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Public comments on petitions by AT&T and the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association seeking to move the nation from Alexander Graham Bell’s old copper-wire telephone system to one based on the Internet poured into the Federal Communications Commission.

As expected, they run the gamut from Free Press’s concern that AT&T is trying to short-circuit consumer protections, to AT&T’s own contention that it is simply seeking a smooth glide path for a change that’s already happening. “AT&T doesn’t want a discussion about a reasonable regulatory framework,” Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner. AT&T federal regulatory senior vice president Bob Quinn pushed back, writing in a blog post that the company just wants the FCC to conduct trials to see where the problems will be as the nation goes into a “final transition” away from the plain old telephone service.

While Turner and Quinn are unlikely to agree on the solution, they both agree that it is time to decide just what the transition to an Internet-protocol based system means for bedrock principles like interconnection, universal service, consumer rights and emergency service. From Quinn’s perspective, the whole issue boils down to a pair of questions. “1) does the FCC have the authority to remove the legal and regulatory impediments to retire legacy technology? And 2) doesn’t it make sense to do a limited geographic trial of this transition to put in place the framework that allows us to complete this transition in the least disruptive way possible?” AT&T, needless to say, votes yea on both counts.

[Commentary] AT&T’s decision to upgrade its network from tradition phone technology (called “TDM”) to an all Internet protocol (IP) system has enormous implications for every aspect of our voice communication system in the country. To provide the right framework for the transition, Public Knowledge submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) our proposed “Five Fundamentals” Framework: Service to All Americans, Interconnection and Competition, Consumer Protection, Network Reliability, and Public Safety.

Using this Five Fundamentals Framework, the FCC (and eventually Congress) can both facilitate the upgrade to an all IP network while simultaneously ensuring that we do not compromise on any of the fundamental principles that have made our phone system the envy of the world. This isn’t an engineering problem – it’s a policy choice. Now is the time to make the policy choices that will form the foundation of the all-IP network for the 21st Century, just as our decisions to adopt these five fundamental principles shaped the home network of the 20th Century. We must not keep old rules that no longer serve us simply because they are comforting and familiar, but we must not be so dazzled by the promise of new technology that we forget the foundational principles on which these networks must be built. The technology changes, but the social needs and goals remain the same.

The Department of Justice apparently has security concerns about Japanese carrier Softbank’s $20.1 billion bid to take over Sprint, and is asking the Federal Communications Commission for more time to look into the deal.

In a short letter sent to the FCC, Jennifer Rockoff, attorney advisor for the DOJ’s National Security Division, asked the FCC to defer any action on the deal. Though the DOJ didn’t go into detail, its review most likely centers on foreign ownership. Softbank would take a 70 percent stake in the country’s third largest mobile carrier, which would trigger automatically trigger a review from federal agencies. It’s important to note that the Justice Department’s antitrust division, which would review from a competitive standpoint, wasn’t even named in the letter.

Sprint characterized the Justice Department’s request as routine. “This is a routine request when working with the [U.S. government] agencies regarding national security,” Sprint said in a statement. The No. 4 U.S. carrier, T-Mobile, is already in foreign hands as a unit of Deutsche Telekom, while Verizon Wireless is partly owned by Vodafone.

Since the arrival of social media platforms, companies have tried to figure out how to best use them to get their messages to consumers, often with mixed results.

Some brands have embraced the notion that social platforms like Twitter allow constant interaction, for better or worse, with their customers. Others have turned away from some strains of social media, as General Motors did last spring when it stopped advertising on Facebook while raising questions about the return on its investment. The move had a ripple effect in the advertising world, with many brands questioning whether the costs of being on social media were worth it.

A new report issued by Nielsen and Vizu, a research company owned by Nielsen, shows that brands think they might be turning a corner, specifically when it comes to paying for their use of social media. The report examined the opinions about social media marketing among more than 500 digital media professionals — including brand marketers, media agencies and advertisers — from September to October 2012. The study found that that 89 percent of advertisers continued to use free social media products. Nielsen did not release the names of specific social media platforms mentioned by the respondents, but they are likely to include Facebook and Pinterest, as well as Twitter.