The Federal Communications Commission has officially proposed a voluntary cybersecurity labeling program for the “things” in the Internet of Things (IoT).

FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel on Thursday (August 10) released a notice of proposed rulmemaking (NPRM) seeking comment on how to institute such a program for smart devices that meet certain privacy and security standards, similar to the Energy Star program for devices, including cable equipment, that meet efficient energy-use standards.

Rosenworcel said the mark, billed as a “trusted, government-backed symbol,” would help consumers make more informed choices about their devices.

“The proliferation of consumer IoT devices has opened the door to cyberattacks on consumer products that can have serious privacy and national security consequences, ranging from theft of personal information to disruption of critical infrastructure,” the NRPM said.

The FCC IoT stamp of approval would come in the form of a U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, the goal being to distinguish trustworthy products from nontrustworthy devices and “create incentives for manufacturers to meet higher cybersecurity standards.”

The FCC cited the estimated 1 billion to 5 billion attacks on smart devices in the first half of 2021 alone in arguing for the need for a new seal of cybersecurity approval.

The mark would be based on criteria from the National Institute of Standards.

The FCC is seeking lots of comments on just how to set up the program, including which devices should be eligible, who should oversee it, how to demonstrate compliance and prevent unauthorized use, and how to let consumers know about it.

Cable broadband operators said the Federal Communications Commission needs to free up more spectrum to handle the explosion of internet of things (IoT) devices, including everything from smart thermostats and locks to garage door openers and refrigerators.

The FCC sought comment on the once and future spectrum needs of IoT. NCTA–The Internet & Television Association, which pointed out its members have built some of the nation's largest WiFi networks, said told the agency in comments filed this week that it should work with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to free up spectrum in the 7 GHz and lower 3 GHz bands for unlicensed and shared use. Finding more spectrum is critical to the growth of IoT, NCTA said.

NCTA pointed out that millions of IoT devices attach to its members' networks, in many cases through WiFi services and equipment supplied by those members. WiFi remains central to wired broadband's mobile profile. Just one of NCTA’s members, Charter Communications, estimated almost half a billion IoT devices were connected to just its network, the group said. 

“Even in commercial settings, WiFi is often the go-to IoT network technology,” NCTA said. “For example, DeepBlue, a Comcast Business company, provides managed WiFi solutions to support IoT functionality in hospitality, retail and entertainment venues such as contactless check-in, keyless entry, touchless controls and entertainment, UV disinfecting robots, AR/VR, wearables, smart elevators and lobbies.”

Unlicensed spectrum means IoT innovators don't need to get permission from the government or secure private licenses to grow the sector. “[U]nlicensed spectrum bands have emerged as playgrounds for the experimentation that is critical for continuing development of new wireless innovations, including in IoT,” NCTA said.

It also pointed out that the shared 3.5-GHz Citizens Broadand Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum is starting to be used for IoT and is proving to be a “critical complement” to licensed use.

The FCC has approved a notice of inquiry into the future spectrum needs of the Internet of Things. The move was mandated by the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.

That came in a vote in advance of the FCC's public meeting Thursday (Sept. 30), so the item was dropped from the agenda.

IoT is likely to be seriously needy if current projections are any indication.

According to infrastructure management company vXchange, there are going to be 41 billion IoT devices by 2027, 70% of cars will be connected by 2023, and every second another 127 devices hook up to the net.

The FCC is asking whether there is enough spectrum to support commercial wireless services and, if not, how to make sure there is enough to meet increased demand, including what regulatory barriers may be standing in the way. It also wants to know what role licensed versus unlicensed spectrum is and will be in the IoT ecosystem.

The FCC has to report back to Congress — specifically the Senate Commerce and House Energy & Commerce Committees — within a year of enactment of the bill, which became law Jan. 1, 2021, with a summary of those comments.

Also Read: Bill Would Mandate FCC IoT Spectrum Database

“The Notice of Inquiry adopted on spectrum needs of the Internet of Things further focuses the important conversation about the inputs needed to support and enhance consumer access to this growing area of next-generation connectivity," said NCA-The Internet & Television Association. "We appreciate the Commission’s continued recognition of the importance of unlicensed spectrum for next-generation networking, including for IoT... "As demand for connected devices grows in a myriad of use cases, unlicensed and shared spectrum will play an increasingly important role in meeting those needs. We look forward to continued engagement on spectrum inputs for next-gen networking.”

NCTA-the Internet & Television Association is celebrating the President's signature on the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act.

The bill, introduced in March 2019, "requires that devices purchased by the U.S. government meet certain minimum security requirements." 

Related: IoT BIll Heads to Senate

“We applaud the President for signing into law the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act," NCTA said in a statement. "With potential security threats to networks always looming, maintaining stringent cybersecurity standards is a must to protect many business and government operations. Since the government is such a large purchaser and user of IoT devices, this new law will have an impact on IoT purchases by businesses and beyond. Many thanks to Senators Gardner and Warner, and Representatives Kelly and Hurd, for introducing this important legislation and navigating it through Congress.”

Specifically, the law:

"Requires contractors and vendors providing information systems to the U.S. government to adopt coordinated vulnerability disclosure policies, so that if a vulnerability is uncovered, that can be effectively shared with a vendor for remediation." 

"Requires the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to issue recommendations addressing, at a minimum, secure development, identity management, patching, and configuration management for IoT devices. 

"Directs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue guidelines for each agency that are consistent with the NIST recommendations, and charge OMB with reviewing these policies at least every five years. 

"Requires any Internet-connected devices purchased by the federal government to comply with those recommendations. 

"Directs NIST to work with cybersecurity researchers, industry experts, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to publish guidance on coordinated vulnerability disclosure to ensure that vulnerabilities related to agency devices are addressed."

The bill was introduced in the Senate by Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), co-chairs of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, as well as Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.). Reps. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) and Will Hurd (R-Texas) took the lead on the bill in the House.

A bipartisan bill has been introduced to finger and eliminate barriers to the development of Internet of Things (IOT) devices.

The Developing and Growing the Internet of Things (DIGIT) Act is the handiwork of Reps. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-Wash.).

The bill is meant to appropriately prioritize the technology, plan for spectrum to support it and ensure interagency coordination. That includes directing the FCC to inventory the spectrum landscape and, generally, avoiding breaking up IoT into regulatory silos.

Related: Rosenworcel Says FCC Should Flex IoT Device Muscle

The bill anticipates that by 2030, there will be 125 billion connected devices generating potentially trillions of dollars in economic activity, the bill points out.

The bill directs the Secretary of Commerce to convene a working group of federal stakeholders, and a steering committee to provide recommendations in a report to Congress on what regulations, statutes, practices or budgetary or jurisdictional challenges could get in the way of IoT development and deployment, as well as what federal regs or activities could be helping IoT, always with an eye toward security.

The working group must also consult with nongovernmental stakeholders including information/communications tech manufacturers, suppliers, service providers, vendors, small businesses, think tanks, nonprofits, rural stakeholders, academia, and others. There will also be a steering committee.

The FCC is directed, in consultation with the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, to issue a notice of inquiry on current and future IoT spectrum connectivity needs, including the role of licensed and unlicensed spectrum. It must submit a report on that spectrum assessment to the Senate Commerce Committee and House Energy & Commerce Committee (as well as each member of the working group) within one year of the enactment of the statute.

In today’s data-driven world, hardly a day goes by without new predictions of dramatic increases in streaming video consumption and Internet of Things device proliferation. Whether it’s eMarketer’s prediction of 2.38 billion viewers of video streams or Gartner’s forecast of more than 20 billion IoT devices by 2020, it is clear that a sea change is occurring that will have significant impact on the cable telecommunications networks that deliver the majority of broadband services.

To manage the increased strain on their networks, cable-system operators require granular visibility into subscriber usage that can help them understand the location and cause of broadband bottlenecks. But while tools that identify areas of congestion and high-bandwidth users can proactively solve operational issues, operators are finding that they can also be utilized to generate business results by helping operators reduce expenses and create incremental revenue opportunities.

‘Power Users’ on the Rise
OpenVault data analysis shows that year-over-year usage was up 31.3% in second-quarter 2018 and that the number of “power users” — those using more than 1 Terabyte of data per month — doubled during the same span. As traffic and individual usage increase, the results can be slowdowns in network speeds and an increase in the number of users who are bumping up against the limits of their contracted plans.

Ultimately, this can cause customer complaints that unnecessarily consume operator resources, including call center personnel and even truck rolls, and can lead in the long term to dissatisfied customers defecting to other broadband providers.

When operators gain greater visibility into broadband usage, they proactively are able not only to manage the traffic concerns, but they also have an opportunity to implement business strategies that can modify customer behavior, including a reduction of usage or alignment of customers’ broadband plans with actual consumption. For example, operators could implement usage-based broadband policies or could target high-bandwidth consumers as candidates for upgrades to levels that would deliver satisfactory performance.

Two datasets released this year showed that consumption by non-usage-based broadband households is 12.2% higher than those with usage-based broadband packages, and that non-usage-based broadband households consume 15% more upstream bandwidth than usage-based broadband customers. Thus, the implementation of usage based broadband pricing with data consumption limits can improve overall customer experiences by reducing network congestion, while also opening the door to additional revenue.

On an individual level, operators can leverage visibility into specific user behavior to create incremental revenue opportunities, including not only usage-based billing but also analytics-driven alignment of customer usage with the appropriate broadband package and zero-rating policies. It has been proven that companies that use highly accurate and broad sets of data to replace blind sales calls with intelligent leads are able to identify prime upgrade candidates and drive incremental broadband ARPU by $2 to $3 per household based on a subscriber upgrade rate of 15-20%.

Zero-Rating as Differentiator
Under increasing consideration as well by operators as both operational and business tools are “zero-rating” policies that exempt some OTT video services from monthly usage-based data policies. Zero-rating-specific streaming services can help operators differentiate their services beyond just pricing and speed tiers, especially as wireless providers develop and launch 5G services. The likelihood of broad adoption of this practice has increased as a potential differentiator in the market, resulting in faster subscriber growth and improved retention.

Ultimately, in this fiercely competitive marketplace where data is growing at exponential rates, operators must look for new ways to
meet demand, retain subscribers, differentiate their services and drive profit. For the pioneers who embracing comprehensive approaches to data analytics, the ability to adjust broadband service delivery to meet changing market needs is enabling them not only to deliver high quality service, but also to ensure customer satisfaction and bottom-line success. )

Mark Trudeau is founder and CEO of OpenVault.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has signaled protecting the security of the Internet of Things is a high priority, but regulation isn’t the route to meet that priority.

That’s the message from David Redl, the head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, who is President Donald Trump’s chief telecommunications adviser.

Cable internet-service providers looking to share connected-car spectrum so they can expand their WiFi hotspots have long argued against overprotecting that spectrum band, so Redl’s signal of a light touch is right in their wheelhouse.

The IoT is high on the radar because it will proliferate with the rollout of next-generation 5G wireless broadband, another of the administration’s priorities.

In March 2015, the NTIA sought comment on identifying cybersecurity issues related to IoT and the rise of an interconnected economy. Separately, it sought comment on potential roles for government in fostering IoT. Last year, it employed a multistakeholder working group to draft guidelines for upgrading and improving security for IoT devices, which range from smart TVs, lightbulbs and refrigerators to fitness trackers, wine cellars and self-driving cars.

