The FCC is unlikely to act on Tribune’s request to transfer radio and TV licenses and waivers of cross-ownership rules banning common ownership of broadcasters and daily newspapers in the same market until pending bankruptcy issues are resolved, agency and industry officials predicted. Work by career commission staffers reviewing the deal for the company to emerge from Chapter 11 appears to have been slowed down because senior creditors of the company that were set to take control of it have abandoned that deal, they said. The officials said the regulator may be reviewing some elements of Tribune’s long-form application -- put out for public comment in May -- that aren’t directly affected by disagreement over bankruptcy emergence by creditors.

The European Parliament flexed its political muscle on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement Wednesday, approving a statement opposing the lack of openness in its negotiations. The successful declaration, a “rare event” which signals the strength of parliament’s bargaining power, will be sent to the EU Presidency before the next ACTA round at the end of this month in Tokyo, said Françoise Castex, of France and the Socialists and Democrats.

The public-safety sector remains resilient despite state budget problems, Motorola Co-CEO Greg Brown said at Citigroup’s technology conference Tuesday. Meanwhile, the manufacturer is teaming up with Ericsson to create a unified public safety platform that will enable real-time information-sharing between command centers and remote devices, the company said.

Electric utilities and telecom carriers clashed over whether utilities can rely on commercial networks to meet most of their communications needs during a disaster. More than a dozen parties filed reply comments on a Public Safety Bureau inquiry notice from April about the survivability of broadband networks. The Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and the Utilities Telecom Council (UTC) said utilities need their own secure networks and dedicated spectrum.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Pay-TV operators and vendors are working on new on-screen guides to keep up with the pace of innovation of over-the-top services such as Netflix Watch Instantly and Apple TV, executives at the Set Top Box Conference said last week. But they diverged on how consumers will want to navigate all the programming choices after operators integrate DVR, VOD and online video options into a single user-interface.

A draft FCC order ties the E-Rate index to inflation and lets schools and libraries lease dark fiber from utility companies other than telcos, advisors to three commissioners said. The proposed order circulated Thursday by Chairman Julius Genachowski would also make permanent a temporary provision that allows communities to use schools’ and libraries’ systems after hours, the aides said. Genachowski is seeking a vote on the order at the Sept. 23 meeting.

Broadcasters’ arguments against the use of an indoor antenna standard to determine significantly viewed signal eligibility are “all either non-existent or easy to resolve,” Dish Network and DirecTV said in reply comments with the FCC. The two DBS companies get congressional intent wrong when they seek to change proposed FCC rules implementing STELA so indoor antennas can be used, a wide array of broadcasters said in docket 10-152. Broadcasters and DBS disagree whether indoor antennas can be used to test if a subscriber can’t receive terrestrial signals from a local TV station and so is eligible to get a distant station affiliated with the same network (CD Aug 26 p2). The law requires the commission to act by Nov. 23.

The U.S. may have dropped its demand that ISPs bear some liability for online infringement, but key provisions in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) remain controversial after last month’s negotiations in Washington, said a professor monitoring the talks. The latest ACTA draft was supposed to be kept confidential but leaked over the weekend. Fears persist of a “back-door” requirement of a graduated response to Internet piracy, overly restrictive anti-circumvention provisions, and criminal sanctions, said Michael Geist, University of Ottawa Canada research chair of Internet and e-commerce law, and others watching the talks.

Competitive eligible telecommunications carriers won’t be able to help themselves to money left over from the surrender of Verizon Wireless’s and Sprint Nextel’s high-cost universal service funds, the FCC said. In an order and rulemaking notice released late Friday, the commission said the money should be kept “as a potential down payment on proposed broadband universal service reforms … including to index the E-rate funding cap to inflation.” The commission sought comment on whether it should amend its rules permanently “to facilitate efficient use of reclaimed excess high-cost support” and on a proposed rule change that would “reclaim legacy support surrendered by a competitive ETC when it relinquishes ETC status in a particular state."

India is asking all companies that offer encrypted communications to install servers in the country so the government will have access to user data. India’s Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said notices were being dispatched to companies like Google and Skype, numerous Indian news reports said. While the U.S. State Department has been in touch with its foreign partners, it’s a matter for RIM and to work out directly with Indian officials, the agency said in an e-mailed statement.