are two important ways to motivate more people to embrace fast Internet service, she said.

Congress shushed loud TV commercials. In a voice vote Thursday night, the House passed the CALM Act (S-2847), which would require TV ads to be set at the same volume as regular programming. “It’s a simple fix to a huge nuisance,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., who sponsored the original House bill (HR-1084). Associations for advertisers and broadcasters said they don’t believe the new requirement will be onerous.

A wide array of communications technology standards groups is being asked to create a combined brain trust to ensure that cloud systems can work together, an organizer said. Robert Marcus, a consultant on telecom-cloud standards to Chinese equipment vendor Huawei, said he will propose to the representatives of more than 20 organizations Tuesday at the Telecom Cloud Information Workshop in Santa Clara, Calif., creation of a Cloud Experts Working Group. It would advise industry and particularly government, in aid of cloud interoperability. The group would offer advice on cloud technology, open source and reference architecture, he said.

The FCC should focus on helping the buildout and expansion of 4G services, Commissioner Meredith Baker said in a keynote at the Phoenix Center telecom symposium Thursday. She called moving forward on net neutrality rules “a legal and political mistake.”

The first version of the draft FCC net neutrality order cites both direct and ancillary authority as giving the commission purview to bar ISPs from discriminating in the type of traffic they carry on their networks, agency officials said. Ancillary authority was a prominent issue in April’s Comcast ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which held that the commission was out of bounds in relying on Title I. But some law professors said there are risks to a Title I approach, even if specific sections of the Communications Act are also cited.