FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn defended the broadband reclassification approach of Chairman Julius Genachowski, contending fears that it would create regulatory uncertainty are vastly overblown. Forbearance has worked in wireless, with companies including AT&T and Verizon supporting that approach, and it can work for broadband transport, Clyburn said. The agency can act on Genachowski’s plan to apply some sections of Title II to broadband transport while forbearing on the other parts, even as Congress looks to rewrite the Telecom Act, she told a Media Institute luncheon audience Thursday. She took some pot-shots at spending on lobbying, the relationship between FCC and industry and some carriers’ complaints about regulatory uncertainty.

Public Knowledge proposed Thursday that the federal government “zero base” the federal “spectrum budget,” requiring every agency to reapply for the spectrum it needs, “including specific details with regard to spectrum utilization.” The group proposed government rules allowing agencies to offer on the secondary market spectrum they don’t use. Both proposals were debated at a Public Knowledge forum in Washington.

The NTIA has determined that pairing the 1755-1780 MHz band with AWS-3 spectrum for a mobile broadband auction won’t be possible, at least in a quick timeframe, based on its preliminary review, Administrator Lawrence Strickling told a Public Knowledge spectrum conference Thursday. He said the nearby 1675-1710 MHz band offers more hope (CD June 3 p1), but more must be known about how that spectrum is being used before the agency can make any recommendations.

The FCC will seek comment on reallocation of the 1675-1710 MHz band, which could be paired with the AWS-3 band for wireless broadband, commission officials said Wednesday. An Office of Engineering and Technology public notice is circulating on the eighth floor and is expected to be published Friday.

AT&T is eliminating its unlimited-pricing plans for new wireless subscribers to e-mail and Internet services on smartphones, signaling a shift in the way carriers bill their customers. Similar moves from other carriers are expected, said analysts, who generally favored the action. But Free Press called AT&T’s tiered pricing anti-consumer.

The FCC is partway through trimming a backlog of requests from cable operators to be freed of local rate and equipment regulation, said commission and industry officials. The Media Bureau in recent months has stepped up approvals of petitions seeking findings of effective video competition, our research found. The bureau granted 31 orders May 7-28, after having granted none during the corresponding three weeks in April.

The FCC should amend its Part 90 rules so more use is made of bands below 470 MHz, PCIA said in reply comments at the commission in docket 07-100. PCIA said it’s an active member of the Land Mobile Communications Council (LMCC), but the council’s proposed rules in this area “represent an overly conservative approach.” Various commenters continue to disagree about whether the FCC should allow secondary access for medical telemetry devices in 2.5 MHz of the 1427-1432 MHz band (CD May 18 p7), assigned to nonmedical telemetry use.

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.