FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, who was recently in New York to meet with analysts and investors, said the message emanating from Wall Street was clear: Chairman Julius Genachowski’s “third way” broadband reclassification proposal is already having a chilling effect on investment. A divided commission is to take up the Genachowski proposal Thursday. McDowell also said in an interview Wednesday that the FCC should complete action on the stalled white spaces proceeding quickly, so devices can be on store shelves in time for the 2011 holiday buying season.

Putting video online has significant costs for old and new companies alike, NBC Universal told the FCC in response to the agency’s wide-ranging discovery request for information on the company’s deal with Comcast. NBC Universal, which Comcast plans to buy control of, discussed some of its strategy to gradually put its cable programming online and discussed some of the events leading up to the start of the Hulu site for its broadcast network and others to put shows on the Web.

Despite opposition from the cellphone industry, San Francisco could soon start requiring cellphone retailers to post notices at point of sale, showing the level of radiation each phone could generate. The city’s Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 Tuesday to give preliminary approval to a “Cell Phone Right-to-Know” ordinance. Final approval is expected next week.

Senate legislation to streamline spectrum relocation for federal users makes minor tweaks to a House bill by Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash. The bipartisan Senate bill (S-3490) was introduced late Tuesday by Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Roger Wicker, R-Miss. Both bills aim to establish a more orderly process for transitioning federal users off bands that would be reviewed by a three-member technical panel reporting to the FCC and NTIA.

The FCC left the door open to further action on complaints of a dysfunctional fixed-satellite services (FSS) marketplace, in its report to Congress on the Open-Market Reorganization for the Betterment of International Telecommunications (ORBIT) Act. The report referenced Globecomm, Artel, CapRock, and Spacenet’s filings saying the FSS market is flawed and Intelsat uses anticompetitive behavior to win contracts and dictate leasing prices, but the report doesn’t propose any specific action. The ORBIT Act requires the FCC to provide annual reports to the House and Senate Commerce and Foreign Relations committees on the effect of the privatization of Intelsat and Inmarsat.

An FCC white paper released Tuesday builds a case against giving public safety direct access to the 10 MHz D-block, which the National Broadband Plan proposes be sold in an upcoming auction. Public safety groups have waged a ferocious battle against the NBP’s recommendations.

The Rural Utilities Service is anticipating that investment for round two of the Broadband Initiatives Program “is going to be more than double what we invested in the first round,” Administrator Jonathan Adelstein said at the Broadband Breakfast. The agency planned to have three rounds, but “folded the second and third rounds into the second one.” Adjusting the “remote” definition, increasing the grant component and other changes in the eligibility process encouraged more applications, he said. Most of the awards will be announced in July and August, he said.

A TV spectrum paper by FCC broadband staffers released Monday to little fanfare drew mixed reviews from broadcast lawyers who closely read it and engineers just beginning to parse it. Consumer electronics and wireless groups, seeking spectrum repurposed from broadcasting to wireless broadband, praised the paper, which is at http://xrl.us/bhor2p. The 60-page paper was posted Monday on the website of the National Broadband Plan but no news release accompanied it, so lawyers and engineers still were studying it Tuesday.

Anti-porn advocates urged more vigorous enforcement of federal obscenity laws, saying Congress and the Department of Justice should ensure that aggressive prosecution of laws already on the books is a priority, they said at a briefing hosted by the Coalition for the War Against Illegal Pornography on the Hill Tuesday.

The Rural Cellular Association (RCA), the Rural Telecommunications Group (RTG), T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel and many small and midsized carriers said the FCC should use its authority under Title III of the Communications Act to impose a data roaming obligation on carriers like the one for voice approved in 2007. But AT&T and Verizon Wireless countered that requiring roaming for data would violate the Communications Act. The commission sought comment on data roaming when it dropped the in-market exception for voice roaming (CD April 22 p4).