Draft public safety legislation by House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., envisions $11 billion for the construction and operation of a nationwide, interoperable public safety network. A draft we obtained Monday would fund the network using proceeds from auctions of the 700 MHz D-block and other spectrum, with additional money from the U.S. Treasury. Public safety groups have opposed that approach, favoring legislation to directly allocate the D-Block to public safety (CD June 8 p1). The House Communications Subcommittee plans to discuss the bill at a hearing Thursday.

Before Cablevision’s acquisition of Bresnan Communications can proceed, approval from various local video franchising authorities in Montana, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado will be needed, industry attorneys said Monday. Cablevision agreed to buy the western cable operator for $1.4 billion and is putting less than $400 million in equity into the deal. The rest will be financed with debt, Cablevision said. The deal is structured in a way that its shareholders and bondholders won’t be on the hook for the debt should Bresnan’s operations falter, the buyer said.

CTIA said the FCC should “reject outright” Mobile Internet Content Coalition (MICC) arguments that net neutrality principles should be applied to SMS text messaging services and wireless carriers’ review of content providers’ marketing proposals. CTIA “misses the point” of the MICC arguments, Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld told us Monday in response to the CTIA filing.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Industry groups are forging ahead with self-regulation efforts for online behavioral ads, in line with signals from policymakers who have yet to set rules, executives said Monday. The initiatives have yielded principles and now comes the time for follow-through, they said at an International Association of Privacy Professionals conference. An effort by the Better Business Bureaus and large advertisers associations has chosen a vendor from six contenders to monitor compliance and flag possible violations, and will announce the selection this month, said Lee Peeler, CEO of the umbrella group, the National Advertising Review Council.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is investing $1 million in an Application Programming Interface called the Public Media Platform, it said. The platform, to be used jointly by American Public Media, NPR, PBS, Public Radio International and the Public Radio Exchange, will allow public media partners to share a variety of content across a digital distribution network. Pubmedia leaders hope it will lead to more innovations in mobile applications, third-party sites, blogs, mashups and widgets.

No opposition cropped up against mobile DTV devices without analog tuners, and industry remains united behind them, replies Friday and Monday in docket 10-111 to two waiver requests before the FCC show. Replies were due Friday. Industry executives have said such consensus augurs for quick approval of the requests, either by the Media Bureau or full commission (CD June 8 p4). It’s unclear if an order exempting the devices from requirements that they also have analog tuners will be forthcoming from the commission soon, agency officials said Monday. None appears to be ready for imminent release, they said.

Wall Street panelists underscored what they said would be the chilling effect broadband reclassification could have on investment, during a panel Friday at Pike & Fischer’s Broadband Policy Summit. Meanwhile, Broadband for America (BFA), organized to oppose net neutrality rules, also flagged during a call with reporters the financial risks posed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s “third way” proposal.

TV and radio broadcast networks and affiliates increasingly are aligned on several issues getting legislative and regulatory attention, our survey of executives in those businesses found. The executives and NAB President Gordon Smith sounded upbeat that agreement in broadcasting, evidenced in part by last month’s return of CBS and Fox to the lobbying group (CD May 11 p14), will help the industry make its case in Washington. They said that’s crucial to avoid fracturing like that of a decade ago -- when networks left NAB amid disputes over ownership rules -- and to fend off challenges to businesses that have faced struggles. It also helps to deal with member NBC set to get a new owner in Comcast.

NTIA will start announcing round-two awards under the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program in July, Administrator Larry Strickling said at Pike & Fischer’s Broadband Policy Summit. With about $1.2 billion having been awarded to 82 projects in round one, there’s still $3 billion to be awarded by Sept. 30. In the first round, NTIA learned that “when we're talking about unserved and underserved areas in this country, there’s a huge difference between the needs of the anchor institutions and the needs of families and small business,” Strickling said. The need for much higher speeds is greater for the anchor institutions, like libraries and schools, he said.

The personnel and data needs of the effort to contain the Gulf of Mexico oil leak have increased reliance on satellite communications in what is usually a very low-density region, said executives of major providers of satellite services there. But one of the two providers has had a much larger increase in demand than the other.