federal

President Obama nominated two new commissioners to the Federal Communications Commission late Monday.

Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel and Republican Ajit Varadaraj Pai, who each have experience working at the FCC and on Capitol Hill, have been nominated to fill vacancies left by Michael Copps, a Democrat, and Meredith Attwell Baker, a Republican who left earlier this year to take a job with Comcast.

Rosenworcel currently works as an adviser to Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. Previously, she worked for Copps as an adviser at the FCC. If confirmed, she will replace him on the commission. … Read more

WASHINGTON--A Federal Trade Commission official says that industry hasn't yet done enough to implement Do Not Track and that legislation to mandate it may still be necessary.

"I don't think we're quite there yet," Julie Brill, a Democratic FTC commissioner, said this week at a conference organized by the Online Trust Alliance.

As interest-based advertising, sometimes called behavioral advertising, has spread, so has interest in some form of Do Not Track mechanism inspired by the federal Do Not Call Registry. Developers have added tools to Chrome, Firefox, and Safari to implement different versions of Do … Read more

Wireless consumers will be alerted in real time when they're about to go over their voice, data, or text-messaging limits thanks to a new voluntary agreement struck between the wireless industry and the Federal Communications Commission.

On Monday, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski and the head of the CTIA, the wireless industry's trade group, Steve Largent, are expected to reveal the new plan at a press conference in Washington, D.C. As part of the deal between the government and industry, wireless operators will send alerts to customers who are in danger of exceeding their monthly voice, data, and … Read more

Challenges to the Federal Communications Commission's Net neutrality rules will be heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a situation supporters of the rules had hoped to avoid.

On Thursday, the D.C. Circuit was chosen at random to be the court where challenges to the new rules, which prohibit broadband Internet providers from deliberately slowing or blocking subscribers' network traffic, will be heard. The rules were passed by the FCC in 2010. And they were officially registered with the government last month, opening up the process for legal challenges before the rules … Read more

Verizon Communications is taking another stab at overturning the Federal Communication Commission's Net Neutrality rules.

On Friday the company filed an appeal in the Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit.

After years of debate on the topic, the FCC adopted in late December rules codifying specific Net neutrality principles. The new rules were published in the Federal Register last week, which opened the door to lawsuits.The rules are expected to take effect November 20.

Verizon had filed a complaint in January to stop the Net Neutrality rules from being implemented. But in April a federal appellate … Read more

Groupon starts selling goods, lawmakers seek FTC probe of Facebook, Nokia hands out more pink slips, and Amazon lights a fire under the BlackBerry PlayBook.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

Bankrupt solar-panel maker Solyndra said it needed more than the initially expected four weeks to find a buyer to take over its idled operations, which were funded with a controversial $535 million federal loan guarantee.

Solyndra filed for bankruptcy this month with a plan to try to find a buyer by early October who could restart its recently shuttered factory and rehire some of its 1,000 staff.

Republican lawmakers have accused the Obama administration of ignoring signs of financial trouble at the company in its haste to grant the loan guarantee and participate in a groundbreaking of Solyndra's federally backed factory in California. … Read more

Wireless broadband startup LightSquared says it has found a solution to its critics' claims that the company's network will interfere with high-precision GPS devices.

Jeff Carlisle, the company's executive vice president of regulatory affairs and public policy, told reporters on a conference call on Wednesday that the company has partnered with a leading GPS manufacturer to develop a prototype device that will allow the GPS device to operate while co-existing with its wireless broadband network.

He didn't name the company that helped LightSquared develop the technology, and he didn't specify how the device works. But he … Read more

President Obama included authorization for incentive wireless spectrum auctions and spectrum reallocation for public safety as part of his American Jobs Act.

On Monday, the White House released a fact-sheet detailing President Obama's jobs bill, which he first talked about last week in his address to Congress. As part of this legislation, he is calling for wireless auctions that would help reduce the deficit and would also provide wireless broadband services for at least 98 percent of Americans. These are goals that his administration has also outlined in the National Broadband Plan.

Specifically, the American Jobs Bill would authorize … Read more