But the administration is now looking to head off a potential regulatory push in the face of likely “bugs” in the move to connected cars, homes and businesses.

“Right now, a bug can cause a computer to crash,” Redl said at the 6th Annual Internet of Things Global Summit. “But what about when it causes a car to crash? It’s likely that we’re going to hear calls for government to step in and impose significant regulations.”

That’s almost a sure thing, given the pushback on the current internet of fake news, Russian election meddling and hidden algorithms that have legislators on both sides of the aisle calling for new laws or regulation.

Hacking phones and computers is bad enough, but power grids and traffic flows have potentially life-threatening consequences. Even so, Redl said, a regulatory rush hour isn’t justified.

“By applying stakeholder-driven policymaking processes as an alternative, we can achieve actionable controls and practices across the ecosystem and at the operational level that account for both the complexity of today’s digital ecosystem, as well as the speed at which bad actors attack and evolve.”

But Redl suggested he needed more buy-in on that strategy. He said owner-operator boots on the ground are the best safeguard, but that the administration needed more volunteers, though he did not say just who was reluctant to step up.

The multistakeholder model meant to produce self-regulatory safeguards isn’t Republican or Democratic. That was the approach used by the Obama administration to come up with proposed regimes for various privacy and security flashpoints.

That is just fine with NetCompetition, the broadband advocacy group backed by ISPs.

“By definition a ‘thing’ is not defined,” Netcompetition chairman Scott Cleland said. “The NTIA is wise in recognizing it should be inventors, entrepreneurs, investors, consumer-demand, markets and experience that should define what the Internet of Things will and will not become, not the U.S. government.”

But privacy advocacy groups have argued those multistakeholder processes are too business-friendly, and no one more than Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “By relying on such a process, Mr. Redl is handing over the personal data of Americans to Silicon Valley on a silver platter,” he said.

So, what is the answer? “What’s needed to protect U.S. consumers is a strong federal privacy law regulating IoT business practices,” Chester said.

Fast action from Congress these days is already a long shot, but given the administration’s approach to the IoT, the odds on legislation or new regulation are both lengthening.

machineQ, Comcast’s enterprise-focused Internet of Things division, said it has signed on another wave of customers for its multi-city Low Power Wan Area Network (LPWAN).

The latest batch of customers to join that list and use machineQ’s LoRaWAN network include:

-FAIRWAYiQ, a Massachusetts-based provider of asset tracking that specializes in real-time monitoring and management of golf courses (such as tracking pace of play) and adjacent organizations such as sports stadiums, municipalities, universities, and resorts.

-H2O Degree, a maker of wireless utility sub-metering products for multi-family dwelling and commercial facilities. In addition to tenant billing, those products also support apps such as water leak detection and energy analytics.

-Seco Sys, the company behind HydraCommunity, a water metering platform for mining operations, campuses, and utilities. Its IoT platform reads sensors measuring water quality, temperature, pressure, and tank levels.

-SteamIQ, a Massachusetts-based provider of monitors that track the performance of stream traps (devices that remove condensate moisture form a steam system without losing significant steam energy) that are used in radiators, water heaters, industrial kettles, refineries, sterilizers and turbines.

-Vinduino, a California-based firm that helps agriculture communities, specifically in the vineyard and wine-making industry, more effectively manage water usage through open source technologies.

Those companies build on others that have tapped into machineQ’s network, including Adveez, CareBand, Neptune, Pansofik, Reach, Instapio, PNI Sensor Corp., Coris, and Victor.

RELATED: Comcast’s MachineQ Unit Gets Down to Business

machineQ’s network is up and running in several markets, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

RELATED: CableLabs Powering Up Open-Source LoRaWAN Solution

Fellow cable operator Cox Communications recently launched Cox2M, an IoT services unit. Dish Network has earmarked dollars for a narrowband IoT offering, and recently acquired Parkifi, a maker of sensors for smart parking lots.

machineQ, Comcast’s enterprise-focused Internet of Things service, has teamed with Neptune Technology Group on smart cities projects focused on advanced water metering and infrastructure.

Under the effort, machineQ’s LoRaWAN network/platform will be integrated with Neptune’s LoRA-enabled water meters and sensors in a way that helps water utilities and municipalities gather data about their infrastructure and use it to optimize their workforces and to boost their sustainability efforts.

They claim that the combination will help water utilities and municipalities leap from manual meter monitoring systems to a more advanced approach that delivers data wirelessly to the cloud for remote monitoring.

Early examples of companies that are taking advantage of the machineQ/Neptune system include Columbus Water Works of Georgia, and Western Municipal Water District in Riverside, Calif.

MachineQ and Neptune are touting the partnership in concert with this week’s American Water Works Association’s annual conference, ACE18, in Las Vegas. They are also sponsoring the event.

Neptune is one of a handful of new business partners that machineQ identified in March.

RELATED: Comcast’s machineQ Unit Gets Down to Business

Comcast introduced machineQ in 2016 via trials in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago, and has since rolled out its LoRa-based service to Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

RELATED: Comcast Unit Launches Enterprise IoT Network in San Francisco Bay Area

“Cities and municipalities are no longer delaying their Smart City programs based on the promise of future network technologies because they see the tremendous cost savings and efficiencies they can realize today from a broad range of existing IoT solutions, from trusted providers like Neptune, that are capable of leveraging the machineQ cloud-based IoT network and platform services,” Alex Khorram, GM of machineQ said in a statement. “We can deploy and manage a dense IoT network tailored to the unique needs of any organization very efficiently, so they can focus their resources delivering the best service possible to their end customers.”

RELATED: Cox Tags Another IoT Tech Partner

Add Leverege, a startup with operations in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, to a growing list of tech partners that are helping to underpin Cox Communications’s new enterprise-focused Internet of Things (IoT) services unit.

Leverege said its software platform is a component of the recently launched Cox2M Connected Asset Services, a unit that is focused on multiple verticals, including transportation, fleet management, smart cities, real estate, retail, as well as energy and agriculture.

RELATED: Cox Banks on IoT

Leverege's platform aims to reduce the complexity of IoT deployments via third-party integrations, 24/7 notification and monitoring tools, and data analytics.

Cox Automotive is an early adopter of Cox2M’s services, as its Manheim used vehicle marketplace has teamed on a custom app that delivers real-time tracking of vehicles across auction lots. The solution, piloted last year, connects more than 500,000 vehicles using a Low Power Wide Area IoT network.

RELATED: Comcast’s MachineQ Unit Gets Down to Business

Founded in 2014, Leverege’s other announced partners include Google, Raytheon, Allen Hamilton, and Siren Marine, a company that operates a connected boat platform.

Cox has also announced that CoreKinect, another startup, will provide sensor-based products for Cox2M.

RELATED: Cox Forges IoT Deal with CoreKinect

“After an extensive survey of the market, we chose Leverege as our IoT platform partner and system integrator for numerous reasons including modularity and customization of the technology, advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities, rapid prototyping tools that greatly accelerate the development of end-to-end IoT solutions, and the world-class team that stands behind the products,” Josh Sommer, executive director of new growth strategy for Cox, said in a statement. 

Cox Communications has tapped CoreKinect to provide sensor-based products for Cox2M, a new Internet-of-Things unit that provides connected asset services tailored for business customers and emerging opportunities with smart cities.

RELATED: Cox Banks on IoT

Financial terms weren’t announced, but CoreKinect will design and develop hardware that Cox2M will use for an asset-tracking service that will also target the smart home, connected wearables, and the agriculture and energy sectors.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based startup said it manages the production of IoT products, from the initial design to the assembly line. Its IoT solutions include GPS tracking, asset tracking, and vehicle/fleet tracking, fire response systems, waste disposal sensors, utility metering, and smart city applications.

CoreKinect claims that it can turn ideas into “workable prototypes” within six to eight weeks, on average.

Cox Automotive is an early adopter of Cox2M’s services, as its Manheim vehicle marketplace has teamed on a custom app that delivers real-time tracking of vehicles across auction lots. The solution, piloted last year, connects more than 500,000 vehicles using a Low Power Wide Area IoT network.

“Cox is redefining the IoT space by introducing custom, purpose-built sensors at market disrupting price points,” Assar Badri, CoreKinect’s CEO and co-founder, said in a statement.

“The depth and breadth of CoreKinect’s team, quality product development, and complete supply chain solutions will help ensure a successful deployment for our Cox2M business line,” added Josh Sommer, executive director of new growth strategy for Cox. “CoreKinect’s low-power, wide-area network and asset tracking systems provide an agnostic communications platform that will allow Cox Communications to deliver end-to-end IoT solutions.”

Comcast has teamed with “smart” home insurance provider Hippo on a trial in Houston that, they claim, will help consumers there save up to 25% of their annual home insurance premiums via a program that leans on integrated IoT home safety devices.

For this stage of the test, which will have some linkages to Comcast’s Xfinity Home service, Comcast said it has made Hippo’s home insurance offering available to all interested residential customers in the greater Houston area. Comcast and Hippo plan to expand the offer to other Comcast service areas later this year.

Hippo currently is officially licensed and operating in California, Arizona, Texas, Illinois, Iowa, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania.

The trial announcement comes about five weeks after Comcast Ventures helped to lead a $25 million “B” round in Hippo, which was founded in 2015 and has raised about $36 million so far.

RELATED: Comcast Ventures Backs Home Insurance Tech Startup

Hippo’s aim is to focus on a large base of underinsured homes with an approach that, it claims, is both cheaper and more modern.

As part of its plan to serve what it sees as a market of underinsured homes, Hippo uses smart home technology, such as water leak sensors, to help detect problems early and, when possible, prevent damage from taking place.

RELATED: Comcast to Sell Rooftop Solar Services, Take Possible Stake in Sunrun

Per the site dedicated to the Houston pilot, Comcast Xfinity Home customers are also in line for additional “smart home discounts” for having certain home safety devices – such as monitored smoke detectors -- installed with their system and lower risks that “typically lead to insurance claims – like theft and fire.”

“This new offering can provide customers with meaningful savings on their annual home insurance premiums and enhanced home insurance coverage,” Jon Kaplowitz, managing director and GM of new businesses at Comcast, said in a statement. “By bringing together smart home devices like monitored smoke and water leak detectors with home insurance, we’re able to help customers lower their annual home insurance cost and, at the same time, help to provide protection and peace of mind for our customers’ most important assets – their home and family.”

“We’ve modernized traditional home policies to go beyond just providing coverage in the event of fire, theft, or water damage,” added Assaf Wand, CEO and co-founder of Hippo. “We’ve added equipment breakdown coverage into our policies so customers have repair and replacement protection on the things that ‘run’ their home - things like heating and air conditioning systems, hot water heaters, major appliances, electronics and more.” 

machineQ, Comcast’s enterprise-focused Internet of Things unit, said it has launched its LoRAWAN-based network in the San Francisco Bay Area.

RELATED: Comcast’s MachineQ Unit Gets Down to Business

Its latest deployment, which will focus on area startups and developers and tap into the low-power LoRAWAN network, spans cities such as Cupertino, Hayward, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale.

