Consumer electronics industry consulting firms CE/IoT Partners and Blue Salve combined to form bluesalve partners, focusing on technology, IoT and consumer goods sectors, they said Tuesday. Robert Heiblim is bluesalve principal and Avi Rosenthal is managing partner. Original team members -- Duane Paulson, David Kaplan and Dan Quigley from CE/IoT and Lew Brown from Blue Salve -- are partners in the new group; industry veterans Meghan Boots, Helen Heneveld, Fred Yando and Charles Durant joined as associates.

Spector & Co. recalled T119 Elf power bank chargers, saying they can overheat and be a fire hazard, said the Consumer Product Safety Commission Tuesday. Spector received two reports of the power bank overheating, resulting in no property or fire damage; no injuries were reported. The unit measures about 4 inches long by .75-inch high by .75-inch wide; it has a color match end with a wire key loop and the sides are gun metal blue, black, red or gray. On the black top of the charger in white letters are "5V OUT" and "5V IN.” The power banks were given out as a free promotional item at various meetings, trade shows and industry conventions from May 2016 through January, and the logo of the organization that gave away the units appears on the side, it said. Consumers should stop using the recalled chargers and contact Spector & Co. for a free replacement charger and instructions for proper disposal, it said. About 4,500 units are covered in the recall, including 2,600 sold in Canada. Manufacturer of the charger is Shenzhen Casun Technology.

Big tech companies -- which just a couple of years ago could do no wrong in Washington's and the public's eyes -- today are suffering from an unprecedented change of favor, NCTA CEO Michael Powell said in an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators that was to have been televised this weekend. The "shocking flip" since around the 2016 election is "the biggest whiplash I have ever seen in policy or public sentiment," Powell said. He said some of that reversal "is probably overdone, but all of it is overdue" since those companies have been allowed to become central in the economy without enough scrutiny. The backlash was inevitable and tech power will define antitrust issues for years to come, Powell said. It's a mistake to lump disparate companies like Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook together given their very different businesses and approaches, and they have to be looked at case by case, he said. A breakup of any seems unlikely at least in the near future, given the legal hurdles and challenges of proving consumer harm when talking about what are often free services, he said. The tech giants' pushes into over-the-top video is leading to cord cutting at a 3-4 percent annual rate, though the legacy cable business "is not on the verge of collapse or vanishing," Powell said. But since the tech companies' primary businesses lie outside video, in areas like internet search or online retail, "They're not really our direct counterparts, they're radically different things" focused on data, he said. Long term, that means " a dramatic revolution" in how services are provided and it could be difficult to compete in some areas without access to that kind of data, Powell said. The Internet Association didn't comment Friday. Powell said all video providers need to be "harmonized" under an overall regulatory philosophy by Congress. He said the differing approaches and rules regimes for legacy providers and new competitors is "an accident of history," with the regulatory structure easily gamed against legacy providers. Asked if video is on the way out, Powell said "the centrality of internet is what's on its way in." And though the video part of the business is "in transition," the industry's 10G initiative (see 1901070048) "is a pretty big statement" of confidence in cable's longevity, he said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will use next week’s NAB Show to demo HD Radio’s emergency alerting functionality for the agency’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), emailed a representative for HD Radio parent Xperi. The demos will be at FEMA’s IPAWS booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s Central Hall, he said. Xperi also will demo HD Radio at its North Hall booth and will participate with NAB Pilot showcasing digital AM technology in the Future’s Park pavilion on the main show floor, he said. More than 320 HD Radio stations in 85 U.S. markets in January transmitted “emergency alert text notifications” to HD Radio receivers, said an Xperi white paper. HD Radio can enhance emergency alerting with many “advanced features and attributes,” including the ability to wake up receivers in sleep mode, “to provide greater resiliency, redundancy, and accessibility in the nation’s public alerting ecosystem,” it said.

The Mobile & Wireless Forum and the Telecommunications Industry Association met Chief Julius Knapp and others from the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology to update them on the status of international RF exposure guidelines. The groups recommended their adoption and discussed with staff technical product testing issues, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 13-84. Industry representatives met with OET staff at the FCC Lab in Columbia, Maryland. Among areas discussed was a proposal to allow telecom certification bodies, the labs that already certify most new products that need FCC sign off, to approve equipment without agency review.

