NASHVILLE -- Much of what’s in the National Broadband Plan has been well-known, FCC Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett said as the CompTel convention got underway. FCC Strategic Planning Chief Paul de Sa said part of the plan’s value is “saying what’s part of our vision and what’s not part of our vision.” The commission will set a period to carry out the plan’s recommendations, to make the process open, Gillett said. The intent also is “to give the feeling of knowing when your stuff is going to be addressed,” she said. “People understand you can’t do everything on the first day of the National Broadband Plan.”

The significant time devoted by many FCC staffers to work on the National Broadband Plan the past year, and the commission’s attention to the subject, cut into the time and energy available for more routine matters, said broadcast and cable lawyers. That leaves some items languishing, causing some licensees regulatory confusion and leaving complaints unresolved, they said. “While the task Congress assigned to the FCC was enormous, all of the effort and energy the commission put into creating the plan will reap many benefits in the years to come,” said an agency spokesman.

The most connected societies aren’t the major sources of growth of the Internet economy, said a report (www.xrl.us/bgymnd) Monday by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation on the growth and future of the 25-year-old .com domain. The media fixation on social networking has obscured much more important growth mechanisms whose success can’t be reduced to universal broadband, foundation President Robert Atkinson told reporters Monday. “It’s a mistake to put so much emphasis on broadband” and less on the applications that make the Internet useful, as the FCC seems to be doing, he said.

House Democrats endorsed the FCC’s National Broadband Plan a day before its official release. House Republicans gave conditional praise, saying they're watching closely. In an interview, Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he believes legislation will be required to satisfy the plan’s recommendations to revamp the Universal Service Fund, build a public safety wireless network, and identify lightly used spectrum.

Wireless carriers may get less in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan than meets the eye, commission officials indicated Monday. Although the plan recommends that 300 MHz of spectrum be made available for wireless broadband over the next five years and 500 MHz total over 10 years, FCC officials made clear Monday that not all will be dedicated to licensed use. The plan also provides substantial detail in its recommendations for the Universal Service Fund, including a phase-out of the high-cost fund. The plan will be presented to FCC commissioners Tuesday. They won’t vote on the plan, only on a mission statement setting out goals for U.S. broadband policy.

Innovations in online news media weren’t enough to offset financial losses, suggests a report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Although news media show tremendous energy toward digital journalism, cutbacks in traditional outlets dominate, the report suggested.

The city of Alexandria, Va., was told that all cable TV negotiations related to Verizon FiOS service have been suspended nationwide as the company does a review, the city’s director of communications, Tony Castrilli, told us. But Verizon said its FiOS expansion plans haven’t changed. Meanwhile, the city is hoping to become a site for the high-speed Internet testbed announced by Google, Castrilli said.

GENEVA -- Countries and the Internet registry community are discussing the possibilities of a global policy for reserving IPv6 addresses and of the ITU’s becoming an additional Regional Internet Registry, said participants at a group meeting about IPv6 that continues through Tuesday. The U.S. and some other participants said current mechanisms work well and can adapt to future needs.

Continued uncertainty in the launch market hurts the satellite industry’s ability to develop strategic business plans for investors, said Michael McDonnell, Intelsat’s chief financial officer. At the Satellite 2010 conference in National Harbor, Md., he joined other CFOs on a panel Monday in saying he hopes Sea Launch can emerge soon from bankruptcy to help keep the launch market competitive.

Verizon and Frontier laid out for the West Virginia Public Service Commission an extensive set of arguments in a filing late Friday summing up the companies’ case for approval of their proposed transaction. The deal would give Frontier ownership of Verizon landlines in 14 states. It ran into resistance last week when an administrative law judge with the Illinois Commerce Commission recommended against approval, saying consumers would be ill-served (CD March 11 p13). Illinois, West Virginia and Washington are the only states where approval of the transaction remains pending.