Kevin Martin

In a brief statement last week, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin announced the FCC will try to complete its review of two major wireless mergers by the end of the year. The goal, Martin said, is to reach a decision before a new president takes office in January.

The deals are Sprint's proposed purchase of a 51 percent stake in a reconstituted Clearwire, and Verizon's planned $28 billion purchase of Alltel. If approved, the Alltel merger would make Verizon the largest U.S. cellular carrier with roughly 80 million subscribers, versus AT&T's 71.4 million.

Last spring, the Federal Communications Commission held its highly publicized 700MHz auction, the sell-off of the slice of the electromagnetic spectrum that analog television signals will no longer be using as of next February. The auction raised nearly $20 billion for government coffers, and was generally considered to be a rousing success.

The only piece of the 700MHz spectrum that did not sell was the so-called "D Block," a narrow frequency range reserved by the FCC for the development and implementation of a national emergency-responder network.

It was a mostly smooth transition for residents of Wilmington, N.C., Thursday as the Federal Communications Commission and city officials worked with local television stations to switch from analog broadcasting to digital.

Wilmington was the first city in the nation to make the highly anticipated switch because it is one of the few markets in which all its commercial stations have built their Digital TV channels.

Comcast fired back at the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday in its long-running duel with the agency. The cable-TV and Internet service provider filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

The filing is the result of a FCC hearing last month in which Comcast was sanctioned for throttling back the broadband speed of customers using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing application. The FCC ordered Comcast to provide plans for equitably managing its bandwidth and to make its network-management policies public.

Comcast's View

While the Federal Communication Commission voted 3-2 to punish Comcast for its alleged poor network-management practices, concerns are being raised about the FCC's legal authority over the cable-TV and Internet services provider.

On Friday, the FCC ruled that Comcast had been monitoring and blocking subscribers' use of peer-to-peer file sharing, specifically with BitTorrent P2P software.

In a historic decision, the Federal Communication Commission has declared that cable-TV and Internet service provider Comcast interfered with Internet users' rights to share specific content, including television shows and movies.

Under strong pressure from open-Internet advocacy groups, the FCC ruled 3-2 Friday that Comcast monitored customers' Web traffic and blocked specific types of connections.

Around-the-Clock Blocking

A divided Federal Communications Commission has ruled that Comcast Corp. violated U.S. government policy when it blocked Internet traffic for some subscribers and has ordered the cable giant to change the way it manages its network.

In a precedent-setting move, the FCC by a 3-2 vote on Friday enforced a policy that guarantees customers open access to the Internet.

The commission did not assess a fine, but ordered the company to stop cutting off transfers of large data files among customers who use a special type of "file-sharing" software.

The fees that cell phone carriers charge customers who break service contracts took a big hit in a California courtroom when a judge said such charges by Sprint Nextel Corp. likely violate state law.

The judge, in a tentative ruling issued late Monday, said Sprint will have to pay $18.3 million to customers who sued over the fees and credit $54.8 million to those who were charged but did not pay the fees.

The Federal Communications Commission is reportedly ready to take enforcement action against cable-TV giant Comcast for blocking Internet traffic. An investigation began after complaints from the public-interest group Free Press.

Philadelphia-based Comcast is the country's second-largest Internet service provider, with 14.1 million subscribers.

A merger of the nation's only two satellite radio companies moved closer to fruition Thursday after the pair agreed to pay $19.7 million to settle a case alleging violation of federal rules.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin told The Associated Press the agency had reached an agreement late Wednesday night where XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. will pay $17.5 million and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. will pay $2.2 million to resolve that issue.