Despite the European Commission’s insistence that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement won’t harm Internet users or ISPs, European lawmakers remain skeptical, some said Tuesday. EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht updated the European Parliament Civil Liberties Committee on the latest round of ACTA talks, held June 28-July 1 in Lucerne, Switzerland. The negotiations produced another draft document, which De Gucht said will be given to the Parliament on the condition that it not be leaked.

So-called “traffic pumping” costs U.S. wireless carriers $190 million annually, consulting firm Connectiv Solutions said in a report to be released Tuesday. Carriers pay in other ways as well, the report noted, saying increased traffic as a result of traffic pumping also means more network congestion and a decline in network quality. The president of a leading conferencing company disputed the findings.

Google is looking at enterprise opportunities in its voice and other unified communications services, Rajen Sheth, group product manager for Google Apps, a service offering Web-based productivity tools, said in an interview. Communications service will play a bigger role in the company’s overall strategy in the next few years, he said.

SAN FRANCISCO -- By 2014, about 90 percent of consumer mobile IP traffic will be video, AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donavan told the MobileBeat 2010 conference here. He was citing a recent Cisco forecast but said it wasn’t “very far off” of AT&T’s internal projections. A variety of video applications will drive that growth, from video telepresence to streaming video, he said. By 2014 it will be a “point-to-point video world,” he said. “Video calling, video streaming, video links -- it’s going to become part of every process and enterprise use, and part basic communication that’s person to person,” he said.

FairPoint Communications’ proposed Chapter 11 reorganization and a regulatory settlement with the state of New Hampshire got approval last week from New Hampshire’s Public Utilities Commission. The approval, while good news for FairPoint, couldn’t prevent postponement of a bankruptcy court hearing which the company hoped would result in the setting of a date for it to emerge from Chapter 11, a company spokesman said. For that to occur, all three of the affected New England states must approve the company’s reorganization plan and regulatory settlements tailored to each. Maine had previously accepted the company’s proposal. Last month the Vermont Public Service Board rejected FairPoint’s proposed settlement (CD June 30 p5).

The digital transition prompted many TV stations to jump ship from the formerly desirable VHF channels, and that reordering should affect the regulatory fee structure, commenters told the FCC. The commission agreed the changes will affect how much stations must pay and adjusted its assessment method, though not in the wholesale fashion some commenters wanted. The change is one of the issues noted in the commission’s report on assessment and collection of regulatory fees for 2010, released Friday. The commission said it must collect $335,794,000 in regulatory fees for 2010, down from $341,875,000 in 2009. The fees are meant to cover the cost of the commission’s enforcement, policy and rulemaking, user information and international activities. The commission said it used the same assessment methodology it used last year.

U.S. telecom companies’ internal disaster and emergency response operations, preparedness and timely response are critical in recovery efforts in Haiti, companies said on a roundtable at the Department of State Friday. The Haiti earthquake, a major test for emergency response capabilities, underlined the need for better coordination, they said.

Cybersecurity is a legislative priority for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., his spokeswoman said. He and Senate committee chairmen hope to introduce and vote on a comprehensive bill this September, Senate staffers said. Challenges remain, including working out differences between two major bills by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and getting approval from Republicans and the House, said Senate and industry officials. Negotiations over the next three to four weeks will be critical, said an aide.

An impasse over FCC treatment of two types of FM stations whose representatives have been at odds was resolved late Thursday by the groups most active at the commission on the issue. That may resolve a standoff between owners of the two kinds of stations, because others are expected to support the agreement between the Educational Media Foundation, with hundreds of FM translators, and the Prometheus Radio Project, a low-power FM (LPFM) group, communications lawyers said. It may also get the commission to act on whether to cap at 10 the translator applications it will process from any filer in a 2003 window for which several thousands of requests remain pending, they said.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is expected to circulate within the next few weeks a long-awaited order on location accuracy rules for wireless, based on proposals by AT&T and Verizon Wireless and incorporating changes sought in by T-Mobile, industry and FCC officials said. Last week, The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International (APCO) and the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) filed a letter at the commission endorsing the tweaks sought in a June 16 letter by T-Mobile to AT&T’s proposal for GSM-based carriers. The Public Safety Bureau has started to brief eighth-floor officials on the order.