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The National Association of Broadcasters has asked the Federal Communications Commission to back off changing its method of calculating TV station coverage areas and interference protections, at least for now, saying the timing of that initiative could undermine the incentive auctions and at least some of the proposals may violate the incentive auction law.

The incentive auction legislation instructs the FCC to make its best effort to replicate coverage and interference protections. That information will be important when the FCC has to repack stations after the incentive auctions, as well as in determining access to in-market and out-of-market stations for satellite carriers. That is an issue that will arise in the reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act at the end of next year, which Congress will start to look at in a House Communications Subcommittee hearing next week.

Phil Hardy, Rep. Raul Labrador’s spokesman since his upset congressional win in 2010, has been fired for mistakenly tweeting in the name of his boss about his admiration for two actresses pole dancing in a Super Bowl ad.

The tweet, “Me likey Broke Girls,” was deleted after 14 seconds but is archived on a website that collects deleted tweets from politicians. The Idaho Republican’s office apologized for the tweet, which was Hardy’s take on a CBS promotional spot featuring Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs, the stars of “2 Broke Girls,” dancing in revealing clothing. The pair were depicted on the show’s set — a Brooklyn diner — gyrating to a Def Leppard pole-dancing tune “Pour Some Sugar On Me.” Hardy worked in the music industry, including a stint in London, specializing in heavy metal bands, before coming to Idaho. His first job in politics was as a spokesman for the Idaho Senate GOP Caucus. Rep Labrador made the decision to fire Hardy, said the Idaho Republican’s district director, Jake Ball.

[Commentary] There is no plan for a free government super Wi-Fi network. What sounded like a plan to create free public Wi-Fi networks is in fact a less ambitious but still vital proposal to reallocate a larger share of the best public airwaves (spectrum) for free shared use without the need for a license.

That’s exactly how Wi-Fi operates today—on “unlicensed” bands of spectrum that are equally open to everyone. There is certainly a strong case to be made that 21st-century public infrastructure should include a minimum level of broadband connectivity almost everywhere. By leveraging existing public assets—both unlicensed spectrum and the spider web of federal, state, and local fiber optic backhaul that crisscrosses the nation—it would be relatively inexpensive to blanket most areas with a basic level of wireless connectivity. In reality, though, the FCC is not proposing to subsidize the construction of networks. Instead, the agency wants to make enough free and high-quality unlicensed spectrum available that a far wider range of private companies, local governments, and individuals will find it economical to either offer or consume more broadband Internet services. If all of the Federal Communications Commission’s proposals are adopted—and shared public spectrum is plentiful—the good news about widespread and low-cost public Wi-Fi networks reported by the Post this week may actually become reality. Let’s hope.

[Commentary] This past week, we’ve had quite the discussion around Cecilia Kang’s Washington Post piece describing a plan by the Federal Communications Commission to create a national Wi-Fi network by making the right decisions about how to allocate spectrum between licenses for auction and what to leave available for the unlicensed TV white spaces (“TVWS” aka “Super Wi-Fi” aka “Wi-Fi on steroids”).

As Kang describes, the FCC’s opening of sufficient spectrum for TVWS could lead to “super Wi-Fi networks around the nation so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month.” Needless to say, the article faced much pushback, despite a subsequent Post clarification to indicate the FCC was not, actually, planning to build a network. Amidst the various critics, there were some general defenders of the concept. My colleagues at the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted that increasing the availability of open spectrum for Wi-Fi-type uses , and my friends at Free Press argued that such a free public Wi-Fi network (or, more accurately, series of networks) is in fact possible if the FCC makes enough good quality spectrum, suitable for broadband and usable outdoors, available on an unlicensed basis. I will now go a step further than any of my colleagues.

I will boldly state that, if the FCC produces a solid 20 MHz of contiguous empty space for TV White spaces in the Incentive Auction proceeding, or even two 10 MHz guard channels that could nationally produce two decent sized LTE-for-unlicensed channels, then we will have exactly the kind of free publicly available Wi-Fi Kang describes in her article. Or, “Yes Cecilia, there really is free national public Wi-Fi. Don’t let the haters and know-it-alls tell you otherwise.”