Verizon had a Q2 loss of $198 million versus a profit of $1.48 billion a year earlier, mostly due to a $2.3 billion charge for job cuts. The company continues to look at tiered data pricing options as it moves to LTE, Chief Financial Officer John Killian said on a conference call Friday. Verizon’s headcount is down by nearly 25,000, to 210,000 at the end of the quarter.

There’s no “deep divide” between the FCC and many in public safety, just a “spirited discussion” on the future of a national wireless broadband network, APCO President Richard Mirgon said on an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators to air this weekend. Former FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Ed Thomas said on the program that the disagreement could hurt chances of Congress’s approving funding for the network soon.

Phone and cable companies are pulling out all the stops to defend their markets and defeat net neutrality rules, ColorOfChange.org Executive Director James Rucker said Thursday. At a panel on broadband at the Netroots Nation conference, attended by liberal activists from across the U.S., he called net neutrality a “modern civil rights issue.”

AT&T’s Q2 net income rose 26 percent year-over-year to $4 billion, helped by wireless growth and its cost cutting initiatives. Chief Financial Officer Rick Lindner expects improved results from consumer landline services but a slow recovery of business services, he said during a conference call Thursday.

The implications for the fast-growing online video market of a planned deal for Comcast to buy control of NBC Universal were debated in new FCC filings by the two companies and opponents of their multibillion dollar transaction. As in the past, Comcast, NBC Universal and NBCU parent General Electric said their deal won’t stifle the market, because the risks to the combined company of withholding online programming from pay-TV rivals likely would exceed the profit from such a strategy. FCC staffers continue meeting with each other and outsiders to consider the deal, and much work appears to remain before the Media Bureau starts drafting a decision, commission and industry officials said.

Wireline telcos of all sizes plus the cable industry backed comprehensive Universal Service Fund legislation introduced Thursday by Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., of the House Communications Subcommittee and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb. The sponsors are upbeat about winning FCC support and getting the long-gestating bill through Congress, they told reporters Thursday. The measure will rein in the size of the fund and spur broadband deployment, they said. The legislation will make USF “durable and sustainable in the long term,” said Boucher.

Digital sales at LIN TV could reach 25 percent of total sales within three or four years, CEO Vincent Sadusky told investors Thursday. That’s the company’s target and would put it ahead of broadcast peers, he said. Sales from LIN’s TV station websites, mobile applications and retransmission consent now make up about 15 percent of revenue, but all those categories have the potential to keep growing, he said. The company’s recent acquisition of RMM, an online ad company, will help it keep selling new online ad products that incorporate geo-targeting and advanced performance metric-based pricing, Sadusky said.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A push by a broad front of marketing-industry organizations to forestall federal action on behavioral targeting (CD June 15 p10) will burst widely into public view over the next three months, said a co-founder of the company whose technology helps power the disclosure effort. “Self-regulation is happening,” said Colin O'Malley of Better Advertising. “It’s time for everyone to get on board.”

The FCC should not apply “retroactively” Federal Aviation Administration marking and lighting changes for communications towers or replace the FCC’s current “due diligence” standard with inflexible deadlines for lighting repairs, CTIA said in comments on an April 12 notice of proposed rulemaking on construction, marking, and lighting of antenna structures. NAB, PCIA, AT&T and Verizon Wireless also urged the FCC to streamline its tower rules in light of rapidly expanding communications networks.

Public safety would get the 700 MHz D-block under major new bills unveiled separately Tuesday by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John McCain, R-Ariz. The latter bill is similar to a House one (HR-5081) introduced a few months ago by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. On a conference call with reporters, senior FCC officials welcomed the Rockefeller bill, even though it clashes with the National Broadband Plan’s recommendation that the band be sold at auction. An agency spokeswoman declined to comment on the McCain-Lieberman legislation.