The number of people who watch broadcast TV programming on the Internet has doubled in the last year, said a recent survey conducted by Altman Vilandrie & Co. “More people are cutting the cord than ever,” said Jonathan Hurd, the firm’s research director and one of several analysts speaking at USTelecom’s Broadband Research Summit.

Some states are looking to consolidate their emergency dispatch centers for cost savings as they migrate to the next generation 911 systems. But some local officials urged states to back off the plan. Concerns regarding additional cost, longer response time and quality of service were cited at a Maine Public Utility Commission hearing Wednesday. The state PUC proposed to reduce the current 26 public safety answering points to 15-17.

Members of the newly reconstituted Wireless Innovation Alliance said in a call with reporters Wednesday the FCC shouldn’t weaken its white spaces rules through changes sought by broadcasters and others. Representatives of Public Knowledge, Google and Dell spoke on the call. A vote on the white spaces order is scheduled for Thursday, though aspects of it were still being worked out at our deadline, agency officials said. The FCC released its sunshine notice last Thursday, cutting off lobbying, though industry officials can still answer questions sent their way by the FCC.

The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) and Motorola, long the top provider of public safety radios, disagreed on the state of industry competition, in filings on an Aug. 19 FCC Public Safety Bureau public notice. Motorola also took issue with the notice’s characterization of the market as one where “first responders rely on communications systems supplied by a small number of equipment providers to support mission-critical communications.” Questions about competition in the public safety equipment market were raised by leaders of the House Commerce Committee in a June 30 letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Two FCC actions concerning children’s media drew praise from kids advocates for giving parents more information about rules by starting a website and showing programmers it takes quick action on what are alleged to be Children’s TV Act violations. The site, www.fcc.gov/parents, has been about a year in the making and its creation was one of Julius Genachowski’s stated first priorities when he became the FCC chairman in June 2009 (CD Aug 21/09 p1). The Media Bureau sought comment Wednesday on a complaint filed last week that a show coming to Viacom’s Nicktoons violates the Act. That’s an unusually quick turnaround. But children’s advocates said the commission could do more to help parents navigate online and older media.

Deals between pay-TV distributors and programmers are becoming increasingly complicated as content owners seek higher prices and distributors try to win broader sets of rights, executives told investors at a Goldman Sachs conference in New York this week. Sometimes TV programmers don’t always have all the rights the pay-TV operators want to license, said CEO Glenn Britt of Time Warner Cable. “The world tends to focus on the money part of these deals, but the reality is the negotiations have gotten very complicated and it’s because we want to move toward the ‘four anys'” of letting viewers watch programming on their device of choice at their place and time of choice, he said.

JetBlue Airways plans to offer in-flight broadband connectivity using ViaSat satellites and equipment, starting in 2012, the companies said. Many details are still being worked out, but ViaSat’s role marks a new stage for the company, which concentrated on the satellite equipment business before buying WildBlue last year. WildBlue will be the network operator of the service, an industry executive said.

A Senate deal on net neutrality is being discussed by Senate Communications Subcommittee leaders, subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., told us Tuesday. But a Senate aide said the staffs of Kerry and Ranking Member John Ensign, R-Nev., failed to reach agreement in discussions over the August recess. The House Commerce Committee is still in talks over its own net neutrality bill, said Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Lack of final FCC action on petitions about how pay-TV providers handle public, educational and government (PEG) channels has resulted in additional cable operators’ moving the networks to digital tiers before all other channels have been switched, representatives of the programmers told us. That the FCC hasn’t disposed of three petitions before it since February 2009 on whether cable operators must treat the programmers the same as commercial ones was cited in a new, emergency petition filed late Monday with the commission. In it, a Texas school district asked the commission to temporarily halt such PEG channel moves by AT&T and cable providers.

There are some “rational places” for targeted legislation on net neutrality, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference Tuesday. Meanwhile, the company doesn’t see many opportunities overseas to extend the platform of AT&T services, largely because of already intense competition and regulatory hurdles, he said.