The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has pushed back the date of its next meeting to Sept. 23, a week after it was previously scheduled. An FCC spokesperson said the change came due to a scheduling issue.

The date of the meeting has been a point of contention for Republicans on Capitol Hill, who said the previous date was too soon for the agency to vote on its reclassification proceeding during the September session.

The FCC has two meetings left before the midterm elections. Some analysts say the elections could sweep in enough right-leaning members to pass legislation blocking the agency from moving to increase its authority over phone and cable companies by reclassifying the legal status of broadband service.

Reps. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) urged the FCC at a hearing last month to keep reclassification off its September meeting agenda because they say the agency needs more time to review the large volume of comments it has received about the proceeding.

"The FCC should definitely not rush any process that gives Congress little time to react after returning from recess. Over 8,000 pages of comments have been submitted to the FCC on this proposal, and the comment period is open to August 12. For reclassification to be on the September agenda, the other commissioners would have to receive the chairman's proposal by August 26, giving the commissioners only two weeks to review the thousands of comments. Clearly, we need to make sure that they have that ability to review those comments from the public," Scalise said.

Reclassification is a controversial plan that would boost the agency's authority over Internet service providers. The FCC says it might need more power in order to protect consumers and expand Internet access to all Americans.

Sprint has hired Maureen Cooney as a deputy chief privacy officer. She previously served as acting chief privacy officer and chief Freedom of Information Act officer for the Homeland Security Department, which made her the highest-ranking privacy official in the U.S. government at the time, Sprint said on Wednesday.

Cooney arrives at Sprint from TRUSTe, a privacy services company in San Francisco. She was the company's chief privacy officer and vice president for public policy.

Google will sell advertisements on some cable channels carried by DirecTV as part of an advertising partnership announced on Tuesday.

Google's TV Ads service, which the search giant bills as an online marketplace that makes it easy for anyone to buy and measure national cable television advertising, will offer day and primetime advertising on channels including Bloomberg, G4, Fox Business Channel and TV Guide.

96 percent of Google's almost $7 billion in advertising revenue last quarter came from the Web. DirecTV is the nation's largest satellite provider with more than 30 million household subscribers, significantly expanding the potential audience for Google Ads.

An AT&T executive commended Google and Verizon’s work on a net-neutrality policy proposal, calling it a “positive sign” at an investor conference on Wednesday.

"The agreement with Google and Verizon, I think, is a positive sign that says, if those two companies can agree on somethingas difficult as net neutrality, that hopefully the rest of the industry can also come to an agreement," said Ralph De la Vega, who runs AT&T’s mobile and consumer divisions. 

He did not comment on how the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) might react to the companies’ proposal. De la Vega also echoed the company’s long-held view that Congress, not the FCC, should clarify the agency’s authority over broadband access providers.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) identified support for its views in a study released on Wednesday that casts the growth of American broadband adoption in a negative light.

“Today’s Pew report confirms what the FCC found in our broadband survey last year: There are still too many barriers to broadband adoption in America,” said Jen Howard, the spokesperson for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Pew found that “after several consecutive years of modest but consistent growth, broadband adoption slowed dramatically in 2010,” according to a report written by Pew senior research specialist Aaron Smith.

Former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe is listed in critical condition after surviving the plane crash that left former Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and four other people dead on Monday.

O'Keefe retired from NASA in 2005 to join European defense contractor European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS) Co. and serves as CEO of its U.S. division. According to the AP, he suffered a broken pelvis, among other injuries. His son Kevin also survived the crash and is listed in serious condition with undisclosed injuries.

The four survivors, which include a 13-year-old boy whose father perished in the crash, were forced to spend the night on a rocky mountainside in the rain before rescuers were able to reach them Tuesday morning. EADS Chairman Ralph D. Crosby Jr. said the company looks forward to O'Keefe's recovery and return in a statement sent out Tuesday afternoon.

O'Keefe lead NASA for three years during President George W. Bush's first term, where he oversaw the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Since joining EADS he was focused on helping the company secure a multibillion dollar contract to build a fleet of aerial refueling tankers for the U.S. Air Force.

The oily residue people leave on handset touch screens could make their phones vulnerable to security problems termed “smudge attacks,” according to a report circulated this week by University of Pennsylvania researchers.

The paper said hackers might be able to read the smudges on a smart phone to infer a password, either by taking photos of the screen or by obtaining the phone and analyzing the screen directly.

The researchers took photos of screens and used a program to analyze the photos closely. They found they could figure out the password over 90 percent of the time. The study used Android phones, which use a graphical pattern to allow users to unlock the phone. Phones included the Nexus 1.

Market research firm Gartner cut its forecast for growth in enterprise information technology spending worldwide from 4.1 to 2.9 percent on Tuesday.

Gartner reduced its expectations from earlier this year but said the enterprise IT market is still poised to grow both this year and next after suffering a 5.9 percent decline in 2009. Total worldwide enterprise IT spending this year is expected to exceed $2.4 trillion.

“The enterprise IT market will certainly return to growth in 2010, but we now expect it will grow by only 2.9 percent globally, down from 4.1 percent growth we had forecast earlier this year,” said Kenneth Brant, research director at Gartner. “Utilities and the national and international government sectors will experience the strongest growth rates in 2010, with IT spending growing 4.7 and 4 percent respectively in 2010."

Good morning!

Tech community mourns the late Sen. Ted Stevens

An outpouring of sad remarks arose from the tech community after former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who had led the Commerce Committee, passed away in a plane crash on Tuesday. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, all four commissioners, Senate Commerce ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), and National Assocation of Broadcasters president Gordon Smith expressed regret over the loss. Smith said Stevens was a "towering figure in the U.S. Senate and shepherded some of the most important legislation through Congress during his tenure on the Senate Commerce Committee."

Conservative groups, bloggers oppose broadband reclassification

Over 150 conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, state legislators and bloggers will send two letters on Wednesday to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voicing their opposition to an agency proposal to reclassify broadband as a telecom service. The signatories, which include Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Washington Examiner editorial page editor Mark Tapscott, Michelle Malkin and Erick Erickson of RedState, urge the FCC not to move to increase its authority in that way.

The first letter signed by advocacy groups and state lawmakers accuses the FCC of "relentlessly pursuing a massive regulatory regime that would stifle broadband expansion, create congestion, slow Internet speeds, jeopardize job retention and growth, and lead to higher prices for consumers." The second letter from bloggers and members of the media uses more measured language but argues no net neutrality regulations are necessary and claims the only two known net neutrality violations were halted without the FCC's intervention.

Net neutrality activists buy up Facebook ads. A coalition of progressive groups that oppose a proposed net neutrality framework from Verizon and Google, which the groups said is not strict enough, are buying up ads on Facebook. "Tell Google 'Don't be evil,'" the ads say. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a political action committee for candidates on the left, bought the ads.