Targeting the burgeoning IoT market, Skylo Technologies asked the FCC for a blanket license for up to 1 million mobile terminals that will connect with the Inmarsat 4-F3 and Skyterra 1 satellites, said an International Bureau application Tuesday. Skylo said the earth stations will transmit in the 1.6265-1.6605 GHz band and receive in the 1.525-1.559 GHz band. It said it's eyeing such applications as fishing vessels, trucking and agriculture.

Intel and the FIDO Alliance announced an open protocol for “simply and securely” onboarding IoT devices Tuesday. This could “save the industry from a lot of frustration and unnecessary security risks,” blogged Richard Kerslake, general manager-industrial controls and robotics of Intel's IoT group and co-chair of the FIDO Alliance’s IoT technical working group. Security concerns are a major barrier to IoT adoption, Kerslake noted, calling the standard "an important first step in addressing the security gaps that currently exist in IoT deployment within enterprise and industrial environments." Companies have worked to automate the IoT onboarding process, but there isn't an industry standard, he said. Of current solutions, the end customer has to be known at the time of device manufacture so the product can be preconfigured, creating “unnecessary friction and cost in the supply chain,” he said. The open IoT protocol will enable industrial IoT devices to leverage public key cryptography to simply and securely onboard IoT devices to any cloud or on-premises management platform without the need for human intervention.

Silicon Labs introduced its Wi-SUN technology Tuesday ahead of the Smart Cities Connect Virtual Conference and Expo. Wi-SUN, based on Silicon Labs’ EFR32 hardware platform, IPv6 mesh stack and development tools, is said to enable secure wireless connectivity for a range of applications including advanced metering infrastructure, street lighting networks, asset management and smart city sensors such as parking, air quality and waste management. The IoT technology, designed for large-scale, long-range, low-power wide-area networks, enables a non-proprietary approach to industrial and smart city applications, making deployments “more scalable, resilient and safer,” said Matt Johnson, Silicon Labs’ general manager-IoT products. It's certified by the global Wi-SUN Alliance, said Silicon Labs, which is working with customers to bring fully-certified applications to market by early summer.

Samsung will roll out a new smart tag April 16 that can be used to locate lost items, said the company Friday. The Galaxy SmartTag+ allows users to locate tagged items on a map, even at a far distance, using SmartThings Find, available for Galaxy devices running Android 8 or later. Galaxy SmartTag+ is equipped with Bluetooth Low Energy and ultra-wideband technology, and it uses augmented reality technology to guide users toward the location of the missing item using a Galaxy phone camera. UWB-equipped Galaxy smartphones show users how far away they are from the tag and point them in the right direction, said the company. Closer to the tag’s location, users can choose to have the tag ring loudly, it said. Price wasn’t given.

Fight for the Future, Public Citizen and 20 other groups urged six publications to “rescind” recommendations of Amazon’s Ring products. The “cameras surveil millions of Americans” and amid “the massive growth of this private network of cameras, the tech giant is aggressively expanding their police partnerships,” said Wednesday's letter to CNET, Consumer Reports, Digital Trends, TechRadar, Tom’s Guide and Wirecutter. “Putting Black lives in danger is part of Amazon Ring’s business model. The tech giant weaponizes racist, fear-mongering culture by using racially-coded language and dog whistles to promote Ring products and partnerships. ... Amazon marketed Rekognition to police with the full awareness of two damning facts: first, that police misuse facial recognition, and second, that Rekognition disproportionately misidentifies Black and brown people, transgender people, and women.” Ring surveils, intimidates and punishes Black Lives Matter protesters, the groups said, citing Electronic Frontier Foundation-released records showing Los Angeles Police Department detectives requested such footage of BLM protests. Amazon didn’t comment.

Parking app company SpotHero launched dynamic pricing at more than 1,000 parking facilities in North America, it said Tuesday. SpotHero IQ gives parking garage operators dynamic rates so they can set optimal pricing in high- and low-demand environments using real-time data, said the company. SpotHero CEO Mark Lawrence said the service allows operators to proactively manage demand volatility during a lull or spike in traffic. Drivers using the app can get “everywhere easier at the right price,” said the company. One Parking Vice President Rosario Palella called it a “game changer” that allows a parking facility to reach customers in time frames it wouldn’t have been able to do previously. The SpotHero app is live in over 65 cities with 100 operators.

Smart traffic management systems will save cities $277 billion globally by 2025 by reducing emissions and congestion, up from $178 billion this year, said Juniper Research Monday. High-traffic smart intersections, leveraging connectivity and artificial intelligence-based automation, monitor and manage traffic flow based on real-time data, potentially slashing time wasted in road congestion by as much as 33 hours yearly per motorist, it said.

A bipartisan bill introduced Thursday would direct the FCC to assess spectrum supply for IoT and 5G devices and deliver its findings to Congress biennially. “The explosion in use of IoT devices by families and businesses means we need to ensure we have enough spectrum available to accommodate this growing technology,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., who introduced the IoT Readiness Act with Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y.

Refrain from acting to curb 6 GHz unlicensed use, the Wi-Fi Alliance urged the FCC in a filing posted Monday in docket 18-295: The need “was significant pre-pandemic and has only increased with hundreds of millions of Americans relying on Wi-Fi."

NTIA plans a virtual meeting Jan. 13 at noon EST to discuss progress in the multistakeholder process on promoting IoT software component transparency, says Friday’s Federal Register. “Modern development practices” such as code reuse and an information technology marketplace with many mergers and acquisitions “make it challenging to track the use of software components,” said the agency. IoT “compounds this phenomenon” with the layering of smart connectivity features on new devices, it said: “The sheer quantity of software means that some software products ship with vulnerable or out-of-date components.”