RELATED: Semtech Accelerates Vesting of Comcast Warrant

Among early use cases there, PNI Sensor of Santa Rose is using machineQ’s network for PlacePod, a smart parking system that provides real-time vehicle detection and locations of available parking spaces for on- and off-street public and private parking management.

RELATED: Dish Buys Parkifi

machineQ’s move into the San Francisco Bay Area follows rollouts that are planned or underway in several other markets, including Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

“It was a no brainer to deliver a dense IoT network in the Bay Area, the epicenter of IoT, because it reduces costs for developers and startups in the region and opens up new business cases for the solutions they are building,” Alex Khorram, machineQ’s GM, said in a statement. “The early success we’ve had working with solution providers reinforces that there is a need for low-power, cost-effective technologies such as LoRaWAN in the rapidly growing enterprise IoT space here in the U.S. and beyond.”

machineQ, which counts Semtech as a key tech partner, announced the deployment amid its sponsorship of Project Kairos in the Start-Up City Showcase at IoT World, which runs May 16-17 in Santa Clara. 

Semtech Corp., a semiconductor company tied to Comcast’s business-focused IoT activities, said it has accelerated the vesting of the remaining unvested shares from a warrant originally issued in 2016 as Comcast’s machineQ subsidiary prioritizes coverage in its current mix of deployment areas before expanding to more markets.

Semtech said the remaining 586,956 unvested shares have been vested. The warrant is now fully-vested and exercisable for a total of 869,565 shares.

The original 2016 agreement provided a warrant for Comcast to acquire up to $30 million of Semtech common stock, to help facilitate an anticipated network expansion in up to 30 U.S. cities within a period of 30 months following initial trials in Philadelphia and San Francisco.

As a result of today’s announcement, Semtech said it expects to record an expense related to the warrant of $21.5 million, including $15.9 million related to the acceleration, which will be reflected as a reduction to GAAP net sales in the company’s fiscal Q1 quarter. Semtech said it will discuss this in more detail on its scheduled May 30 earnings call.

Comcast has similar warrants agreements with other key suppliers, including Arris, Harmonic and Universal Electronics.

machineQ, Comcast’s enterprise IoT company, is using Semtech’s LoRA devices and wireless RF technology for rollouts underway in several markets, including Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

RELATED: Comcast’s MachineQ Unit Gets Down to Business

“As its deployment has matured, Comcast has shifted deployment efforts to better target high-value strategic markets by providing extensive coverage within these markets before expanding regional coverage to new markets,” Semtech said in a release.

Semtech said the change in priorities will be of interest to both companies, but were not anticipated in the original terms of the warrant.

“We are pleased with the speed and extensiveness by which Comcast has executed the deployment of Semtech’s LoRa technology to enable its machine platform,” Semtech president and CEO Mohan Maheswaran, said in a statement. “Comcast’s efforts in the deployment of LoRaWAN networks in various U.S. markets is further helping to establish the LoRaWAN protocol as the de facto standard for LPWAN deployments.” 

Comcast said it has pushed ahead with an integration with Tile, a maker of connected devices that can track a person’s keys and other belongings, with its Xfinity Home and X1 TV platform and X1 voice remote. 

The integration, which ties into Comcast’s effort to drive automation into how smart home products work together on its systems, enables its customers to link their Tile accounts and likewise track their Tile devices via the TV through X1 boxes and X1 voice remotes. The agreement also ties into Comcast’s acquisition of Stringify, the Internet of Things startup. 

RELATED: Stringify Connects to Comcast’s Connected Home Vision 

Tile makes a range of Bluetooth-connected tracking devices that are also referred to as Tiles, including versions that are waterproof, can easily be attached to keychains, luggage or backpacks, as well as “slim” versions tailored for items such as purses, wallets and passports.  

Via the integration, Comcast customers can locate a misplaced item with a Tile using X1 by saying “Xfinity Home, where are my keys?,” or "Xfinity Home find my purse,” and the TV will put up a display showing the last known location and address of the Tile-connected item.  

Initially, the integration will be for Xfinity Home customers with X1 voice remotes (they can add Tiles by downloading the Xfinity Home app), but Comcast and Tile plan to expand eligibility to all Xfinity internet customers later this year.  

Comcast and Tile alluded to the partnership at a press event in January at CES, with execs there noting that Comcast would be integrating Tile with its service platforms. Tile officials also noted that the company is also working on software-based integrations of its tracking system.  

Update: In January, for example, Tile announced that Bose would embed Tile’s technology inside its SoundSport Wireless and QuietControl 30 headphones, a pilot with Samsonite slated for this spring that will test “next-generation luggage,” and an agreement to blanket the San Jose International airport with Tile access points to help find lost items. Propeller Health is also working to integrate Tile into its sensors, and Ruckus Networks (now part of Arris) has teamed up to detect Tile-enabled items via indoor and outdoor access points. 

“This is a home automation partnership that helps solve real-life problems,” Sri Solur, SVP at Comcast Cable, said in a statement. “Now, when a child arrives home from school, a parent can simply say, ‘Xfinity Home where’s Sam’s backpack?’ into their voice remote and see that it was left at school. This is just one of the many peace of mind features we are making available to our customers on our evolving home automation platform.” 

“Tile is creating a world where everyone can find everything that matters,” added Mike Farley, CEO and co-founder of Tile. “With the smart home being central to so many consumers’ lives, we are thrilled to be partnering with Comcast. Together, we are bringing greater peace of mind to Xfinity customers in their home, providing a streamlined experience for them to quickly locate their things no matter where they are.”  

Former Verizon exec Marni Walden has been named the new board chair of Globetouch, a connectivity company focused on the connected car and Internet of Things market.  

In that role, Walden will help to guide the Globetouch team, including its recently named CEO Alfredo de Cárdenas. Arun Sarin, the previous board chair, will remain a board member for Globetouch.  

Globetouch’s backers include Verizon Ventures, Hermes Growth Partners, Impact Venture Capital, Spark Telecom Ventures and Wholesale, CK Hutchison Holdings Limited, Digicel and NTT DoCoMo, 263 China, and Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd. 

Walden, who played a big role in Verizon’s acquisition of AOL, most recently was Verizon’s EVP and president of Global Media. She left Verizon in February following a brief time as a strategic advisor.  

Walden is an exec who is also late of AT&T Wireless, McCaw Communications and General Cellular, and was COO and EVP of Cellco Partnership (now part of Verizon Wireless).  

“There are some prime opportunities for growth in the connectivity space right now, and Globetouch has the advantage of being positioned squarely at the center of them all,” Walden said in a statement. “It’s an exciting time to take the lead of Globetouch’s Board, at such a pivotal moment in the industry, and I look forward to helping the company fulfill its vision of driving innovation in the IoT economy.” 

Cox Communications said this week it embarked on the national rollout of a home automation as-a-service offering for its Homelife product that complements a larger offering that also includes home security services.  

The wider rollout, which will reach all Cox markets in the coming months, follows trials of home automation-only services in Tulsa, San Diego and Rhode Island.  

“We see two markets forming, a well-established and growing home security market and an emerging market who aspires to smart home living but who may not want 24/7 monitored security,” Kristine Faulkner, SVP, Cox Homelife, said in a statement. “Offering more choices in the Cox Homelife portfolio enables us to expand our reach beyond the homes that are buying home security today and establishes an umbrella for future expansion into every home.”  

Cox Homelife Automation, which will start at $19.99 per month according to FierceCable, is designed to control a range of smart home devices, including indoor/outdoor Homelife HD cameras, custom alerts and notifications, connected lights, and door locks and thermostats. Cox is backing that up with pro installs and 24/7 phone support.  

Comcast, which last year acquired a part of Icontrol that Cox has been using for its smart home services, has also been pushing hard on smart home automation that will cover its range of residential services. Cox’s new Contour-branded pay TV platform is also underpinned by an X1 syndication deal with Comcast.  

RELATED: Comcast Scales Home Automation Services to 15M Subs  

Stringify, the Internet of Things startup recently acquired by Comcast last fall, has launched an updated app that will bring a wave of new automation features to Xfinity products, including X1, Xfinity Home and Comcast’s xFi home WiFi management system.  

RELATED: Comcast Buys Stringify 

With the update, Comcast customers can now display notifications on their TV and pause and un-pause devices on their home networks. The app has also been integrated with Lutron Caseta dimmers and switchers, as well as Serena shades and Carrier’s line of WiFi thermostats.  

RELATED: Comcast Sets Sights on Smart Home  

Stringify is also offering its first app for Android Wear, enabling users to set up coming home “scenes” that automate certain smart home functions such as turning up the lights and the home’s thermostat, or schedule a family "movie night" and have the channel changed automatically.  

RELATED: Comcast Scales Home Automation Services to 15M Subs 

Louisville, Colo. -- The hunting appears to be pretty good these days at Kyrio, the for-profit unit of CableLabs that has been seeking business growth opportunities both inside and outside the cable industry.  

Kyrio, a spin-off formed in 2012 and originally called NetworkFX (rebranded as Kyrio in 2016), cut its teeth in cable device security using a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) service. It has been expanding into several emerging areas, including mobile and wireless, the Internet of Things, as well as interoperability work centered on network functions virtualization (NFV). While some of those activities have attracted business from companies and industries outside of cable, Kyrio has also taken the reins on DOCSIS certification testing.  

RELATED: Kyrio Takes Over CableLabs Certification Testing Program 

Out of all the opportunities being worked on now or being targeted, wireless is currently the biggest one being pursued, Mitchell Ashley, president and GM of Kyrio, said in a briefing here at the CableLabs headquarters.  

WiFi performance testing (for metro WiFi networks as well as in-home WiFi products and technologies) are the largest component of that part of the business, though Kyrio has started to do some testing around 5G. All of that work complements other wireless-facing work Kyrio has undertaken, including a WiFi roaming service/hub that some cable operators, including Midco, have taken advantage of.  

Louisville, Colo.-based Kyrio, which has even rented out a two-story home in the area to help with real-world WiFi performance testing, also expects increasing interest in the emerging CBRS band to also factor into future business.  

RELATED: Comcast Wants to Test CBRS in Philly 

Part of the WiFi testing tends to center access point performance, as well as new whole-home setups that employ extenders and other whole-home gear and software.  

RELATED: Whole-Home WiFi Heats Up 

Kyrio’s being tapped in part by vendors and suppliers for product testing because the division is made to be neutral and independent, and can also serve as an extension of their own in-house labs. Others simply don't have the resources that Kyrio affords them. 

“We don’t have a dog in the hunt on what’s chosen,” Ashley said. “The data is the data…The results speak for themselves.”  

Kyrio has also taken its PKI infrastructure for set-tops and modems and offered that capability to the IoT market, enabling the same security mechanisms and technology to validate and authenticate this new wave of connected devices in a sort of digital ticket exchange.  

RELATED: Kyrio Teams on IoT Device Security 

“IoT has a lot of promise” for Kyrio’s business, Ashley explained.  

Another emerging area for Kyrio is NVF interoperability. Some of that work involves a lab that lets vendors come in to create multi-device scenarios and develop proof of concepts.  

Interoperable, multi-vendor environments represent both a challenge and a promise for NVP, explained Robin Ku, director of Kyrio’s NFV Interop Lab, which is sponsored by Intel and Amdocs. 

