The Federal Communications Commission is poised to hand a big victory to the cell phone industry by allocating more airwaves for mobile broadband services.

The FCC's goal is to make available 500 megahertz of spectrum for commercial broadband providers over time, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.

Under pressure from the Obama administration to make broadband service ubiquitous across the country, the agency is in the final stages of putting together its long-awaited National Broadband Plan, which is due to Congress March 17. The plan is expected to outline the spectrum goal, sources said.

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The White House wants the public's help in crafting a national intellectual property enforcement strategy.

Victoria Espinel, the new White House intellectual property enforcement coordinator, is charged with putting together a strategy to help protect America's innovation and creativity from falling seize to piracy and counterfeiting.

The strategy was mandated by the Pro IP Act passed by Congress in 2008, which also created Espinel's position. She's been in the job less than 3 months.

According to a notice in the Federal Register today, Espinel is looking for input on ways to decrease the supply of counterfeit goods both in the U.S. and overseas. She also wants recommendations from the public regarding the "objectives and content" of the strategic plan to improve the government's intellectual property enforcement efforts.

Comments must be submitted by March 24.

The Chamber of Commerce last week urged the administration to deliver the plan to Congress by the summer.

"Our government's efforts to promote and protect our innovative and creative industries will be a crucial element of our economic recovery," said David Hirschmann, president and CEO of the Chamber's Global Intellectual Property Center.

"A government-wide national intellectual property strategy should be a fundamental part of our nation's job strategy," he said.

TUESDAY TECH ROUNDUP:
Apple VP explains risque apps double standard - Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Intel attacked at same time as Google - Miguel Heft, Bits
FCC: Cost a major barrier to broadband adoption - Marguerite Reardon, Signal Strength
Intel spearheads jobs initiative - Juliana Gruenwald, The Daily Dose
Catching Saddam Hussein in his own social Web - Nancy Scola, techPresident
Olympics: Thou shal not Tweet - Mike Masnic, Tech Dirt
Firms warn against FCC re-classification - Cecilia Kang, Post Tech
Commercial spaceflight creates jobs - Gov. Bill Richardson, The Huffington Post
Twitter's ad platform could launch next month - Adam Ostrow, Mashable

TOP TECH STORIES FROM THE HILL:
Fmr. intel chief: U.S. would lose cyber war - The Hill
Intel targeted in Jan. attack, though says no relation to Google attack - The Hill
Beijing blasts Google claims as 'groundless' - The Hill
FCC: Cost is broadband's top obstacle - The Hill

A former intelligence chief warned lawmakers Tuesday the U.S. would lose a cyber war waged today. Read more...

It seems Intel, too, was the target of repeated cyberattacks throughout the month of January.

The tech firm noted in its most recent filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it was victim to multiple "attempts by others to gain unauthorized access through the Internet to our information technology systems by, for example, masquerading as authorized users or surreptitious introduction of software."

Intel officials ultimately reported they were unsure of who launched the attacks, though they did speculate the attempts could be the result of "industrial or other espionage, or actions by hackers seeking to harm the company..."

But they have since taken great care to distance their difficulties with those of Google, which was subject to a series of cyberattacks around the same time as Intel.

Google believes two Chinese schools, one of which has close ties to the state's military, launched an attack on the search engine giant on January 12, specifically targeting human rights activists using the company's popular Gmail service.

But an Intel spokesman stressed that incident was in no way related to his company's current difficulties.

“The only connection between what we saw in January and the attacks on Google is timing,” Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman, told The New York Times, which first discovered the SEC report.

Intel's full explanation, pulled from their SEC filing, follows the jump.

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A day after the Senate approved a new jobs bill, tech giant Intel announced its own stimulus package.

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The public-interest group Free Press is now calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to release its data on national high-speed Internet access.

While the FCC typically makes an analysis of that data available to reporters, Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner is pressing the agency to share with research all of its new broadband numbers.

He emphasized in a statement early Tuesday that a full release is the only way to ensure the FCC is not "missing some key gems" about national broadband usage, accessibility and competition.

"When the FCC overhauled its broadband data collection practices back in 2008, there was much hope that the new information would be used to finally portray an accurate picture of the state of the U.S. broadband market and enable smarter policies aimed to promote competition and universal service," Turner said.

"We are simply asking that outside researchers and analysts be granted access to these data," he continued. "We believe this request to harness the collective power of the research community is consistent with [FCC] Chairman [Julius] Genachowski's commitment to run a fact-based, data-driven agency."

The numbers Free Press desires derive from Form 477, which Internet providers must submit to the FCC periodically.  Free Press believes a number of inconsistencies hamper numbers derived from those reports  -- from reporting errors that show rural areas with more broadband providers than is likely, to a series of ambiguities or redactions that warrant further clarification, they said.

Consequently, they formally requested the FCC share its nuanced raw data with researchers, provided those experts sign a confidentiality form and agree not to release information that would cause "substantial competitive harm," as FCC rules stipulate. The interest group said it was mostly hoping to conduct analyses on issues it believes the FCC has largely overlooked.

"The FCC should be applauded for its public recognition of the shortcomings of its analysis of this new broadband data," Turner said. "Some of these shortcomings might be explained with a better understanding of the Commission's methodology, but we strongly believe the underlying information has great analytical power that remains unharnessed."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is coming under growing pressure to award grants to promote Internet freedom in Iran.

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Poor performance in a host of technology-related areas is what "catalyzed" President Barack Obama's early push for tech innovation, the White House's top tech adviser stressed Tuesday.

At an event hosted by The Atlantic, Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra said both federal and state governments have long been dogged by poor marks in online government services, education advancements and tech industry improvements.

Those scores only highlight the fact the United States is lagging behind the rest of the world in areas it once dominated, he continued. But while Chopra later admitted those absolute rankings mean far less than a country's rate of progress between years, he ultimately said those numbers, too, showed the United States in decline, prompting the White House to take action.

"Now, one would expect mathematically that if you're number one, the marginal rate of improvement on a given indicator would be low, and if you're at the bottom of the heat, you could see bigger gains," he said. "Unfortunately, we were not number one on these key indicators..."

Chopra later said the lack of progress was especially pronounced in measures of academic achievement. Far fewer Americans today have advanced degrees than in years past, he explained, noting that produced a tough barrier for innovation.

"[One indicator] the president has often cited is one of the most important for our global competitiveness: the rate of our college graduates amongst our adult population," he said.

But studies routinely show that fewer Americans are seeking those degrees, Chopra noted.

"We had been number one for decades, but we are flat, folks, Going back to decades; relatively flat," he emphasized, adding the president hoped to return to No. 1 by 2020.

Chopra later described the the United States' performance at providing government services online -- e-government -- as similarly lagging.

"You would think we lead the world in e-government," he said, but he noted that the country until recent had suffered from low marks in measure of online services.

Consequently, Chopra said these alarming indicators prompted the new White House as early as January 2009 to commit more heavily to innovation -- a job, Chopra seemed to recognize, that was far from complete.

"All of this to be said, these benchmarking statistics as we came into the administration catalyzed the president's call for a new vision of the American economy," he said.