The FCC should not impose an in-store testing requirement as part of its hearing-aid compatibility rules, the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition (CERC) said in reply comments on an FCC further notice of proposed rulemaking. CTIA, meanwhile, urged the FCC to base its rules on a collaborative process between carriers and the public. Groups representing the deaf and hard of hearing did not file reply comments.

Media companies are working on new apps to run in Web browsers and on devices such as Internet-enabled TV sets, Internet industry executives said. They said part of their motivation is the prospect of charging for content currently available free on the Web. Media companies are working on new apps to run in Web browsers and on devices such as Internet-enabled TV sets, the executives said. They said part of the motivation is the prospect of charging for content currently available free on the Web.

Pay-TV distributors have been buying back stock at high rates in recent years, and more companies are taking up the strategy. The reliably high levels of free cash flow generated by the pay-TV industry, and lack of opportunity and desire for companies to spend their cash on large acquisitions is leading more companies to invest in their own stock, analysts said. Buying back stock can also make it easier for a company to go private, they said.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski seems to prefer not to reclassify broadband transport as a telecom service and instead to keep it as an information service, as part of enacting the net neutrality rules he seeks, according to a high-ranking commission official who has been briefed about the recent stakeholder meetings on net neutrality and to other officials who have been represented at those gatherings or also been briefed. Genachowski appears to prefer to stick with the current Title I information service regime for broadband, especially if he can get ISP support for net neutrality rules that don’t include reclassification, commission, industry and nonprofit officials said.

If the FCC imposes net neutrality rules without reclassifying broadband as a Title II service, carriers could come away at most nicked instead of badly injured, industry and FCC officials said. The bigger threat to carriers and their stock prices is reclassification and a fundamental change in the way they are regulated, they said.

The House plans to vote next week on the CALM Act, which would require lowering the volume of TV commercials to that of regular programming. The House also plans to consider another continuing resolution to maintain funding for federal agencies until regular appropriations are approved, amid pleas from state regulators to provide additional funding to federal agencies charged with overseeing the broadband stimulus program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The FCC will vote on a notice of inquiry at its December meeting designed to push 911 into the broadband age, Chairman Julius Genachowski said Tuesday. The announcement answers in part the question of what will be on the agenda for December, the last open meeting of the year. The FCC also said the meeting is delayed from Dec. 15 to Dec. 21, amidst growing speculation that the main order of business will be a vote on net neutrality rules (CD Nov 22 p1).

Three spectrum items set for a vote Tuesday aren’t drawing much controversy within the FCC and seem likely to be unanimously approved in a final form that’s close to the first version of their drafts, agency officials we spoke with said. They said some commissioners are suggesting changes to a rulemaking notice on TV spectrum. Among the three items, that’s been drawing the most attention within the FCC and from the broadcast industry, which appears to have some concerns about it, agency officials said. Fewer changes are likely to be made to another rulemaking notice, on experimental licensing, and to a notice of inquiry on opportunistic use of spectrum, commission officials said. Altogether, the three items still aren’t likely to differ substantially from the first drafts from career commission staffers (CD Nov 16 p4), agency officials said.

The FCC changed the rules for carriage of significantly viewed (SV) stations by satellite TV providers as part of its implementation of the Satellite TV Extension and Localism Act Tuesday. As expected (CD Nov 23 p9), the agency issued three unanimously approved orders and a further rulemaking. Under STELA, the FCC was responsible for updating rules for SV stations and predictive models for determining broadcast signal strength. The orders were largely in line with proposed rulemakings from earlier this year. They revise rules from the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act (SHVERA) that STELA replaced.

Industry players on all sides expressed general support for FCC efforts to add spectrum for wireless backhaul. But reply comments on proposals to change FCC rules (CD Aug 6 p5) expressed reservations about several of the measures, especially one to allow fixed service (FS) operations to share several spectrum bands now used by the Broadcast Auxiliary Service (BAS) and the Cable TV Relay Service. Several of the proposals grew out of the National Broadband Plan.