ComScore broadband test results understate the speeds offered by ISPs, the NCTA said in a letter to the chief of the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. The association said it sent the letter in response to assumptions about retail broadband speed disclosures in the National Broadband Plan that relied on comScore figures. “The comScore data cited in the plan suffers from a variety of problems and should not serve as the basis for concluding that there is such a significant gap between maximum speeds and ‘actual’ speeds,” NCTA Vice President Neal Goldberg wrote Joel Gurin, the chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau.

Changing the Wiretap Act to ban video surveillance could cause more problems than it solves, a former federal prosecutor said Monday at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Crime Subcommittee in Philadelphia. Chairman Arlen Specter, D-Pa., the only lawmaker at the hearing, said he will introduce a bill to expand to still pictures and video the legal protection given oral communications, according to media reports. We couldn’t reach his office for comment. Several civil-liberties groups also said they will propose Tuesday changes in the underlying Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

TORONTO -- Seeking to “encourage the creation of high-quality Canadian television programs,” the Canadian Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is for the first time imposing spending requirements on the nation’s three largest private, English-language broadcasters.

Historically non-regulated media companies are approaching the FCC’s Future of Media proceeding cautiously, industry officials said. Most newspapers will leave it to their trade associations to file comments, and some question the agency’s jurisdiction in the area. “I don’t expect them [our members] to file anything that is exhaustive,” said Newspaper Association of America President John Sturm. “It just doesn’t seem to warrant that, at least from the newspaper side. I don’t know what they'll do with regard to their broadcast interests,” he said. “The bottom line is there will be some general information filed on a respectable basis to the commission, but unlikely to be any kind of serious data dump."

The Senate and the House late Thursday passed a 30-day extension for the license allowing satellite TV companies to import distant signals. The license was set to expire at the end of the month. The legislation (S-3186) gives DBS providers and legislators until the end of April to pass another extension or a longer-term reauthorization. It’s the third time the license, which was originally set to expire at the end of 2009, has gotten a reprieve. The measure was passed without debate in both houses. The Senate also passed a 10-year reauthorization of the distant signal license Friday.

GENEVA -- The ITU Radiocommunication Bureau (BR) has begun consultations with countries and satellite companies over discrepancies found between satellite networks logged in the master register and their actual use. The BR also started to enforce certain regulatory provisions by removing unused frequency assignments from the register when their use hasn’t been suspended as required. A BR study showed about 10 to 15 percent of geostationary positions with satellite networks recorded in the register may not be in regular operation.

The FCC needs more data before it can make any decisions about whether to move forward on allocating spectrum to an advertising-supported free or low-cost broadband service, one of the suggestions in the National Broadband Plan, Blair Levin, executive director of the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative, said Friday during a taping of C-SPAN’s The Communicators, to be telecast over the weekend. Levin also responded to criticisms of the plan from both Democrats and Republicans that were voiced during last week’s House hearing on the plan.

Satellite broadband providers were pleased to find significant recognition of the role the technology could play in increasing the reach of broadband in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, executives from Hughes Networks and WildBlue said in interviews. While past government broadband initiatives, such as the first round of the broadband stimulus grants, largely discounted satellite broadband as a useful means for connectivity expansion, the FCC’s broadband task for took a new approach, they said.

Comcast’s deal to buy control of NBC Universal has been discussed by the Department of Justice with some of those likely to be affected, at this early stage of antitrust review (CD March 10 p2), said some following the transaction and an opponent. An Asian American group that wants Comcast to pay $1 billion into a media diversity fund to be run by the FCC was the first to say in a commission filing that it has met with Justice. Others probably have discussed the deal with the department or will, analysts and a deal opponent said.