Some of that work has involved expanding the NFV ecosystem to support a greater number of virtual applications that can be tested in those interoperable settings.  

“But you have to walk before you run,” Ku said, adding that NFV has “a high degree of interest from MSOs”  

While it’s not yet clear precisely how much revenue machineQ is bringing in the door yet, the Comcast-owned unit focused on enterprise Internet of Things services, been adding customers at a healthy clip in the early going. 

machineQ said its service, which runs a Low Power Wide Area Network using the LoRaWAN protocol, has  notched deployments with companies focused on areas spanning business asset tracking, rodent control to water service utilities, and has signed on the following as new customers:

-Adveez, an IoT hardware and software solutions provider that monitors a business’s critical assets at locations such as airports, seaports and in cities.

- CareBand, a maker of connected wearables aimed at reducing injuries to seniors due to dementia-related wandering by providing real-time, precise location tracking.

-Neptune, a software and hardware provider to the water industry that serves more than 4,000 utilities across North America. Neptune’s new, LoRa-enabled L900 series of water endpoints supports water meter reading and sensor applications that require low-power consumption and long-range connectivity.

-Pansofik,a developer of digital solutions designed to help small- and mid-sized businesses and building owners integrate IoT and data analytics within their organizations.

-Victor, a maker of rodent control systems is using LoRaWAN-based sensor technologies operating on the machineQ network.

Examples of other known machineQ customers include SteamIQ (stream trap performance monitoring), Reach (lighting control), Instapio (data management), PNI Sensor Corp. (smart parking sensors), and Coris (temperature monitoring tailored for the medical industry). 

machineQ also has tech alliances in place with Semtech (LoRA devices and wireless RF technology) and Murata (electronic components, connectivity modules and power conversion technologies).

RELATED: CableLabs Powering Up Open-Source LoRaWAN Solution

Comcast introduced machineQ in 2016 via trials in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago, and has since rolled out its LoRa-based service to Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

Fellow cable operator Cox Communications bowed Cox2M, an IoT services unit, earlier this week. Dish Network, meanwhile, plans to spend big on a wireless network buildout for a narrowband IoT offering, and recently acquired Parkifi, a maker of sensors for smart parking lots.

RELATED: Comcast IoT Unit Heads Into a Dozen More Markets

“IoT solution providers are seeking secure, reliable and highly scalable network connectivity, device management capabilities, and ‘as-a-service’ IoT network services, like geo-location, to speed their time-to-market, and our new customers have chosen machineQ because it can be deployed across a wide range of different enterprise use cases,” Alex Khorram, general manager of machineQ, said in a statement. “We want IoT solution providers to know that we can handle their network needs, so they can focus on bringing their innovative solutions to market to the benefit of their end users.”

Following earlier trial work, Cox Communications has launched Cox2M, an Internet-of-Things unit that offers connected asset services that are targeted to business customers and emerging opportunities with smart cities.

Cox said the unit’s new offering provides turnkey services that monitors and tracks commercial assets and inventory, including vehicles and power lines. Service examples include automotive lot management, smart cities (lighting transit, etc.), connected healthcare, and fault detection. Cox believes that Cox2M’s service line can be used to serve several types of industries spanning transportation, cities and campuses, energy companies and utilities, agriculture, retail and real estate.

Corporate cousin Cox Automotive is an early adopter of Cox2M’s services, as its Manheim vehicle marketplace has teamed on a custom app that delivers real-time tracking of vehicles across auction lots. Cox said that solution was piloted last year and is to be implemented across the U.S. and Canada to connect more than 500,000 vehicles using a Low Power Wide Area IoT network. Other Cox Automotive brands are also considering the platform for additional applications, Cox said.

“Cox connects millions of people and businesses today, and we’re constantly thinking about how to deliver powerful new outcomes through that experience,” Sujata Gosalia, executive vice president and chief strategy officer, Cox, said in a statement. “With Cox2M, we will play an even more significant role in supporting the smart businesses and smart cities of the future.”

Cox said Cox2M was incubated in its New Growth organization over the past two years. It’s led by Cox executive director Barak Weinisman.

Cox is also the latest cable operator to launch a unit focused on IoT opportunities. Comcast, for example, has launched machineQ, a unit that entered the early stages of its commercial rollout last year.

Comcast IoT Unit Heads Into a Dozen More Markets

Eutelsat Communications said it has tapped Tyvak International to build a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite that’s designed to support Internet of Things-focused apps and services.

The resulting Eutelsat LEO for Objects, or ELO (not to be confused with this ELO) service, will be used to assess the performance of LEO satellites in providing narrowband connectivity.

Eutelsat said it will also work with Sigfox, which runs a global narrowband network dedicated to IoT.  Part of that work will include the analysis of spectrum used by the satellite in ISM Industrial, Scientific and Medical) frequency bands. ELO will also test connectivity in other bands.

Eutelsat said low earth orbit is well-suited for narrowband connectivity for IoT, noting that the satellite will be located on a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of between 500 km to 600 km.

RELATED: Broadband's Space Race Heats Up

Eutelsat expects ELO to launch in 2019 and backhaul information from objects located in areas that are not served by terrestrial networks and to offer a redundancy for existing terrestrial network coverage. The plan is also for ELO to collect data twice a day from IoT objects like connected vehicles, with data downloaded to a ground station in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, for collection and analysis.

“With the expansion of the Internet of Things, new services are being developed in a wide range of sectors including smart cities, the mining industry, agriculture and logistics,” Jean-Hubert Lenotte, Eutelsat’s chief strategy officer, said in a statement.

Dish Network is also getting a fix on narrowband IoT, announcing last month that it will spend $1 billion on the first phase of such a wireless buildout using licensed spectrum.

Kyrio, the for-profit unit of CableLabs, has teamed with Microchip to develop embedded device security for the Internet of Things (IoT) sector.

Kyrio said it is the first certificate authority and Microchip Security Design Partner as part of an effort aimed at driving scale into IoT device security.

RELATED: CableLabs Unit Tackles IoT Testing

“The mission of this partnership is to embed IoT devices with digital certificates in secure hardware in a way that integrates well with hardware manufacturing process flows,” Ron Ih, director of business development at Kyrio, explained in this blog post. “This strategy will make it easy for IoT device manufacturers to enable enterprise-grade security without needing to be security experts.”

He noted that providing high security for networked devices historically requires complex back-end security software, security specialists, and processes “that did not fit well with hardware manufacturing flows,” and represents a situation that’s not sustainable with an IoT world that is seeing the number of connected devices explode.

RELATED: Kyrio Takes Over CableLabs Certification Testing Program

“IoT devices – from lightbulbs to cars – need security at the core, not as an afterthought,” Ih added. “By providing a strong managed Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) that fits within the existing design flow and supply chain familiar to device manufacturers, we are moving closer to the standardization the IoT industry requires to grow securely,” Ih explained.

RELATED: CableLabs Rebrands Security Spin-Off

Microchip, he said, already works with customers in several markets, including consumer, automotive, communications and industrial control.

Though Kyrio is the first certificate authority for Microchip’s Design Partner Program, other companies involved with it include cloud providers such as Google, Afero and Amazon Web Services, CycloneCrypto (a stack provider), and Cerberus, a design house based in the U.K.

Speaking alongside other panelists at a Capitol Hill luncheon briefing earlier this month, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) reiterated his concern that IoT stands for "Internet of Threats."

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) insisted that consumers should know a so-called smart device can be hacked after they install it at home, but that government protections should have a "very light touch."

Chris Calabrese, VP-policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, emphasized that the approval seal proposed in the Markey-Lieu Cyber Shield legislation is merely a way "to figure out if we can trust these devices."

And they all acknowledged that any such law will have to be dynamic because of the rapidly changing factors in the Internet of Things.

Shane Tewes, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, organized and moderated the "Securing the Internet of Things" seminar Feb. 14. She characterized it as a good way "to get people's attention" even though some parties "are not going to be happy about it." In particular, she told Multichannel News after the event, manufacturers "don't want to put this in a box and get sued."

"You have to find the middle ground," Tewes said, adding quickly that AEI is not endorsing the legislation, but rather acknowledging that "something is going to happen" and the group doesn't want to "shy away" from the process.

Although it was unusual for a right-leaning think-tank such as AEI to showcase legislation by two liberal Democrats, the event hit a topic of interest to cable operators and other carriers as well as equipment makers -- all of whom are concerned about the assigned liability if home IoT devices are hacked. Markey is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee and its subcommittees handling communications and consumer protection. Lieu sits on the House Judiciary Committee. They introduced the Cyber Shield Act of 2017 (S.2020 and H.R.4163) in October.

Their proposal calls for a voluntary cybersecurity program for the Internet of Things, with input from a public/industry/academic advisory committee; one objective is to create product labels (physical or digital) that identify IoT devices that meet strong cybersecurity standards. The seal would show consumers that devices -- ranging from baby monitors to phones, laptops and other networked items -- are safe from intrusions. The voluntary self-certification program in the legislation would put the program into the Department of Commerce, also home of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Dangers and Dynamic Solutions
Markey, in his opening remarks at the AEI session, warned, "We're here to talk about the sinister side of cyberspace: the harm that can be inflicted."

He emphasized that every IoT device is "something that can be compromised ... in ways that people don't think about but they should." He said the Cyber Shield "seal" would "enable consumers to make informed decisions" when they buy and install devices on a home network and "reward businesses that offer best practices." In the process, the legislation would "create a roadmap of improvements for manufacturers and their devices," Markey added.

Lieu concentrated on the "living, breathing process which would change over time as tech continues to change."

"The reason we're not very specific in this statute is [because] when it comes to technology, government should have a very light touch," Lieu added, emphasizing his expectation that that industry will "self-regulate." He explained that the voluntary program established by the proposed legislation would rely on a commission of diverse experts to set standards.

Industry-wide self-regulating standards, however, became the first matter addressed during a follow-on panel.

"We haven't seen a lot of coordination behind the standard," said CDT's Calabrese. "A lot of private entities have tried to put out standards, and the result has been a jumble."

Nonetheless, he agreed that certification of some sort is valuable "to figure out if we can trust these devices." He cited the recent BITAG report on technical aspects of IoT security and privacy as a model for such cross-industry collaboration. (The Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group's members include Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Dish Network, Cisco, CableLabs, NCTA and Level 3.)

Rena Mears, head of consulting at DLA Piper law firm, pointed to the role of communications companies as devices are added to home networks.

"The level of data sharing is immense and going to get bigger," she said. "The risk with IoT is that each individual product is so small ... but taken together, it is immense." That will lead to "supply chain issues" which will put the burden "back to industry," Mears added.

"Even in an organized system, it's hard to find where the vulnerability or breach is," she said, stressing that liability "sits thick and heavy" in complex networks, such as IoT relationships.

"When I look at a home that has become a platform, and I look at the immense possibilities for IoT," Mears said, she envisions both values and dangers.

She called the ecosystem for IoT liabilities "just mind-boggling."

"There will have to be some set of rules that apply at some broader level rather than the traditional way of [managing] every little piece," Mears said.

Robert Stein, VP-government and regulatory affairs at InterDigital, a research and development company that provides wireless technologies for mobile devices, networks and services, acknowledged that, "We haven't thought that far ahead about who oversees" the integration of IoT connections.

