A draft FCC order ties the E-Rate index to inflation and lets schools and libraries lease dark fiber from utility companies other than telcos, advisors to three commissioners said. The proposed order circulated Thursday by Chairman Julius Genachowski would also make permanent a temporary provision that allows communities to use schools’ and libraries’ systems after hours, the aides said. Genachowski is seeking a vote on the order at the Sept. 23 meeting.

Broadcasters’ arguments against the use of an indoor antenna standard to determine significantly viewed signal eligibility are “all either non-existent or easy to resolve,” Dish Network and DirecTV said in reply comments with the FCC. The two DBS companies get congressional intent wrong when they seek to change proposed FCC rules implementing STELA so indoor antennas can be used, a wide array of broadcasters said in docket 10-152. Broadcasters and DBS disagree whether indoor antennas can be used to test if a subscriber can’t receive terrestrial signals from a local TV station and so is eligible to get a distant station affiliated with the same network (CD Aug 26 p2). The law requires the commission to act by Nov. 23.

The U.S. may have dropped its demand that ISPs bear some liability for online infringement, but key provisions in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) remain controversial after last month’s negotiations in Washington, said a professor monitoring the talks. The latest ACTA draft was supposed to be kept confidential but leaked over the weekend. Fears persist of a “back-door” requirement of a graduated response to Internet piracy, overly restrictive anti-circumvention provisions, and criminal sanctions, said Michael Geist, University of Ottawa Canada research chair of Internet and e-commerce law, and others watching the talks.

Competitive eligible telecommunications carriers won’t be able to help themselves to money left over from the surrender of Verizon Wireless’s and Sprint Nextel’s high-cost universal service funds, the FCC said. In an order and rulemaking notice released late Friday, the commission said the money should be kept “as a potential down payment on proposed broadband universal service reforms … including to index the E-rate funding cap to inflation.” The commission sought comment on whether it should amend its rules permanently “to facilitate efficient use of reclaimed excess high-cost support” and on a proposed rule change that would “reclaim legacy support surrendered by a competitive ETC when it relinquishes ETC status in a particular state."

India is asking all companies that offer encrypted communications to install servers in the country so the government will have access to user data. India’s Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said notices were being dispatched to companies like Google and Skype, numerous Indian news reports said. While the U.S. State Department has been in touch with its foreign partners, it’s a matter for RIM and to work out directly with Indian officials, the agency said in an e-mailed statement.

The FCC acted in “injudicious haste” in adopting new Wireless Communications Service rules “without an adequate record to support its performance requirements,” AT&T said in a petition at the FCC, seeking partial reconsideration of a May 20 order. The WCS Coalition filed in support of the carrier. The FCC approved the order as the first step toward the National Broadband Plan’s goal of freeing up 500 MHz of spectrum over 10 years for wireless broadband(CD May 21 p5).

Largely dismissing an April plea from the U.S. Copyright Office to cast the Performance Rights Act (HR-848) in a more favorable light, GAO maintained that the bill would raise costs for broadcasters and boost revenue for the recording industry. A GAO report dated August 2010 and released Friday reached the same conclusion as a February preliminary report made public in June. That earlier version had prompted an April rebuke from the Copyright Office (CD June 8 p11).

The FCC would expand the types of providers getting guaranteed space on Sirius XM as full-time channels to be set aside for such use were expanded beyond those owned by minorities, in an order that circulated last week, agency officials said. The draft written by career agency staffers makes good on the 2008 commission order conditionally approving Sirius’s purchase of XM in a several-billion-dollar deal by dictating terms of channel set-asides. Instead of using minority-owned companies to fill 4 percent of the company’s channels, the draft would let Sirius XM pick as qualified entities any firm that doesn’t already have a programming relationship with the company, commission officials said. The channel set-aside was part of FCC approval of the 2008 deal that created the company.

Washington’s Utilities and Transportation Commission seeks comment on an update of a “concept paper” proposing how the state should restructure its universal service fund, the commission said Thursday. The extensive document, submitted Wednesday by the Washington Independent Telecommunications Association, reflects revisions to a July proposal and goes into significant detail in recommendations. The commission tentatively set Oct. 4 for a third workshop on the document and related matters. Comments are due Sept. 17.

September is expected to be busy for public safety issues in Washington, but time and funding concerns are working against passing any legislation this year, said public safety and telecom industry officials. Legislation to set up a $70 million NTIA grant competition for public safety communications devices (CD July 30 p5) may have a better shot than bills involving the D-block, they said. The House and Senate have introduced nearly identical bills, HR-5907 and S-3731, sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and neither has generated opposition.