Gogo partnered with Virgin Atlantic to offer in-flight connectivity services on Virgin Atlantic’s aircraft. The companies expect Gogo’s global connectivity solution, 2Ku, to deliver “unprecedented bandwidth to the aircraft,” Gogo said Wednesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1wEfImo). The companies agreed on principal terms and are working to finalize a definitive agreement, Gogo said. All of Virgin Atlantic’s aircraft “will be retrofitted with Gogo’s 2Ku solution,” it said.
Online and mobile video platform JW Player raised $20 million in a Series C funding round led by Greycroft Growth and Greenspring Associates, said a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1pjtfXF). The new financing will be used to expand JW Player’s marketing and sales, among other efforts, it said. The company wants to leverage its “network of connected [video] players that provides publishers with unique insights around how people are engaging with video,” said CEO Dave Otten.
Online retailers must ship purchases within 30 days or give customers a refund option, the FTC said in a final rule in Wednesday’s Federal Register (http://bit.ly/1Dkenml). “The Rule prohibits sellers from soliciting mail, Internet, or telephone order sales unless they have a reasonable basis to expect that they can ship the ordered merchandise within the time stated on the solicitation or, if no time is stated, within 30 days,” the rule said. It said a seller must seek “the buyer’s consent to the delayed shipment when the seller learns that it cannot ship within the time stated or, if no time is stated, within 30 days.” Without consent, the seller must offer a refund, the FTC said. The updated rule is an amendment to the trade regulation that the agency said has been revised to be called the “Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise” rule.
The FCC should craft net neutrality rules that “encourage investment in abundant bandwidth,” but allowing paid prioritization could “create incentives for providers to maintain scarcity and congestion on their networks, in order to sell services,” Google executives told Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and aide David Goldman. Google Fiber’s deployment “suggests that it is both workable and economically desirable to manage a broadband network without prioritization and consistent with open Internet principles,” Google said at the meeting in Mountain View, California, where the company is based, recounted a filing posted Tuesday to docket 14-28 (http://bit.ly/1u1bHY4). Company attendees included Craig Barratt, senior vice president-access and energy. Communications Act Title II is a “flexible, light-touch approach for the preservation of open communications networks,” Free Press said in net neutrality reply comments (http://bit.ly/1ASdX2E). Common-carrier principles are “perfectly suited and absolutely necessary to maintaining nondiscrimination principles and nondiscriminatory outcomes” for all telecom services, “not just those delivered on copper telephone wires,” the group said. The FCC has “tremendous ability to tailor Title II,” and “extraordinary power to forbear not only from its own rules, but even from statutes and congressional acts themselves.” Section 706 “will not work for the protections contemplated,” Free Press said. Some want a Section 706 approach, as other replies to the net neutrality NPRM showed (WID Sept 17 p4).
The market for power sources used in the Internet of Things will grow from $57 million in 2014 to $590 million in four years and to more than $2.4 billion by 2021, said a report from NanoMarkets (http://bit.ly/1wEkHDu). Products that have had niche success so far -- thin-film and printed batteries, energy harvesting modules, flexible photovoltaic panels and thermoelectric sources -- could generate “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenue annually through IoT, it said. Mobile phones currently account for most of the $57.1 million thin-film and printed battery market, but smart cards, semiconductors/computing and wearables are each expected to grow into hundred-million-dollar battery markets by the end of the decade, NanoMarkets said. Other growth opportunities in IoT power include inductive power sources -- used almost exclusively in wireless chargers now -- which approach $5 million in current annual revenue but are forecast to pass $100 million revenue by 2018, jumping to $760 million by 2021, it said. The growth driver will be increased adoption of RFID tags, a segment forecast to hit a $100 million market by 2019 and $583 million by 2021, it said. While energy-harvesting power sources are a $7 million market through 2015, they're expected to spike to $41.5 million in 2016 on “rapid uptake” for sensors and networks, NanoMarkets said. Growth for energy-harvesting devices will pick up, increasing to $161 million by 2018 and $557 million by 2021, it said. Revenue for wearables power sources is forecast to accelerate from “next to nothing” today to $82 million in 2018 and $200 million by 2021, it said.
The U.S. software industry employed 2.5 million people in 2014, or 2.2 percent of the country’s overall private workforce, said the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) in a report released Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1wE4Swy). SIIA said the software industry “contributes greatly to rising output and productivity in other industries and sectors.” From 2004 to 2012, the software industry accounted for 15.4 percent of the country’s labor productivity gains, SIIA said. “Software has become an enormous driving force, creating significant economic output and jobs as an industry and serving as an economic catalyst across almost the entire U.S. economy,” said Vice President-Public Policy Mark MacCarthy. “Every 10 software jobs support five jobs in other industries."
The House Judiciary IP Subcommittee plans a hearing on oversight of the Copyright Office Thursday at 2 p.m. in Rayburn 2141 (http://1.usa.gov/1AHlscs). The subcommittee will “examine the practices and organization of the Copyright Office to ensure it is equipped to keep pace with the digital age and has what it needs to serve the American people in the 21st century,” said a joint statement Wednesday from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and subcommittee Chairman Howard Coble, R-N.C. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante is to testify at the hearing, it said.
The FCC is not relying on secret meetings to make decide on proposed industry acquisitions, Chairman Tom Wheeler told Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., in a letter Wednesday. Heller asked Wheeler about the ex parte exemptions and what those really mean in light of two major deals the agency is considering: Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV. “I fully endorse the core principles you describe,” Wheeler told Heller, referring to Heller’s statement in a letter that any major orders crafted in part on secret information can be undermined due to process concerns. Wheeler cited the court cases that give the agency “flexibility” in how it reviews such transactions. The FCC, “in accord with the Administrative Procedure Act and applicable precedent, uses only information that is placed on the record when it renders a decision on whether to allow a transaction to proceed, with or without conditions,” Wheeler said. While the agency can’t rely on information given in secret, those meetings “could be used, however, to help the Commission formulate appropriate questions to applicants or other parties,” questions that can be placed on the record, he said.
Unrestricted global data flows are critical to the health of e-commerce, said eBay Executive Director-Global Public Policy Lab Brian Bieron, testifying Wednesday before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade (http://1.usa.gov/1qZmcZr). “Government restrictions on where companies can process data “would greatly limit the many benefits of the Internet,” Bieron said, in prepared remarks. “Imposing data localization requirements on Internet-enabled businesses is problematic from both an economic and security perspective.” Bieron said the problem is not remote. “Localization barriers are actually proliferating most among some of the larger and more developed countries,” he said. “G20 countries are responsible for 65 percent of the protectionist measures, and at the same time, they are also the countries which are the worst affected by protectionism.” Subcommittee Chairman Lee Terry, R-Neb., said in his opening statement “the European Commission, for example, has argued that localization of data could be a way to promote domestic industry and create jobs” (http://1.usa.gov/1uHO4T7). The hearing was to discuss the role of cross-border data flows in the ongoing negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trade in Services Agreement, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and U.S.-EU safe harbor agreement, said a background memo (http://1.usa.gov/1r1GJLJ). “I am hopeful that Congress can send a unified message to current and future trading partners that trade barriers will not be tolerated, and that we will protect our economic interest in data flows,” Terry said.
The French government will soon hire its first chief data officer, it said in a Wednesday news release (http://bit.ly/1BKZCar). The government didn’t say who would be hired. The chief data officer will be responsible for improving the “use” and “circulation” of government data, “while respecting the protection of personal data ... including the confidentiality of national defense secrets,” said a translation of the release.