The panel agreed that the Cyber Shield legislation is forcing the industry to examine specifics about digital security. Beyond the integrated role for carriers and hardware providers, there are "complicated realities" such as locked passwords. If a manufacturer installs a digital lock that a consumer cannot update, they wondered how it would affect the future interoperability with other home devices -- especially if a device is compromised or discarded.

The discussion echoed an early remark by Calabrese, who characterized the proposed legislation as an interim measure.

"No one should mistake it for a solution," he said.

Pictured (from left): Chris Calabrese, Rena Mears and Robert Stein, panelists at AEI's IoT security briefing Feb. 14.

Ruckus Networks, the wireless-focused tech company acquired late last year by Arris, has introduced a new lineup of LTE-based products, including access points and a spectrum allocation server, aimed at the emerging market for the 3.5 GHz Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS) band.

That portfolio, introduced ahead of the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, is entering the fray as the shared-use CBRS band – a 150 MHz chunk of spectrum in the 3.55 Gigahertz to 3.7 GHz range -- becomes a focal point for traditional mobile carriers, cable operators and neutral-host service providers.

RELATED: CBRS Spectrum to Open Windows of Opportunity for Cable Ops

Ruckus’s CBRS band LTE portfolio includes the Ruckus Q710, a 3.5 GHz indoor access point/small cell with 10,000 square feet of coverage, the Q910, a 3.5 GHz outdoor AP/small cell that can cover a 660-foot city block, and a cloud-based element management system. ts CBRS product suite also includes pro services from Arris (for network planning and deployment, the cEPC (a cloud-based evolved packet core), and the cSAS, a cloud-based spectrum allocation server that is being marketed as an optional subscription service.

The spectrum allocation server is a key product component for the CBRS band's shared spectrum environment, as it ensures that new use cases for licensed and unlicensed capacity in that band do not interfere with incumbent users such as the U.S. Navy. Notably, Arris and one of its top customers, Charter Communications, are investors in Federated Wireless, a startup that specializes in spectrum allocation servers and systems and recently introduced a product interoperability program.

Ruckus said the new CBRS-focused portfolio is in trials today, with availability to come following anticipated FCC certification in the shared-use band.

RELATED: Comcast Wants to Test CBRS in Philly

Ruckus didn’t identify trial partners. In the cable world, Comcast and Charter have either started CBRS trials or have plans underway to test small cells that, for example, might be used to offset some of the network costs for mobile services that lean on MVNO agreements.

RELATED: Small Cells to Play Big Role in Charter’s Mobile Future

The CBRS/LTE access points being announced today are the first two of a larger, more comprehensive product line, as some will be capable of snapping onto existing Ruckus-made access points, according to Mark Davis, Ruckus’s senior director of product marketing.

When combined with the subscription services and other elements, the product suite is shaping up as a “CBRS in a box” solution, he said, estimating that Ruckus has more than 20 trials underway with operators of various shapes and sizes.

Ruckus also introduced a suite of Internet of Things products focused on enterprises and to address the complexities that some IoT solution vendors have created using vertically-integrated systems.

“IoT is an extraordinarily complex beast” as many of today's IoT solutions don’t talk to each other, Davis said.

The idea behind Ruckus’s approach is to consolidate the physical layer access networks into a unified IoT network. Those components include IoT-ready access points, IoT modules (based on standards such as Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee and LoRA, and IoT controller that works with the company’s existing SmartZone wireless LAN controller.

The result aims to create a common infrastructure between the wireless local area network and the IoT access network.

Ruckus also announced ecosystem partnerships with several IoT companies, including Assa Abloy Hospitality (smart security), LoRaWAN network specialist Actility, IBM (for its Watson IoT platform), Kontakt.io, TrackR, and Tile, a company that has developed an electronic beacon system that tracks a person’s belongings.

RELATED: Assa Abloy Seals Deal for August Home

Dish Network is deepening its connection to the IoT and wireless worlds with the acquisition of Parkifi, a Denver-based startup that makes and sells patent-pending, connected single-space parking sensors that work in tandem with a cloud-based analytics platform.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but Parkifi will continue to make and sell that platform around the country and retain the Parkifi brand. Tied to the deal, Parkifi co-founder, Ryan Sullivan, will lead a new team at Dish to sell, support and develop new Parkifi-branded products and services.  

Parkifi’s sensor-gateway platform can be installed in individual parking spaces in surface lots, garages or on the street. The gateways aggregate sensor data that is sent to its cloud-based analytics system. The platform helps parking operators more efficiently manage inventory, predict occupancy, and increase revenues by directing drivers to available spaces, Dish said.

Parkifi’s customers include the University of California, Berkeley, which is using the vendor’s system for an on-campus parking garage. Per its website, Parkifi is operating in more than 70 locations in six markets.

Founded in 2014, Parkifi has raised about $13.9 million, according to The Denver Post.

The acquisition comes almost a year after Dish announced it was building out a national narrowband IoT network that’s slated to be completed in March 2020.

“Parkifi brings to DISH practical deployment and real-world experience connecting low-powered sensors with gateways to the cloud,” Tom Cullen, Dish’s executive vice president of corporate development, said in a statement. “Parkifi is helping solve the parking hassle affecting millions of Americans, but that connectivity model extends to utility monitoring, street lights and other applications of a connected community. We’ll leverage Parkifi’s expertise to test and learn as we deploy our own network.” 

Consumers want Internet-connected services that will take care of everyday, repetitive tasks for them and anticipate their needs with timely reminders and encouragement. They'd also like to have options to choose among in terms of service providers -- and if they get user-friendly technology that delivers on what's promised, then those companies can expect to get return business.

Those were among the lessons shared by CTAM from a new study of "connected consumers" done with the research firm Magid. The research involved focus groups of "Internet of things" early adopters and people who were interested in acquiring smart-home products. CTAM plans to release the study to members of the marketing association soon, after discussing it at a meeting in New York on Tuesday of the cable and telecommunications marketing association's Advanced Video and Insights + Analytics councils.

CTAM CEO Vicki Lins said the research pointed to opportunities for cable companies and programmers, even though the brands that consumers in the study expected to rely on for connected tech solutions were Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. Consumers said they want a range of choices, and if cable companies can serve their consumers well and continue introducing voice-enabled search and other time-saving innovations on top of reliable broadband, then cable can win its share of their business, she said.

In August, Magid worked with more than 100 men and women on the study. They were a mix of pay-TV customers, cord cutters and cord nevers and were in 15 focus groups in three cities (Austin, Texas; San Francisco, Calif., and Alexandria, Va.). 

Early adopters were "forgiving and demanding," CTAM and Magid said, and Internet-of-Things prospects were "excited, yet hesitant." 

Google's combining of calendar and map apps to send a reminder that it's time to head out to the next destination is the kind of application consumers are looking for. "As consumers become accustomed to everything being one click or voice command away, they grow frustrated by routine tasks that could be solved more intelligently," Jill Rosengard Hill, executive VP at Magid, said in a release about the study. This leads consumers to believe that the more technology delivers in one part of their life, the more it should simplify the other parts of their life."

READ MORE: Altice USA Hawks Nest Smart Home Products

There's a lot of interest in technology that can help with caring for the elderly and physically challenged with a mix of monitoring, on-demand interaction and coaching, the study found.

Consumers aspire to have devices, platforms and brands that work together and that "get to know me" -- and they want worry-free, ubiquitous connectivity.

Based on the research, CTAM and Magid expect password sharing and tapping into unauthorized content to continue, and it's up to the affected industries to figure out how to provide simple, easy and reasonably-priced access to minimize that behavior. CTAM and Magid also published an infographic to illustrate the study results.

This article was updated to reflect in the headline that the story is based on a study, not a survey.

Diving deeper into the young IoT sector, Xfinity Home, Comcast’s smart home/security unit, has become a member of the Internet of Things Consortium (IoTC).

The IoTC isn’t a technical standards body, but is rather an association/trade group that provides a business-focused forum for large and small companies that are in the industry.

Examples of other IoTC members include Verizon, ADT, Fox, The Weather Company, Greenwave Systems, MasterCard, Cox Communications, Nielsen, T-Mobile, LG Electronics, Turner, and August, the maker of smart locks that has been integrated into Comcast’s Xfinity Home platform, and Stringify (an IoT automation startup that was acquired by Comcast earlier this year).

RELATED: Comcast Buys Stringify

Two Comcast execs are also joining IoTC as advisors -- Daniel Herscovici, GM and SVP of Xfinity Home; and Sridhar Solur, SVP of product and development for Xfinity Home.

Solur said a trade group such as the IoTC is important in part because it can take on the role of “self-regulation” in this early phase of the market while also putting large companies and startups on a platform dedicated to helping them grow their businesses.

The formation of trade groups such as the IoTC “is especially important for new industries,” he said.

“We’re still in the first few innings of what this industry will become, how large it will be, and how we will affect consumer experiences,” Herscovici said.

He said it’s important for a company like Comcast, which is focused on providing an underlying, cohesive platform with Xfinity Home that can be combined with third-party smart home products such as locks, doorbells, and garage door openers.

RELATED: Comcast’s Xfinity Home Lights Up More Device Partners

“It's important for us to work with these point solution providers to figure out how to go to market in the most compelling way,” Herscovici

Xfinity Home, which has about 1 million subscribers, is currently the lead for Comcast at the IoTC, but the company is also involved in several other IoT-facing activities. Its MachineQ unit, for example is focused on enterprise Internet of Things services.

RELATED: Comcast IoT Unit Heads Into a Dozen More Markets

In addition to the consumer side of the sector, the IoTC will also be working in other areas that include security, smart cities and B2B solutions.

“As we see how these working groups get formed, we will pull in the appropriate leaders from within Comcast to participate as needed,” Herscovici said.

Pushing more deeply into the smart home market, Altice USA announced that it is selling connected home products from Nest to its Optimum (former Cablevision Systems) and Suddenlink customers.

Billing itself as a “one-stop shop” for Optimum and Suddenlink customers who want a simplified connected home experience, Altice will sell several Nest products, including its Learning Thermostat, Thermostat E, Nest Protect smoke and CO alarm, and a range of Nest Cams.

Altice USA is already selling Nest products at select Optimum and Suddenlink retail stores, and expects to offer them across its other sales channels, including online and by phone.  Customers who buy Nest products through Altice USA will also have access to a professional installation option from the operator’s Premier Installation and Support Service.

RELATED: Altice USA Pitches Premium Service Products

Altice USA is currently selling Nest products in select Optimum and Suddenlink retail stores, with plans to offer Nest’s products to all customers across its sales channels, including all stores as well as online and by phone.

Altice USA said it also plans to offer Nest Aware, a subscription service that provides alerts and 24/7 continuous video recording for Nest Cam users.

The agreement represents a new, direct cable operator deal for Nest, which has also integrated some of its products with Comcast’s Xfinity Home platform. Nest, part of the “other bets” unit of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is led by cable industry vet Marwan Fawaz.

RELATED: Marwan Fawaz Named CEO of Nest

Suddenlink also offers smart home and security services via a partnership with Alarm.com that was formed prior to Altice’s acquisition of Suddenlink in December 2015. Altice USA has been asked if the new Nest agreement will have any effect on that offering, though, at last check, Suddenlink’s web site for its Connected Home product appears to be alive and well.