The 8K Association will host a seminar at NAB 9 a.m.-5 p.m. April 10 in rooms N221-N222 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, it said Tuesday. It will include presentations, panels and audience Q&A. Participating companies are Roam Consulting, the 8K Association, Colorfront, NHK/NEP, Panavision/Light Iron, Red Digital Cinema, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, intoPIX, SES Video, Ateme, HDMI Licensing, Futuresource, TCL and Samsung.

Importer Daniel M. Friedman & Associates recalled Universal rechargeable power banks for smartphones and tablets due to reports of overheating, said the Consumer Product Safety Commission Tuesday. The company received three reports of chargers overheating, including one of a house fire. No injuries were reported. The recall covers 170,500 chargers in the U.S., sold at Burlington, Kohl’s, Ross and other stores nationwide November 2016-January for about $25. Contact Friedman to arrange to return the product for a refund, said the CPSC. The recalled chargers -- in a variety of colors and shapes, including a unicorn head, a cat with sunglasses and a rainbow between two clouds -- were made by Yiwu City Fuman Leather & Accessories.

DirecTV and Viacom signed a new carriage agreement with continued carriage of the programmer's content across AT&T platforms and products, AT&T emailed us Monday. It said the deal "brings AT&T customers more choice and improved value for Viacom content" and details will be forthcoming. Viacom's keepviacom.com about the possibility of a blackout no longer existed Monday. In a note to investors, MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson said that with the AT&T talks complete, the Viacom and CBS boards likely will renew talks about combining. He said operating separately "makes zero sense" and CBS stock is trading "in nearly linked step with Viacom," indicating most investors believe a combination is a fait accompli. Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche emailed investors Monday that a big question mark is how the Viacom contract is structured for when AT&T launches a streaming service offer in Q4.

California is the 20th state this year to introduce right-to-repair legislation, said iFixit Monday. AB-1163, introduced by Assemblymember Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), would require electronics manufacturers to make service literature and equipment or parts available to product owners and to regulated, independent repair shops. “Consumers should have the right to choose their repair provider,” said the nonprofit iFixit. Increasing independent repair options “will encourage people to fix the electronics and appliances they already own, rather than toss their broken belongings and buy new ones,” it said. Overcoming tech lobby opposition to get legislation passed and enacted is a tall task, but right-to-repair advocates will take every victory they can get, iFixit said: “This month Minnesota became the first state in Right to Repair history to pass legislation through two state committees.” One California consumer, Andrew Keates, thinks devising a “repair-ability rating would be a useful addition to product labeling,” he commented to the FTC, as posted Tuesday in docket FTC-2019-0013 in the agency's inquiry into manufacturer limitations on third-party repairs (see 1903150055). “We label dangerous goods as such,” and labeling products as repairable “would be equally valid,” he said. “If items are repairable,” said Keates, “somebody like me would repair them and we might even start a secondary market for repaired goods, avoiding them landing in landfills.” He recently repaired a desktop PC by fitting it with a new power supply, he said. He would have repaired the power supply itself if he had had access to a repair manual, he said: “I imagine at least part of the old power supply is now sitting somewhere in a landfill.”

The Illinois tech manager who urged the FTC last week to “put a stop” to manufacturer limitations on third-party repairs (see 1903150055) was “right” to call out vendors whose software updates can render devices unfixable, emailed iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens Saturday. “Oracle and IBM are tying security updates to service subscriptions in a pretty underhanded way,” said Wiens, an advocate of state right-to-repair laws who calls the FTC’s inquiry into manufacturer practices “a big deal.” Oracle declined comment and IBM didn’t respond to emails Monday. The tech manager, Timothy Pearson, singled out Nvidia when he told the agency last week that “any right to repair guidelines in today's high tech, firmware-driven world must address the issue of vendor cryptographic signatures being required to replace existing malfunctioning firmware on hardware devices.” Nvidia didn't comment.