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Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) said that she intends to reintroduce legislation, the Next Generation Wireless Disclosure Act, in the coming weeks that's aimed at ensuring consumers have complete information about pricing and service conditions before they sign up for a mobile wireless contract.

Rep Eshoo said it's imperative that mobile providers "accurately disclose terms and the conditions of services, including a clear and concise explanation of pricing," as well as explain whether they have a "network management policy that could impact a user's experience." The goal of the forthcoming bill is to ensure "consumers know what they're getting for their money before committing to a two-year wireless service contract," Rep Eshoo said during an event about Congress's broadband agenda for 2013 that was held by the Broadband Breakfast Club. The bill would provide consumers with information about the speed of a wireless carrier's 4G service and the technology used to provide that high-speed mobile broadband service before they sign a mobile contract. The bill would also give consumers information about a wireless service's minimum data speed, network reliability and coverage areas so they can compare different pricing and service options.

Now that Rupert Murdoch is spinning off News Corp.’s publishing properties into a separate company, media observers have identified the Los Angeles Times as a likely target for acquisition. Murdoch isn’t one of them.

"It won’t get through with the Democratic administration in place," Murdoch said during a break in the Golden Globes ceremony in Beverly Hills. Murdoch was alluding to federal regulations that seek to limit media consolidation. A Federal Communications Commission rule adopted in 1975 bars the same company from owning newspapers and television stations in the same market. News Corp. owns two television stations in Los Angeles: KTTV-TV Channel 11 and KCOP-TV Channel 13. Adding the L.A. Times to the portfolio would put Murdoch in violation of the cross-ownership rules.

As part of its Data Innovation Initiative, the Federal Communications Commission continued its modernization of its international reporting requirements.

In 2011, the FCC adopted a First Report and Order, FCC 11-76, which eliminated a number of outdated international reporting requirements and reduced the number of international reports to just two: the Traffic and Revenue Report and the Circuit Status Report. This Second Report and Order further streamlines these two reports by eliminating reporting requirements for over a thousand small carriers and reducing the level of detail submitted by international service providers by over 75 percent. Taken together, the FCC estimates these changes will reduce the overall burdens industry-wide by nearly 30 percent. The FCC also adopted reforms that ensure data collections match the Commission’s needs while avoiding unnecessary or excessive burdens on international service providers. These include replacing the current system of billing codes for reporting telephone service with a series of simplified filing schedules, and allowing carriers to report their transit traffic on a world-total, rather than route-by-route basis.

Last year, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged the nation’s schools to opt for digital textbooks as quickly as possible. “Over the next few years, textbooks should be obsolete,” he said during a National Press Club address in October. “The world is changing. This has to be where we go as a country.” But a number of challenges to reaching this goal exist—including finding and evaluating high-quality digital texts. To help school leaders with this challenge, here’s a closer look at the current digital textbook market for K-12 schools.