UPDATE:Altice confirmed that Suddenlink continues to offer the Connected Home product. 

RELATED: Alarm.com At Home With Suddenlink

“Altice USA is focused on providing our customers with the services and solutions that support their full digital lifestyles, and offering Nest products is our next step in delivering a more robust and differentiated product set to enable the smart home experience and meet even more of consumers’ connectivity needs,” Dexter Goei, Altice USA’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “We are excited to be working with Nest as we continue to reinvent and simplify the connected home experience for all of our customers - now and in the future.”

Comcast has acquired Stringify, an Internet of Things tech startup that helped the cable operator develop xFi, a cloud-based home WiFi management platform that was launched earlier this year.

RELATED: Comcast Tacks On xFi Features

Stringify announced the acquisition via a Sept. 18 blog post, noting that the company would be updating its terms of service soon to signal that Stringify service data will be transitioned to Comcast.

Founded in 2014, Stringify provides a cloud-powered automation service for the IoT, and has introduced apps for iOS and Android. Stringify said it works with 500-plus products and services, including those from Nest (part of Google), Philips Hue, Ring, Amazon Alexa, Honeywell, Insteon and Netgear, among others.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Stringify raised a $6.3 million seed round led by Artis Ventures, according to Crunchbase.

Related: Time to Own the Home

“Comcast is a perfect fit for Stringify,” the IoT provider explained in the blog post. "With xFi and Xfinity Home, Comcast is delivering elegant, powerful IoT and automation experiences to millions of customers. The Comcast team shares our passion for using technology to solve real-world problems, and to connect the world in meaningful ways.”

Elsewhere on the xFi front, Comcast made in investment in Plume, a startup that is helping Comcast develop a lineup of WiFi “pods” that work in tandem with broadband gateways to extend wireless signals to all corners of a consumer’s home.

RELATED: Comcast Leads $37.5M Investment in Plume

Expanding further into the world of the Internet of Things, CableLabs said it is creating an open-source LoRaWAN network solution that will support the long range, low-power wireless protocol aimed at in-building IoT networks.

Daryl Malas, principal architect, advanced technology group at CableLabs, noted in this blog post that LoRA is a “semi-propriety” platform owned and licensed by Semtech while a closed consortium develops the LoRaWAN spec around the Semtech solution architecture.

“CableLabs chose to develop a LoRaWAN open-source solution because we believe it is a good compromise between proprietary and open solutions, and it provides many of our members an opportunity to compete in the low power wide area (LPWA) space,” Malas wrote.

He also used the blog to outline several LPWA use cases that require remote maintenance and control of operations, such as factories and warehouses, homes, schools, public infrastructure, transportation and agriculture.

The post also includes a reference architecture and a link that details a CableLabs LoRA server, which includes components such as the app server and a gateway bridge.

“By making a portion of this network available for open-source, our goal is to lower the barrier for the cable industry and other industry participators to enable these solutions for consumers and governments,” Malas explained.

CableLabs is taking on that effort as MSOs start to rev up their IoT strategies. Of recent note, machineQ, a unit of Comcast focused on enterprise IoT services, marked the early stage of its commercial rollout by expanding to an additional U.S. markets. machineQ is using Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology based on the LoRaWAN protocol.

Following a set of market trials, machineQ, a unit of Comcast focused on enterprise Internet of Things services, said it has entered the early stages of its commercial rollout by expanding its reach into a dozen more U.S. markets.

RELATED: Comcast Launches IoT Trial Venture Called machineQ

machineQ, which uses Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology based on the LoRaWAN protocol, is building and deploying in the following Comcast markets -- Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Washington D.C. Those rollouts follow trials in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago that got underway last fall.

RELATED: Comcast Joins LoRA Alliance 

“We’re opening shop with commercial services,” Alex Khorram, general manager of machineQ, said.

Early on, machineQ said it has been gathering interest from businesses and organizations across several markets and industries, including healthcare (patient monitoring, laboratory sciences tracking), public utilities (remote utility metering), automotive (asset tracking, telemetry), and smart cities (outdoor lighting, waste management, utility grid monitoring). machineQ is expected to announce more details about those partnerships down the road.

“The big takeaway [from the initial trials] is how creative people are when they are given a tool...and can connect something [they’ve] never connected before,” Khorram said.

He said machineQ achieved a set of goals in its trial work – understanding the market demand for enterprise IoT services, how to build out those services, and to get a fix on the kind of services and business models that would support the underlying offering.

Khorram also acknowledged that the IoT market being pursued by machineQ is at its early stages, but stressed that it makes sense to enter the fray now and to get ahead of the curve at this this phase of the market’s development.

“We're perhaps at the first pitch of the first inning still,” he said, noting that while most Fortune 500 companies have an IoT strategy underway, nearly all of them are in the proof of concept and trial phases. Startups are also part of the mix.

Though machineQ’s main focus is on connectivity (via Comcast’s own network footprint and a look toward bring-your-own-broadband models that can be managed by machineQ) to a new range of devices, it has wider ambitions.

“Our end game is to work at the platform layer and the application layer to make sure that the whole ecosystem benefits from it,” Khorram said. 

After sampling dozens of Internet of Things opportunities -- from smart cities to medical sensors to autonomous vehicle prospects -- members of the House Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee sat down Tuesday (June 13) to hear about the challenges of bringing IoT to the American public.

The show-and-tell event was the latest installment of the "Disrupter Series: Update on IOT Opportunities and Challenges," organized by the subcommittee of the House Energy & Commerce Committee,” to identify policies that could affect technology innovation in this much-touted communications-based category of products and services.

Subcommittee chair Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio; pictured), in opening the session, said he wanted to explore "how we as policy makers can continue to support IoT and address any regulatory obstacles or barriers that may stifle innovation or hinder the industry."

Coincidentally, the session was held simultaneously with another Commerce subcommittee hearing on wireless security, a point mentioned by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.).

"We are all faced with the challenges of integrating technology .... particularly cybersecurity," Pallone said, citing the hearing on risks in wireless technology. "I hope we as a committee will consider real legislative solutions" although he also insisted that "creators and manufacturers of Internet-connected technology must take responsibility for mitigating" any threats.

"I implore [them] to build in security from day one," Pallone said. He also emphasized that the industry should "be mindful of consumer privacy."

"Consumers have already told us they want control of who has access to their data," he emphasized.

In her opening remarks, ranking member Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) cited the value of energy generation and medical devices in the IoT race, calling them "two great examples of how innovation can benefit our country."

She went on to extol "research universities like Northwestern" (based in her district) as "critical to the future of innovation ... to help this innovation continue." Schakowsky also focused on the "enormous potential of the Internet of Things" but warned that the user experience, privacy and security are vital to the "make-up of connected devices" and should be part of government's assessment as it seeks to help consumers "realize the full benefit of this technology."

About two dozen organizations demonstrated their wares at an IoT Showcase in a House Office Building foyer prior to the hearing; the exhibits ranged from Smart Cities to medical assistance devices. Subcommittee members invited groups from their home districts to display products and services and explain to members and staffs how IoT is changing the way they do business.

Exhibitors included Qualcomm, Panasonic, General Motors, Honeywell and Siemens, plus utility companies, entrepreneurial IoT developers and academic start-up labs, such as The Garage at Northwestern University.

Witnesses Focus on Security, Spectrum and Light Regulation
Bill Kuhns, director of product development at Vermont Energy Control Systems LLC, a North Ferrisburgh, Vt., small business that makes home monitoring and control systems, offered an impassioned plea to "avoid heavy-handed regulations that could stifle innovation." He also cited spectrum and security factors that must be included in IoT development.

"This is an area where innovation is happening at a breakneck pace," Kuhns said in his prepared statement. "The potential benefits are enormous. It’s important that we allow the evolution of this technology to proceed with as few barriers and impediments as possible."

Kuhns cited the important of spectrum policy, especially lower frequencies.

"They don’t support high data rates, but they work better through walls and trees," he explained. "It would be helpful to free up additional low-frequency spectrum for low-power devices. It would be crippling to sell rights to more specific bands at auction. Bandwidth is a finite public resource, and selling it to the highest bidder effectively shuts out small businesses."

As for security, Kuhns emphasized that IoT makes "every connected device ... a risk."

"If you can connect to it, so can an intruder," he said. "Physically, I live in a very safe area. On the Internet, I live in a high-crime district. We see literally hundreds of probes and connection attempts every day."

Cameron Javdani, director of sales and marketing at Louroe Electronics, a Van Nuys, Calif., audio security firm, also focused on security in IoT technologies. He cited the value of networked devices that let security officials monitor larger geographic areas and take advantage of economies of scale to reduce the operating costs of their system.

"Technology growth within the security and surveillance industry is largely focused on the analytic capability of a system," Javdani said. "Very few security devices are monitored in real time, which means that IoT devices are data sensors, and not surveillance equipment as they are more conventionally thought of. ... Used alongside other networked security technologies, this type of system provides for optimization of security resources as it no longer becomes necessary for staff to monitor all areas at all times.

"As IoT technologies continue their adoption in the security industry, there are certain risks that present themselves," Javdani added. "Without taking appropriate precautions, consumers put themselves at risk of their privacy being violated. ... Certain malware and viruses scan networks for IoT devices that accept default credentials, and then use these devices to conduct large scale denial of service attacks."

Peter B. Kosak, executive director, urban active solutions at General Motors North America, focused on IoT's automotive opportunities. He testified that autonomous or self-driving technology "promises opportunities to make chaotic urban environments safely manageable."

"Embedded connectivity, app-based access, and data science will yield safer and more robust transportation systems, with more modality options," he said, going into great detail about GM's "Maven" platform for on-demand mobility. Maven's variations are in part aimed at "on-demand leasing for rideshare drivers," which has evolved into "Maven Gig," an enabler for the sharing economy. He cited GM's recent acquisitions and investments which are intended "to unlock the potential of autonomous vehicle and system capabilities as soon as possible."

"Business model and technology innovations promise to transform mobility, affording greater access and improved quality of life in cities," Kosak told the subcommittee in prepared remarks.

Universal Electronics, a maker of remote control and smart home technologies, said it’s diving deeper into the IoT pool by putting up $9 million in cash to acquire “certain assets” of RCS Technology, a maker of energy management and control products for the residential, commercial and hospitality sectors.

UEI said the deal include RCS’s product lines, inventory, intellectual property, engineering and development resources, sales and distribution relationships, and other assets used in its communication and smart thermostat business.

In addition to the $9 million up front, the financial terms include other incentive-based cash consideration to be paid over the next five years, they said. UEI plans to operate RCS as a wholly-owned subsidiary and market the energy monitoring, thermostat, sensor products and services under RCS brands.

UEI, a key supplier to Comcast and other video and smart home service providers, said the deal will broaden its portfolio of home sensing, monitoring and control products by adding programmable communicating thermostats, advanced HVAC controls, and in-home displays and user interfaces.

RELATED: UEI, Comcast Sign Warrants Agreement

RCS’s customers include ADT and Nexia Home Automation Systems. Its portfolio uses a variety of connectivity technologies, including Z-Wave, ZigBee and WiFi.

