Legislation blocking the FCC from reclassifying broadband “is not going to be a Democratic initiative,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. In a conference call with bloggers Tuesday, she dismissed some Democrats’ objections to FCC reclassification of broadband transport under Title II of the Communications Act. Meanwhile, House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., told us he hopes to address colleagues’ concerns by having net neutrality legislation this year.

The trend toward movie studios’ distributing their works online fueled Roxio maker Sonic Solutions’ bid for DivX, executives of the companies told investors Wednesday. DivX, a maker of video encoding and copy protection systems agreed to sell itself to Sonic for about $123 million in cash, plus 16.9 million Sonic shares -- about $300 million total at Wednesday’s close. The deal requires approval by the companies’ investors. The executives said they don’t expect it to raise antitrust concerns with regulators.

FairPoint Communications is authorized to pay an estimated $600,000 in legal costs incurred by Maine’s public utility commission and consumer advocate as a result of their participation in the company’s bankruptcy, the Manhattan bankruptcy court ruled last week. The court was responding to a proposed regulatory settlement that the company made with representatives of the Maine agencies. Similar settlements are afoot between FairPoint and regulators and advocates in New Hampshire and Vermont, the other New England states where it bought Verizon networks. FairPoint hopes to have all three states’ approvals for its bankruptcy plan by June 24.

Thales Alenia Space will design and build Iridium’s new constellation of low-earth orbit mobile services satellites for $2.1 billion, the companies said Wednesday. French export credit agency Coface issued a promise of guarantee to cover 95 percent of the $1.8 billion credit facility for the satellites, said Iridium. The guarantee offers significant security for lenders and isn’t conditioned on new debt or equity financing, Iridium said. Thales was competing with Lockheed Martin for the contract. Total cost for the constellation, including launch, insurance and ground segments, is about $2.9 billion, the company said. Iridium will pay for the rest of the constellation through its own cash flow.

The FCC said Tuesday it plans to gather data on wireless broadband connections and released a public notice seeking comment on how to do that. The commission also asked for 10,000 volunteers to allow hardware to be installed in their homes to test the actual speed of their wireline broadband connections, in a scientific study to be run by SamKnows Ltd. The regulator still hasn’t decided what it will do with the results and whether they could lead to additional regulation, Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau Chief Joel Gurin told reporters.

Rocco Commisso, Mediacom’s CEO and controlling shareholder, offered to buy out the company’s public stockholders for $6 a share. He may have trouble raising the bid because the cable operator already carries so much debt, Standard & Poor’s said. Wall Street analysts said the bid seemed low and investors ran Mediacom’s stock price up 17.6 percent Tuesday to $6.27 a share.

Motorola looks to grow its business further by partnering with cities on public safety networks and municipal mobile broadband, said Scott French, vice president of Wireless Mobility Solutions. The manufacturer also plans to make inroads in markets like utilities, transportation and human services, he said in an interview.

SES World Skies successfully avoided signal interference from Intelsat’s stray Galaxy 15 satellite that drifted into SES’s orbital space, both companies said. While the satellite remains within SES’s orbital slot at 131 degrees west, it’s out of range to pose an interference threat to AMC-11, SES World Skies’ satellite in that slot. Galaxy’s expected to exit the AMC-11 orbital space June 7, said Intelsat. Intelsat lost communication with Galaxy in April (CD April 9 p10) and has been unable to keep the satellite from drifting even though its transponders remain active. The companies were concerned the proximity of the two satellites’ active C-band transponders could interrupt service for customers on the AMC-11 satellite.

A combination of legislation and industry self-regulation is the best way to shore up the FCC’s authority over broadband, said AT&T and Time Warner Cable executives. The ISP officials and others condemned FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s “third way” proposal in a panel discussion Tuesday co-hosted by the Information Technology & Information Foundation and the Free State Foundation. A technology-based answer by industry would be ideal, said BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker.

An inflection point has been reached in the cable and consumer electronics industries as companies ramp up efforts to provide more online content to video subscribers through their cable connections and via more devices, our survey of executives found. The backdrop is the introduction by Apple of the iPad, increased availability online of content from cable channels, broadcast networks and other programmers, and increasing viewing of video on devices besides TVs. Those factors and cable’s tru2way CE platform mean there likely will be more ways for cable subscribers to view over-the-top content, executives said.