A Colorado mountain town asked the state utility commission to force Qwest to bring it the same fiber service the company delivers to the state’s other 63 county seats. Acting in concert with San Juan County, Silverton petitioned the commission for an order requiring Qwest, under threat of financial penalty, to complete a fiber line that now stops 16 miles short of that town, the county seat. The petitioners sent a letter to NTIA and members of Congress impugning Qwest’s candidacy to participate in the broadband stimulus program because the telco hasn’t done what it said it would do in Colorado.

Public interest groups led by the New America Foundation said the FCC should impose full disclosure requirements on wireless carriers in the commission’s “bill shock” inquiry. The wireless market is competitive and no new regulations are required, CTIA and carriers said. Consumer & Government Affairs Bureau Chief Joel Gurin said in May that the results of an FCC survey found bill shock a major concern for wireless subscribers (CD May 27 p1).

Telcos and cable companies would pay the same rates as each other for attaching to utility companies’ poles under proposed FCC rules, but whether other aspects of the rules for attachments represent a change or a codification of current practice is unclear, lawyers said in a Law Seminars International briefing Wednesday. The order and further rulemaking follows through on chapter six of the National Broadband Plan, they said.

The U.S. Air Force said it postponed Thursday’s scheduled launch of a space-based surveillance satellite because a software problem was found in a similar Minotaur IV rocket. A spokesman said the Air Force doesn’t know when the satellite, which will monitor space debris among other things, will be ready but is preparing to set a new launch date this month. The launch will be from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The FCC is not listening to public safety officials as it pushes forward on a plan to auction the 700 MHz D-block for commercial use while giving public safety agencies priority access to other spectrum in that band, said Charles Dowd, deputy chief of the New York City Police Department. He spoke Tuesday during a debate with FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett on a National Public Radio program in Washington. Barnett disagreed sharply. The argument presages the reaction commission officials could face next month at APCO’s annual meeting in Houston.

Inflight broadband service provider Aircell will be “well beyond the tipping point” for inflight Internet across the domestic U.S. airline fleet by the end of 2011, said CEO Michael Small in an e-mail interview. The company is following the FCC’s broadband reclassification proceeding and is confident that “the unique nature of our service will be taken into consideration” when the FCC adopts final rules, he said.

The FCC is working to demonstrate it received viewer complaints for each of the 235 Fox affiliates that got letters of inquiry on a January broadcast of American Dad that drew more than 100,000 gripes (CD June 4 p10), agency and industry officials said. That would respond in part to a recent request by a lawyer whose filings represent 86 percent of those affiliates, including some owned by Fox network parent News Corp. The request sought proof that each station had a complaint lodged against it by a viewer in its market.

Debate intensified over the FTC’s proposed regulatory expansion of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) as trade organizations submitted comments. In March, the agency said that the rapid evolution of technology since COPPA’s implementation in 2000 called for a thorough re-evaluation of the Act and the possible modification of some of its rules. More than 20 trade associations and technology advocacy groups have since commented on the proposed rule changes, largely insisting that the current regulations sufficiently protect young users of the Web.

Tiered pricing for wireless plans could mean application developers pay more attention to the size of their apps and more Wi-Fi connections, experts said. AT&T’s move to abandon unlimited pricing could prompt others to follow suit, analysts had said (CD June 3, p2).

Dish Network sued the FCC Thursday and seeks temporary injunctive relief from enforcement of a rule it carry local HD programming of public TV stations. Dish filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for Nevada. While Dish highly values PBS programming, “this case is about who gets to make the editorial judgment whether to carry local PBS stations in HD — Dish or the government,” the satellite-TV company said.