“RCS represents another important step toward our goal to be the leader in control and sensing technologies for the smart home,” Paul Arling, UEI's chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “This acquisition builds on our existing business with original equipment manufacturers in HVAC, giving us an expanded capability in delivering traditional and wireless thermostats, room air controllers, and wireless remotes to customers such as Daikin, Fujitsu and Panasonic.  The addition of RCS brings new smart thermostat, sensing and monitoring products to our international market through our global sales, manufacturing, and distribution channels.”

Comcast has joined the the LoRa Alliance, a group that backs the LoRaWAN standard for low-power wide-area IoT networks, as a Sponsor member and will also join the LoRA board.

Examples of other LoRA sponsor members include Cisco Systems, IBM, ZTE, Semtech and Orange.

Comcast is also on tap to host the group’s all-member’s meeting, set for June 12-14, at the The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

Comcast’s membership in the group follows some recent IoT-facing pursuits by the company. Last fall, Comcast introduced machineQ, trial venture focused on developing a low-power IoT network for enterprise customers. In February, machineQ announced it had begun to deploy a LoRaWAN network in Philadelphia that aims to monitor things like public infrastructure and enable predictive maintenance on consumer appliances.

RELATED: Comcast Launches IoT Trial Venture Called machineQ

Comcast is also organizing a “smart-city themed hackathon” for local startups, independent developers and universities to explore LoRaWAN technology.

"Comcast's successful citywide deployment in Philadelphia exemplifies the power of standardizing LPWANs to fully realize the worldwide potential of IoT technology," Geoff Mulligan, chairman of the LoRa Alliance, said in a statement. "Comcast's decision to become a Sponsor member is a strong endorsement of LoRaWAN technology.”

"As we continue to deploy the LoRaWAN protocol in the United States, the core technology is exceeding our expectations in terms of network propagation and coverage. We are seeing increasing demand and interest from a diverse client set," added Alex Khorram, general manager, machineQ.

Comcast has completed its purchase of Internet of Things company Icontrol Networks, a move the company said will enhance its Xfinity Home security and automation business.

RELATED Comcast, Alarm.com Divvy Up Icontrol Networks

Comcast said it would acquire the Converge business of Icontrol in August , with Alarm.com agreeing to purchase Icontrol’s Silicon Valley and Ottawa business units, for about $140 million. Comcast and Icontrol did not reveal the financial terms of their agreement, but the deal makes sense especially since Converge built the platform that powers Xfinity Home.

RELATED: Why Comcast Is Buying Icontrol

In a blog post Wednesday, SVP and general manager of Comcast’s Xfinity Home Daniel Herscovici wrote that the purchase of the Converge unit gives Comcast “full control over our research and development roadmap,” which will allow the company to invest more strategically in the future.

He added that with the buy Comcast will develop an "IoT Center of Excellence" in Austin, Texas, Icontrol’s home base.

“This will be a key hub where our engineers and developers will design innovations to support our various IoT businesses,” Herscovici wrote, adding that engineers in Austin will work closely with teams in Philadelphia, Silicon Valley, and other locations.

Finally, he said the purchase opens up a new line of business for Xfinity Home.

“We will also be able to offer wholesale services to new customers, either domestic or international,” Herscovici wrote. “We have plans to make a more formal announcement about this new line of business soon.”

RELATED: Rogers Tightens Technology Ties to Comcast 

The zigbee alliance is assuring developers that "dotdot," its newly released unified Internet of Thing (IoT) language which operates on the applications layer, can be applied across almost all IoT networks. Dotdot, which was unveiled at CES early this month, is based on the previous Zigbee Cluster Library (ZCL) and  is characterized as an "open, mature technology supported by the Zigbee alliance's 400+" members and supply chain, according to the association.

Some analysts have recently sought to minimize the value of zigbee now that Bluetooth and home WiFi systems are so widely deployed. 

Comcast has deployed ZigBee-enabled Xfinity set-top boxes  for home security and energy management features and services, including premium security service such as streaming video from cameras around the house.

The zigbee alliance (which insists on a non-capitalized name format as part of its new rebranding) unveiled its new IoT agenda amidst a slew of smart home product integration ventures,including projects from Comcast. At the Las Vegas event, Comcast confirmed plans to roll out a new “Digital Home” platform to 15 million gateways in 2017.

For its part, the zigbee alliance showcased  an "Interoperability  Wall" on the CES floor:  95 products from more than 30 manufacturers showed ways that the dotdot language could be connected to a variety of energy, security and entertainment devices.  zigbee characterized dotdot as a "full-stack IoT solution, from mesh network based on the global 802.15.4 standard, to energy harvesting technology that enables battery-less devices...to work together."

Although there were no cable devices or cable operator participation in the Interoperability demonstration at CES, Victor Berrios, zigbee alliance VP-Technology, told Multichannel News that cable operators continue to be part of the alliance.

Berrios pointed out that, for example, Comcast "Xfinity boxes continue to ship with alliance technology embedded in them." 

zigbee is built into Comcast's XB6 wireless gateway, which also includes Thread and BTLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) and 8x8 WiFi. Zigbee is the main wireless technology used in most Xfinity Home products, except cameras.

RELATED: Comcast Taps Arris, Technicolor for ‘XB6’ Gateways: Sources

Comcast is evaluating zigbee's new dotdot language, a company spokesman told Multichannel News.

“dotdot represents the next chapter ... to create and evolve open standards for the smart networks in our homes, businesses and neighborhoods,” Tobin Richardson, zigbee alliance President and CEO, said at the CES demo.

zigbee acknowledged that "Most IoT devices don’t speak the same language even if they use the same wireless technology," and hence the IoT is often "a patchwork of translations, adding complexity for developers and limiting users to single-vendor systems."

The unified language is also expected to beef up security on the wireless zigbee platform.  A year ago, Wired magazine published a report about vulnerabilities in Comcast's Xfinity Home Security that could generate false assurances that windows were locked.  Other reports continue to fret that evildoers could transform smart objects into hostile trinkets if the IoT connections lack sufficient security safeguards.

The Department of Commerce Thursday proposed a framework for advancing the Internet of Things (IoT), saying it must be connected, open and interoperable, and is seeking comment on its "findings, approach and next steps."

The framework identifies four areas of engagement:

• "Enabling Infrastructure Availability and Access: Fostering the physical and spectrum-related assets needed to support IoT growth and advancement.

• "Crafting Balanced Policy and Building Coalitions: Removing barriers and encouraging coordination and collaboration; influencing, analyzing, devising, and promoting norms and practices that will protect IoT users while encouraging growth, advancement, and applicability of IoT technologies.

• "Promoting Standards and Technology Advancement: Ensuring necessary technical standards are developed and in place to support global IoT interoperability and that the technical applications and devices to support IoT continue to advance.

• "Encouraging Markets: Promoting the advancement of IoT through Department usage, application, and novel usage of the technologies; and translating the economic benefits and opportunities of IoT to foreign partners."

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker committed that the agency would create the conditions for the emerging technology to thrive.

The basic prinpciples driving the plan are that Commerce will make sure IoT is inclusive, widely accessible, stable, secure, trustworthy, globally connected, open and interoperable.

It also promised to convene stakeholders to deal with the public policy challenges of Iot, including cybersecurity, privacy, innovation and intellectual property.

The report itself was informed by comment from, among others, NCTA: The Internet & Television Association.

It remains to be seen whether the new administration will follow through with the plan.

The bipartisan congressional Internet of Things working group comprising Sens. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) has reintroduced the Developing and Growing the Internet of Things (DIGIT) Act.

The bill was introduced in the last Congress, following up on a resolution that passed the Senate last March that called for a national strategy on IoT.

The bill would "convene a working group of federal entities that would consult with private sector stakeholders to provide recommendations to Congress." Those would include how to encourage the growth of IoT, seeking input from the private sector to help prevent "regulatory silos."

It would also direct the FCC to launch a proceeding on the spectrum needs of IoT.

Congress has estimated that more than 50 billion devices will be connected by 2020 generating billions of dollars in economic opportunity.

The bill directs the Secretary of Commerce to convene a working group of federal stakeholders to advise Congress on how to plan and encourage IoT, including spectrum needs and the appropriate regulatory environment for things like consumer protection, privacy and security.

The working group will have to consult with industry stakeholders.

The FCC, in consultation with the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, will have to conduct a study to evaluate what spectrum will be necessary to accommodate that explosion in connected devices, including whether adequate licensed and unlicensed spectrum is available, what role each agency should play in the growth of IoT and what regulatory "barriers" exist.

Daniel Castro, director of the Center for Data Innovation, said the bill puts the country on track to be a global IoT leader.

"By bringing together a broad cross-section of stakeholders in government and industry to shape a national strategy for the Internet of Things, the bipartisan DIGIT Act would put the United States on track to secure the enormous potential benefits this technology has to offer for both the private sector and the public," Castro said. "To make the United States more competitive and seize on all the opportunities from the Internet of Things, this working group should focus broadly on all challenges and opportunities the technology presents."

Competitive Carriers Association president/CEO Steven K. Berry said: “I thank Senators Fischer, Booker, Gardner and Schatz for the bipartisan reintroduction of the DIGIT Act. IoT already plays a major role in the mobile industry, and demand – by consumers and businesses – for these unique services will only continue to increase.  Competitive carriers must have access to 5G technologies to ensure their customers have access to IoT services and to effectively compete with the largest national carriers.”

LAS VEGAS — The emergence of the Internet of Things has quickly been followed by the smartness of everything. As a key theme here at CES last week, it is clearly no longer enough to simply connect everything to the Internet. Those Internet-connected things must also work in concert with a tightly integrated and secure platform that can be managed together, rather than operate within their own technology silos.

Playing into that that trend is the emergence of voice-controlled technologies from companies such as Amazon and Google that are seemingly being built into everything from smart home hubs, connected televisions to over-the-top devices, including Shield TV, a new streaming box from Nvidia that runs on Android TV.

“The next computer interface is voice” as the technology hits an inflection point and makes the leap from “theoretical to practical,” Dr. Shawn DuBravac, the Consumer Technology Association’s chief economist, said last week in a presentation that outlined key tech trends and revenue forecasts for a wide array of product categories (see sidebar).

While the home is shaping up to be the battleground, cable operators and other service providers are jostling to position themselves as the aggregation and management point of this emerging class of smart-home services, which have already boosted profits.

It’s shaping up to be a good place to seek growth, as consumer adoption of smart-home technologies and services is clearly on the rise.

About 26% of U.S. broadband homes now have a smart home device, up from 19% at the end of 2015, according to a Q4 2016 national survey conducted by Parks Associates. The research firm also found that 11% of U.S. broadband homes currently employ a smart thermostat, and 5% own a smart plug/adapter module.

And while retail will be playing a big role in the smart home, the trend is toward aggregated and integrated ecosystems that support an array of smart home products, an area of focus for service providers such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon Communications.

Building partnerships with device makers and stitching them into an integrated ecosystem will help smart home products and services break into the consumer mainstream and create scale, according to Daniel Herscovici, senior vice president and general manager of Xfinity Home, Comcast’s home security and automation service, who spoke at the Parks-run Connections Summit here last week.

Consumers now have a “premium expectation” that smart home devices will work together, agreed François Girodolle, head of European developer relations for Nest Labs, the smart home product unit owned by Google.

