The FCC pulled the plug on M2Z’s proposal for a free broadband network in the AWS-3 band, which had been before the commission since 2007, the company said Wednesday. M2Z’s proposal faced continuing opposition from industry, especially T-Mobile, the top bidder in the AWS-1 auction. The FCC notified M2Z backers of its decision to end the AWS-3 public interest rulemaking “thereby closing off the possibility” of the free network, the company said.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Pay-TV providers need to “become the preferred store that consumers go to to get their video service,” said Chief Technology Officer Dave Grubb of Motorola’s Moto Home division told a set-top box conference Wednesday. As the TV and set-top become more capable of running multiple applications, providers need to offer a one-stop shop where customers can go for all their video needs, he said. “Consumers will prefer this.” They aren’t “big fans of piece-building their service solutions and getting a little bit from here and a little bit from there,” said Grubb.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- While satellite manufacturers have the technical ability to provide modern broadband speeds, it isn’t clear yet if the economics are right for mass satellite broadband offerings, said Christopher Hoeber, Space Systems/Loral senior vice president of program management and systems engineering during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference. Broadband satellites require about three times as much equipment as most other satellites, adding to their costs and power needs, he said on a panel. The difficulty of designing Internet protocols to deal with the inherent latency of the satellite broadband and the expense of modems also make satellite broadband a difficult business, he said.

Tests in Boulder, Colo., are studying questions raised as public safety systems make sure of LTE for the first 700 MHz network deployments, the manager of the National Institute of Standards and Testing’s Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program said Tuesday in a speech at the FCC. Dereck Orr also said the program will run a second set of tests in Washington to examine a public safety network in a real city. NIST will also consider a permanent “testbed” in Boulder to take up problems as they appear, he said.

Conventional pay-TV operators should use new technologies such as 3D TV and whole-home DVRs to differentiate themselves from coming competition from online video and other sources, Yankee Group analysts said on a webinar Tuesday. They surveyed pay-TV subscribers about what might make them change service providers. Though price is still the main reason subscribers cite, new technologies are starting to emerge as a point of competition, said Vince Vittore. “More and more, these types of applications show up as reasons why people would consider moving their pay-TV subscription,” he said. “You can get some true differentiation among different types of pay-TV providers."

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Arianespace will rely on a wider range of launch vehicles to give the company stability as the large satellite operators’ launch campaigns approach the tail end of launch cycles, said Clay Mowry, the U.S. president of Arianespace said on a panel at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference. While the company’s revenue has suffered in the past from the end of commercial satellite launch cycles, Arianespace is hoping that a bigger variety of launch vehicles to launch different types of satellites will help keep its manifest schedule full, he said. Maintaining a full manifest is the biggest challenge for the company, especially since it has so little effect on demand for launch services, he said.

USTelecom is urging the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to take a slow, careful approach to rules governing loans to extend broadband services in rural America. In a letter Tuesday to RUS Administrator Jonathan Adelstein, USTelecom President Walter McCormick said any rules should be “carefully considered and subjected to review and comment from the public prior to being finalized."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is taking flak for not moving as quickly as many had expected to carry out the National Broadband Plan, released in March to much fanfare. The August commission meeting included votes on only two items, concerning wireless backhaul and hearing-aid-compatible phones. The July meeting included votes on three. Even some Democrats have started to question why the FCC isn’t moving faster on the massive broadband plan and whether Genachowski is reluctant to make tough policy calls.

The FCC largely sat out retransmission consent talks between Time Warner Cable and Disney-owned ABC TV stations and cable networks including ESPN that the companies said are close to reaching a successful conclusion, according to commission officials. The ongoing contract negotiations drew widespread attention, with a large number of stations, channels and cable subscribers involved. They didn’t seem to lead to overt worry inside the FCC that a deal wouldn’t be reached, agency officials said.

Clearwire’s new pay-as-you-go WiMAX mobile broadband service and devices target the 18-to-24-year-old city dwellers, executives told an investor conference Monday. The service, called Rover, doesn’t require contracts and is available in all of Clearwire’s 49 4G markets.