FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) call for the Biden administration to enable U.S. businesses to provide internet service to Cubans. “While Cuba’s communist regime is blocking Internet access in an effort to hide their brutal crackdown on freedom, American enterprises have the technical capability to beam connectivity to the Cuban people and help power their real and ongoing struggle for life and liberty,” Carr said. “With the backing and authorization of the federal government, these private sector innovators can get to work immediately.” Also Wednesday, Carr spoke with DeSantis about serving remote locations in Cuba. DeSantis sent a letter to President Joe Biden requesting federal assistance to provide internet access to Cuba. He requested “all necessary authorizations, indemnifications, and funding to American businesses with the capability to provide internet access” there. The White House didn’t comment Thursday.

Intelsat dropped the Gogo branding from the commercial aviation connectivity business it bought in December (see 2012010026), said the company Tuesday. Gogo sold Intelsat the business for $400 million to focus on business aviation connectivity.

Airline broadband connectivity via geostationary orbit (GSO) satellite is on its way out, with low earth orbit (LEO) constellations likely to claim most if not all that market by decade's end, satellite executives said Wednesday during the annual Connected Aviation Intelligence Summit. OneWeb Vice President-Mobility Ben Griffin said many airlines he has spoken with in the past year are "positively anxious" about LEO and its promised capacity, coverage and low latency benefits over GSO. Vice President-Starlink and Commercial Sales Jonathan Hofeller said SpaceX similarly is in talks with several airlines and has its own aviation service in development. He said the company has done some demos and plans to get it finalized for aircraft deployment "in the very near future." Griffin said aviation is "a fairly risk-averse" industry and won't adopt LEO connectivity quickly, as it waits instead to see that networks and constellations are established with a level of credibility. He said LEO connectivity deals likely will start ramping up in the back half of the decade. Hofeller said by the end of the decade, a good number of GSO satellites in orbit will be decommissioned and it's unclear if all will be replaced. He said within 10 years, LEO will be the norm for inflight connectivity. Hofeller said SpaceX has spent considerable time trying to estimate what bandwidth will be needed to serve a particular flight. He said one challenge is that usage will change over time, since usage now on airlines reflects the relatively meager service that's available. Telesat Director-Commercial and Product Development Manik Vinnakota said flights get perhaps 10 to 30 Mbps downlink service, while 50-100 Mbps could easily be needed, and perhaps more for widebody jets. He said links to aircraft also will get more symmetrical as people increasingly send as well as download files. Uplinks of 30-40 Mbps might be needed, he said.

Inability to obtain equipment due to the chip crunch and lack of trained workers could slow replacement of Huawei and ZTE gear, the Rural Wireless Association told the FCC. “Lead times on equipment and services" in rural areas can be 8-12 months, "when they are typically 6-8 weeks,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 18-89. RWA noted providers have a one-year FCC deadline.

Ceva's RivieraWaves dual-mode Bluetooth 5.2 platform achieved Bluetooth SIG qualification for classic and Low Energy implementations. Licensees can use the platform for products including true wireless earbuds, smartwatches and smart speakers, said the company Thursday. The platform has the latest improvements to Bluetooth features, supporting isochronous channels for LE audio, direction-finding randomized advertising channel indexing, periodic advertising sync transfer and Generic Attribute Profile caching, it said.

The installed base of connectivity devices, including laptops, desktop PCs, tablets and mobile phones, will total 6.2 billion globally in 2021, reported Gartner Thursday. It estimates 125 million more laptops and tablets will be in use this year than in 2020. COVID-19 "permanently changed device usage patterns,” said analyst Ranjit Atwal. “With remote work turning into hybrid work, home education changing into digital education and interactive gaming moving to the cloud, both the types and number of devices people need, have and use will continue to rise.” The world is on pace to reach 6.4 billion devices in 2022, up 3.2% from 2021, said Gartner. The shift to remote work exacerbated the decline of desktop PCs and boosted the use of tablets and laptops. In 2021, laptops in use will increase 8.8% and tablets 11.7%, while the installed base of desktop PCs is expected to decline to 470 million in 2022 from 522 million in 2020.

Cox unveiled a web-based remote control that, when tied into customers' assistive technologies, lets people with disabilities control their TVs with their eyes. It said Thursday its Accessible Web Remote for Contour works with customers' eye gaze hardware and software, switch controls, and "sip-and-puff" systems. Cox said for the past three years it has worked with disability accessibility organizations to ensure accessible design and development of its offerings.

Cisco's “premise” is that enterprise customers will begin returning to physical offices in mid- to late summer, said CEO Chuck Robbins on a fiscal Q2 call Tuesday. As companies look to prepare, “we’ve seen significant uptake in Wi-Fi 6,” he said. “That will require switching infrastructure as people come back to the office and begin to put load on those wireless networks.” Cisco assumes every meeting in the future will be “hybrid,” even after people return to physical workspaces, he said. “You’ll have people in the office, and you’ll have people remote. In order to accommodate that, we suspect most of our customers will be putting video units in every conference room.” Cisco’s “strong momentum” with Webex continued in the quarter ended Jan. 23, said Robbins. The platform served nearly 600 million users, and “we are connecting over 6 billion calls every month,” he said. “Our goal is to deliver a 10X better experience than just in-person interactions.”

Infinite Electronics’ L-com brand introduced AV active optical cables that can extend high-resolution signals up to 100 meters without a repeater. The AOC cables include HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4 and DVI video cable assemblies, said the company. The HDMI 2.0 cables support resolutions up to 4K@60Hz and are compatible with Extended Display Identification Data (EDID), HDR, HDCP 2.2 and multichannel audio. The DVI cables support resolutions to1080p and 4K2K and source connectors that are programmable to store EDID information. The DisplayPort cables deliver 8.1 Gbps per channel and support 8K@60Hz, High Bit Rate 3 and HDCP 1.4 and 2.2. The cables don't require a power supply.

HDMI LA anti-counterfeiting measures are a key part of HDMI Licensing Administrator efforts to ensure licensed and compliant products reach the market, Rob Tobias, CEO, HDMI LA, told us in a Friday briefing. Consumers can scan a QR code and holographic image on packaging to determine if a product at retail is legitimate, he said, and the holographic image can be successfully scanned only by the HDMI Cable Certification app. The organization works with international law enforcement and customs and borders officials to do factory raids, product seizures and takedowns of counterfeit product listings on e-commerce and social media, Tobias said, to ensure authorized resellers and consumers can buy legitimate products. The HDMI Forum released HDMI 2.1 last year and products are widely available that support the latest HDMI spec features including 4K 120Hz, 8K 60Hz, dynamic HDR and enhanced ARC, he said. At CES, TV makers will promote HDMI 2.1 in sets to support the latest PlayStation and Xbox gaming consoles. HDMI 2.1 includes variable refresh rate, auto low-latency mode and quick frame transport. Fixed rate link mode ensures a more robust video delivery over an HDMI 2.1 cable by using a forward error correction method, combined with a link training protocol, which adapts the link rate, if necessary. The HDMI Forum is also promoting HDMI cable power, which allows cables to be powered directly from an HDMI connector, without attaching a separate power cable.