The European Commission, in the final version of guidelines for standards-setting activity, due by year-end, may loosen requirements for safe-harbor protection from competition laws and make clearer that it isn’t the only way to avoid legal trouble, a commission official said Wednesday. The changes will respond to criticisms of the commission’s draft guidelines on standard-setting, issued in May, said the official, Per Hellstrom, the head of the EC’s antitrust unit on information technology, the Internet and consumer electronics. A large number of comments were filed before a June 25 deadline, Hellstrom said.

Successful government partnerships with commercial satellite operators for hosted payloads will require the government to step back and let the commercial processes move forward effectively, said CEO Tip Osterhaler of SES World Skies Government Solutions. Governmental oversight procedures can slow the efficiency, he told the Satcon conference in New York. For example, the Wideband Global SATCOM system, which is being built by Boeing, has allowed around 500 government employees access at the facility, Osterhaler said. “That’s a lot of oversight."

A federal appeals court will hear Thursday oral argument on whether the FCC “abused its discretion and acted arbitrarily and capriciously and contrary to law,” as argued by MetroPCS, in declining to decide what was “reasonable compensation” to a CLEC for terminating telecom traffic originating on MetroPCS’s network. The FCC had determined that the California Public Utilities Commission was “a more appropriate forum to determine a reasonable compensation rate.” The case involves a dispute between MetroPCS and CLEC North County but has wider implications, MetroPCS said.

A new GAO report found that broadband availability is similar across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, including the U.S., but adoption varies more and is influenced by cost, income, computer ownership and other demographic factors. Increasing adoption in the U.S. won’t be easy, but recommendations in the FCC National Broadband Plan are consistent with the approach adopted in a number of other OECD countries, GAO found. The report was prepared at the direction of the leaders of the House Commerce Committee.

Capitol Hill aides urged patience from those seeking a Telecom Act revamp by Congress. A rewrite will happen, but Congress doesn’t want to rush it, said Danny Sepulveda, senior adviser to Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass. Other priorities next year include wireless spectrum and oversight of the broadband stimulus program, aides told a panel discussion Tuesday by the Free State Foundation.

AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, ZipDX and Level 3 signed a USTelecom letter urging the FCC to use the top 1 percent of minutes per line monthly as an indicator of so-called traffic pumping. At 2009 rates, the benchmark number would be 406 minutes per line per month limit, wrote USTelecom Vice President Glenn Reynolds, ZipDX CEO David Frankel, Verizon Vice President Donna Epps, AT&T Director Brian Benison, Qwest Vice President Melissa Newman and Level 3 Assistant Chief Legal Officer John Ryan. That would be three times the median minutes a line as established by the National Exchange Carriers Association Band 8 LECs, they said.

Ex-Republican FCC Chairmen Michael Powell and Kevin Martin called on current Chairman Julius Genachowski to stake out clear positions on net neutrality as the debate continues at the commission and on Capitol Hill. Their comments came on an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators that was scheduled to air over the weekend. The third former chairman on the program, Reed Hundt, a Democrat and Genachowski’s old boss, came to Genachowski’s defense. The chairman has already changed the debate on key issues before the FCC, Hundt said.

Cbeyond, Integra Telecom and Socket Telecom have urged the FCC to impose conditions on CenturyLink’s planned purchase of Qwest to require the combined company to guarantee wholesale service quality, provide CLECs with conditioned copper loops and prevent the company from increasing special access rates or canceling special access agreements. The comments filed Thursday replied to a Sept. 29 letter from CenturyLink saying that a settlement with Sprint, Paetec, Mediacom, Cox and 360Networks in Iowa provides a model for relations with CLECs.

TOKYO -- With Japanese government approval almost certain, NTT DoCoMo will begin its next-generation digital mobile broadcasting service in 2011 starting in Tokyo and Osaka, spokeswoman Naoko Minobe told us Friday during a tour of the company’s showroom.

A dozen broadcasters sought to jump start an auction of translators they hope can be used for service on either radio band, without waiting for new requests for low-power FM (LPFM) stations that could use the same spectrum. A counterproposal to one made last month from an LPFM group and a broadcaster among those with the most applications pending in the 2003 filing window for Auction 83 was filed by small commercial broadcasters frustrated at the pace of FCC action. The earlier proposal by the Prometheus Radio Project, representing LPFM stations, and Educational Media Foundation, with several hundred translator supplications, has been getting consideration from career FCC staffers and commissioners’ offices aware that many industry stakeholders hadn’t signed onto that plan (CD Oct 4 p8). Prometheus officials said they welcomed debate about their proposal.