FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski repeatedly deflected senators’ questions Wednesday on how the commission will respond to the recent net neutrality decision by the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Genachowski said the FCC has all the authority it needs to carry out proposals in the National Broadband Plan. Democratic senators seemed open to reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act, at least as a stopgap before a new law. Republicans sharply disagreed. “The legitimacy of the agency would be seriously compromised” if the FCC reclassifies broadband as a common-carrier service without instructions from Congress, said Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

All eyes are on Chairman Julius Genachowski on one of the first controversial orders before the FCC since he became chairman: A proposal to reclassify broadband under Title II of the Communications Act in the aftermath of the Comcast v. FCC decision. He faced repeated questions Wednesday, at a Senate Commerce hearing on the National Broadband Plan, about his position on whether the commission needs to reclassify broadband Wednesday. But he offered little beyond what he has said since the decision came down last week. (See related report in this issue).

Wireless carriers have been busy at the FCC in recent days on a roaming item scheduled for a vote next week. It’s an order that would narrow the in-market exclusion, approved in 2007 as part of the commission’s automatic roaming rules, and seek further comment on data roaming. The commission released its sunshine notice for the meeting late Wednesday, cutting off lobbying.

The FBI’s use of “exigent letters” to get phone records from telecommunications companies without first going through a legal process may lead to revision of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and possibly the firing of the FBI’s top lawyer, officials indicated. The House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee grilled FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni at a hearing Wednesday about her office’s role in the controversy, the subject of a 300-page report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine. His office previously released reports on abuses of National Security Letters, which the FBI issued to organizations demanding phone, e-mail and other business records. Their gag-order requirement doomed the Patriot Act provision in court (CD Sept 7/07 p8).

Verizon is building a new LTE innovation center that largely focuses on devices, Chief Technology Officer Dick Lynch said in an interview. Meanwhile, the carrier is going beyond LTE trials, targeting year-end for some commercial launches, he said.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Satellite executives see broadband, access to the mass market, and the blurring of civil, military, and commercial services as the source of future growth in the industry, they said at the National Space Symposium. The executives, from different parts of the satellite industry, spoke on a panel about emerging applications.

LAS VEGAS -- Three FCC commissioners told NAB they support studying retransmission consent in the wake of a petition from pay-TV operators to modify the commission’s approach to broadcast carriage disputes. But they didn’t all take a position on how the agency should move forward. “I think it’s important to study the issue,” Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said. But it’s also important to get a sense of the true scope of the problem, she said: “It’s always the 1 percent or 5 percent of the issue that draws the policy and decisions and that doesn’t always work in our best interest."

Choice is alive and well in U.S. broadband, at least when it comes to efforts by tech industry associations to broker net neutrality solutions. They've arisen in the uncertainty after a federal appeals court rejected the FCC’s claimed authority to act against Comcast in the BitTorrent case. The leaders of TechNet and the Information Technology Industry Council each said his organization has been working behind the scenes toward agreement among players including the incumbent wired broadband providers.

The FCC has plenty of authority under the Communications Act to provide Universal Service Fund support for broadband deployment and move forward with other proceedings prompted by the National Broadband Plan, regardless of the decision last week in the Comcast v. FCC case by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, AT&T said in a filing Tuesday at the commission. The carrier asked the FCC to proceed with caution and reject advice that the decision means the commission must reregulate broadband as a Title II service.

The long awaited satellite TV reauthorization remains stuck in the House due mainly to a Congressional Budget Office bill-scoring issue. The license allowing satellite TV companies to import distant signals is to expire at the end of the month. Ranking Member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., of the House Communications Subcommittee told us in a written statement Tuesday that “the bill is held up due to a copyright provision and it is not clear when the bill will proceed."