Liberty Global and CableLabs joined the MulteFire Alliance consortium, Liberty said in a news release Wednesday. MulteFire's main focus is ensuring future LTE mobile standards are compatible with shared and unlicensed spectrum, with its current push involving 3rd Generation Partnership Project-based mobile wireless standards, Liberty said. Other members include Qualcomm, Intel, Nokia and Ericsson, said the alliance website.
The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste and a half dozen taxpayer groups are urging the House and Senate Judiciary committees to pass the International Communications Privacy Act (S-2986/HR-5323), which would clarify how law enforcement officials obtain U.S. citizens' electronic communications wherever the person or that individual's personal information is located. The identical, bipartisan ICPA bills, which business and technology groups also support, were introduced in May in both chambers (see 1605250050 and 1607140012). In a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the coalition said the legislation "strikes the right balance" between privacy protection and law enforcement needs. The coalition said the bills would also update the mutual legal assistance treaty process (MLAT) and provide "greater accessibility, transparency, and accountability by requiring the attorney general to create an online docketing system for MLAT requests and publish new statistics on the number of such requests." Other signatories to the letter are American Commitment, Americans for Tax Reform, FreedomWorks, Institute for Liberty, National Taxpayers Union and Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
Some 3 billion people remain unconnected worldwide and another 2.4 billion are connected only to voice and simple text services, GSMA said in a report. The IoT “is developing rapidly, but the level of penetration remains low,” GSMA said. The report is on industry progress on sustainable development goals. SDG 1 focuses on “eradicating poverty, providing equal access to economic resources, and building the resilience of the poor,” and SDG 9 seeks “resilient infrastructure, sustainable and inclusive industrialisation, and innovation.” This "first-of-its-kind report offers critical insights into the transformative impact of the mobile industry on individuals, societies and economies around the world, in developed and developing markets,” said Mats Granryd, GSMA director general.
Chinese OEM Tomtop Group isn't an HDMI licensee, but is selling AV products with counterfeit HDMI logos over its e-commerce website and via third-party online retailers Alibaba, Amazon, DHGate, eBay and Taobao, HDMI Licensing alleged Wednesday in a complaint (in Pacer) filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized a “plethora” of HDMI-infringing Tomtop products entering the U.S. since 2012, but HDMI Licensing was unsuccessful in shutting down the illegal activity through cease-and-desist letters and other measures, the complaint said. The infringing products “bear markings that are identical, or confusingly similar to,” actual HDMI logos and “provide consumers with a false assurance that the Infringing Products that they have purchased are reliable and conform to HDMI Licensing’s high standards and rigorous compliance testing when, in fact, they do not,” the complaint said. “HDMI Licensing has suffered and is continuing to suffer irreparable harm and financial injury as a result” of Tomtop’s behavior because the infringing products “are likely of a sub-standard quality, unreliable, and/or unable to deliver the exceptional signal and image quality offered by Licensed Products,” it said. Consumers who use the products “will falsely attribute” any “negative experiences” with them to HDMI Licensing, and that “is likely to erode the substantial goodwill that HDMI Licensing has spent years and millions of dollars in developing,” it said. Tomtop representatives didn’t comment Thursday.
Under a multiyear deal with Netflix, the streaming service will be part of Liberty Global's TV platforms in parts of Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Liberty said in a news release Wednesday. The Netflix app will be integrated into Liberty Global set-top boxes, starting with the Netherlands and spreading to other countries as part of technology upgrades across Liberty Global's operations through 2017, the company said. Some pay-TV experts see such partnerships becoming the norm (see 1607220044).
The ZigBee Alliance announced UL as the fifth independent authorized test lab to support ZigBee Alliance certification programs. UL will offer ZigBee testing at its labs in Fremont, California, and Basingstoke, U.K., said the alliance in a news release. “We are at a tipping point in the industry where the Internet of Things moves from an idea to real world application for consumers,” said Ghislain Devouge, vice president-UL Consumer Technology division. Other ZigBee authorized test facilities are the Chinese Electronics Standardization Institute, Element Materials Technology, National Technical Systems and TÜV Rheinland Group, it said. Providers have tested more than 1,600 certified ZigBee products, including 200 this year, it said.
Amlogic and Dolby are demonstrating Amlogic’s 4K HDR S912 series chipsets with Dolby Vision integration at IBC in Amsterdam. The SoC is targeted to set-top box makers that want to offer over-the-top streaming, and includes an AVE-10 video engine for video codec processing of Trusted Video Path, multiple HDR formats and video watermarking technologies for secured 4K digital rights management applications, they said.
Streaming media technology firm Wowza Media Systems signed a deal with Alibaba to enable Wowza Streaming Engine software on the Alibaba Cloud platform, Wowza said in a news release Thursday: It will let customers scale their video streaming applications across Chinese markets via Alibaba Cloud's platform. “One of the more complex challenges for streaming applications is expanding operations and availability into Chinese markets,” Wowza Chief Revenue Officer Carlos Perez said.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has no plans to bring up the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the lame-duck session after the November election, he told reporters Thursday. “We don’t have the votes right now,” Ryan said. “So it’s not something that I’m thinking about because I know the votes on this issue very well from doing TPA [Trade Promotion Authority] and we don’t have the votes. And quite frankly, I think they have to fix it.” President Barack Obama told reporters earlier this month he believes TPP, which involves telecom, tech and copyright provisions, eventually will be ratified. “Back home, we'll have to cut through the noise once election season is over,” Obama said, speaking in Asia following the G20 Summit. “It's always a little noisy there.” Vice President Joe Biden, speaking on CNN earlier this week, also said the administration will seek a congressional vote on TPP during the lame-duck session. “There’s going to be some additional changes that have to take place,” Biden added. Both Republican and Democratic presidential nominees have questioned the merits of the trade deal. Ryan will meet with his caucus Friday to discuss the strategy on government funding, which expires Sept. 30 and requires a continuing resolution for funding going forward. Senate Republicans said they're aiming for Dec. 9 as the target expiration date for a short-term CR (see 1609070053).
The Computer and Communications Industry Association said it strongly supports final net neutrality guidelines released last week by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications. BEREC guidelines clarify how national regulatory authorities should enforce net neutrality rules, but they don't cover services that aren't publicly available, IP interconnection services or virtual private networks (see 1608300002). In a news release Tuesday, CCIA said it supports an open platform that empowers consumers and fosters competition and growth, including building a digital single market. “BEREC is right to clarify that the regulations apply to providers of Internet access services and not to content and application providers or to websites," said CCIA Europe Vice President James Waterworth. He said "successful implementation" of the guidelines requires authorities to approach complaints on a case-by-case basis. "Whether conduct or particular programs constitute an infringement of the rules will depend on the specifics of the case and no assumptions should be made," he added.