Xfinity Home is pushing hard in that direction with a curated certification program for third-party device makers that aims to support two to three “best of breed” suppliers in several key categories and then stand behind them with customer, tech and installation support.

Herscovici said he expects other large smart-home ecosystems to follow Comcast’s lead, but stressed that building partnerships with third-party suppliers isn’t without its challenges.

Notably, Comcast must also keep pace with new iterations of products and firmware updates coming from partners. Getting partners to be “disciplined” with those technical changes has become a greater challenge as the ecosystem grows, he said.

Carrier, the heating, ventilation and air conditioning giant, has also been looking to help its customers optimize and automate their home climate systems and continues to be interested in lending its expertise to smart home ecosystems and aggregators such as Comcast, Apple and Google.

But Carrier, which relies on complex HVAC systems that utilize their own algorithms, gets concerned when others are injecting sensors to control HVAC systems without a well-heeled partnership, Matthew Pine, Carrier’s vice president of marketing, said.

“In the first wave of integration … the deeper layer is what concerns me,” Pine said, noting that Carrier sometimes gets customer calls because of issues stemming from smart home systems that are architected in a different way than Carrier’s.

Comcast, meanwhile, has been looking beyond Xfinity Home with its smart home strategy. Last week, it introduced a broader “Digital Home” initiative run by an integrated, cloud-powered platform that will help millions of customers smarten up, organize and simplify their home networks.

Comcast expects the new whole-home platform to go live by the end of Q1 2017, with a goal of having it supported in 15 million gateways by the end of the year. It will operate via a new app for mobile devices or a Web portal and be integrated with the X1 voice remote.

“To all of us, the Internet doesn’t stop at the wall,” Chris Satchell, Comcast’s executive vice president and chief product officer, said. “It has to be ubiquitous and it has to be smart and be able to connect to all of those devices.”

Emerging Tech Fills the CE Gap

LAS VEGAS — Maturing technology and product categories, such as smartphones, tablets, TVs and PCs, contribute about half of total CE industry revenue, and many of those segments are in decline.

The good news for the industry is that emerging categories such as virtual reality, smart-home technology and services, and TVs with next-gen 4K and High Dynamic Range (HDR) are filling the gap. The U.S. consumer technology industry is forecast to produce $292 billion in retail revenue this year, driven by emerging categories, according to the Consumer Technology Association’s latest U.S. Consumer Technology Sales and Forecasts report.

Here’s a glance at how some of the newer categories are expected to perform:

Virtual Reality: Sales of VR headsets are expected to reach 2.5 million units this year, up 79% versus 2016, while driving $660 million in revenue, representing a 42% rise.

Smart Home: This category, which includes products like smart thermostats, IP cameras, smart locks, lights and doorbells will hit sales of 29 million units in 2017, up 63%, and bring in $3.5 billion, up 57%.

Digital Assistant Devices: Thanks to the popularity of products like Amazon’s Echo and Google Home, unit sales are expected to reach 4.5 million units in 2017, up 52%, and $608 million in revenue, up 36%.

4K/UH D TVs: Shipments are expected to reach 15.6 million units, up 51%, and pump revenues of $14.6 billion, up 38%.

Expanding on its curated smart home integration program for third-party products, Comcast said it will soon add support for two lighting partners – Jasco and Sengled – to its Xfinity Home platform.

Comcast, which helps outside vendors hook in via its Works With Xfinity Home initiative, said its smart home/security customers will be able to manage GE-branded plug-in and in-wall smart switches from Jasco and Sengled’s Element Touch connected LED lightbulbs via the Xfinity Home app.

RELATED: Home Smart Home (subscription required) 

Xfinity Home customers who also have Comcast’s X1 video service will also be able to bring up the smart home user interface on their TVs by saying, “Xfinity Home lights,” into the X1 voice remote.

Citing data from a study (PDF) from Icontrol Networks (Comcast announced a deal to acquire a large piece of Icontrol in June), more than a third of consumers said they are likely to buy connected lighting in the next 12 months.

RELATED: Why Comcast is Buying Icontrol

Jasco and Sengled are the latest third-party companies to be integrated with Xfinity Home. Others include August (smart locks), Chamberlain (garage controllers), Lutron (wireless controllers and dimmers), as well as Nest Learning Thermostats.

“By adding Jasco and Sengled to our growing list of curated smart home devices that we integrate with Xfinity Home, our customers will be able to create unique experiences that connect the devices that are important to them such as streaming security cameras, door locks, thermostats, and lights,” Daniel Herscovici, senior vice president and general manager of Xfinity Home, said in a statement. “We can integrate all of these devices into a unified experience on one easy-to-use platform.”

Comcast also builds its own products for Xfinity Home, including the recently introduced “xCam,” a WiFi-connected, HD indoor/outdoor camera.

Comcast said Xfinity Home subs can also set and manage rules/automated commands that trigger certain functions – for example, they can set a rule that turns on a light every day at sunset or every time the front door is opened.

Comcast revealed last summer that it has more than 500,000 Xfinity Home subs, but has not issued an updated sub figure since. In its Q3 earnings report, Comcast said that 55% of Xfinity Home subs were new to the company. At the end of that period, nearly 60% of Xfinity Home customers bundle four services – Internet, TV, phone and home security, and nearly all sign up for at least three products from the MSO.

RELATED: Comcast Pursues Bigger Piece of  Smart Home Market

Comcast is competing in the market against the likes of Alarm.com (which is also acquiring a piece of Icontrol), ADT and other service providers such as AT&T and  Verizon. EchoStar exited the smart home and home security game in September when it shut down Sage By Hughes, a do-it-yourself platform.

Comcast has launched machineQ, a “business trial venture” focused on developing an Internet of Things (IoT) platform for enterprise customers.

Comcast, which will employ Semtech’s LoRA Wireless Radio  Frequency Technology for the machineQ venture, said it will work with select commercial partners on proof of concepts that enable them to tap into the operator’s network to gather, transmit, and analyze data from connected devices distributed throughout their organizations. Comcast said its network now spans more than 149,000 route miles of fiber optic cable and more than 500,000 miles of HFC plant.

RELATED: SCTE/ISBE Eyes IoT Standards

Comcast said initial network trials will take place later this year in Philadelphia and San Francisco, with a focus on use cases such as utility metering, environmental monitoring (temperature, pollution, noise), and asset tracking via  LoRa Technology-enabled devices and network services.

RELATED: CableLabs Unit Tackles IoT Testing

If the initial trials are successful, Comcast plans to commercially deploy LoRaWAN networks and LoRa-related services across its markets, with the goal of completing commercial deployments within the next 18 to 30 months.

Comcast sees IoT as a huge business opportunity, citing a study from Machina Research that sees the total number of global machine-to-machine connections growing from 6 billion in 2015 to 27 billion in 2025, and  a global market that will generate $3 trillion in revenue by 2025 (22%, or $660 billion, originating in the U.S.).

RELATED: An SCTE Cable-Tec Expo Jargon Descrambler

"We believe the business-to-business segment of the Internet of Things market is going to expand rapidly over the next decade as businesses look to IoT-based technology to manage their businesses in a more effective and sophisticated manner," Sam Schwartz, Comcast Cable’s chief business development officer, said in a statement. "Technologies such as LoRa are setting the stage for the era of connected devices, and we think our network potentially has a role to play in connecting the millions of internet-enabled devices deployed within enterprises.”

 “The decision by Comcast to complement its existing infrastructure with LoRa Technology will enable connected devices, servers and software components to communicate seamlessly and securely on its new LoRaWAN™-based IoT platform,” said Mohan Maheswaran, Semtech’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Semtech is committed to working with Comcast to make LPWAN networks broadly available in the United States. We believe this will foster innovation by enterprises for new IoT solutions that allows us all to benefit from the advantages of our emerging connected world.”

SCTE/ISBE announced the creation of an Internet of Things Working Group within the organization’s standards group, noting that the aim of it is to position cable as a “pivotal delivery channel” for IoT-facing technologies, products and services.

Chris Cholas, gateway solutions architect for Intel and a former engineering exec with Harmonic and Time Warner Cable, has been appointed chair by the SCTE/ISBE Standards Engineering Committee, which approved the creation of the new IoT working group at last month’s Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia.

Get complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2016

SCTE/ISBE said the new working group focus on what’s unique and advantageous about delivering IoT services over cable networks.

“Even as it opens the door to new business opportunities, the massive number of Internet of Things devices that are being connected to our networks present unique reliability and security requirements,” Chris Bastian, senior vice president and CTO of SCTE/ISBE, said in a statement.  “Our new IoT working group is intended to bring together network operators and vendors to determine how best to standardize and operationalize these new services.” 

Kyrio, the for-profit subsidiary of CableLabs, has branched into Internet of Things device certification and compliance testing for the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF).

Kyrio said its vendor-neutral IoT testing service complements its existing wireless, network and security testing services business. The OFC standard is supported by about 200 members, spanning consumer, enterprise, industrial, automotive and health industries. Examples of OFC members include Arris, CableLabs, Cisco Systems, Samsung, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Intel, Comcast, HP, and IBM.

RELATED: CableLabs Rebrands Security Spin-Off

IoT testing expands on Kyrio’s areas of business. Kyrio is also developing a WiFi roaming hub/interconnection service (subscription required) for cable operators and partners outside the cable industry, though the initial focus is on independent MSOs, with Midco being the first announced partner for the program.

Kyrio’s flagship business is a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) service, used by MSOs, device makers and trade associations such as the Wi-Fi Alliance. In addition to performance-testing services, which include the new IoT focus, Kyrio also runs Go2Broadband, an offering that started out as a service locator for cable-modem service, but has since evolved into a cloud-based platform that connects resellers and partners such as Best Buy to cable operator services, and as a resource for consumers who move residences and need to switch providers.

“As the Open Connectivity Foundation continues its efforts spearheading IoT standards, we are delighted to work with the world’s top testing laboratories to offer IoT certification testing for our members,” said Michael Richmond, executive director of the Open Connectivity Foundation, in a statement. The addition of Kyrio as an authorized test lab will ensure that we meet the demand for OCF certification testing, helping technology companies and developers achieve complete interoperability across their devices.”

“Our experience helping manufacturers achieve certifications, test interoperability across vendor solutions, and quickly bring new products and technologies to market uniquely positions Kyrio in the marketplace,” added Mitch Ashley, president and GM of Kyrio. “Working with OCF enables us to continue delivering on our commitment to innovation to tackle tough device interoperability challenges and deliver the best end user IoT experience.”

A California wireless broadband provider, spun out from Motorola, has a conducted a study indicating that nearly one of four Americans believe Internet access during a zombie apocalypse could be critical for disaster response teams.

The study also asked which presidential candidate would do the most to encourage policies to build an Internet of Things. To that question, Democrat Hillary Clinton received 28% of the votes, Republican Donald Trump got 24%, Libertarian Gary Johnson scored 5% and Green Party nominee Jill Stein scraped 2%. (Clearly a lot of respondents either had no preference or, more likely, didn't know what IoT is.)

The opportunistic study -- clearly released to leverage search engine optimization (SEO) triggers by headlining popular terms such as Zombie, Trump and "terrorist" -- was intended to "get people to have a conversation about why data is important," especially data backhaul, a marketing executive of the company told Multichannel News.

"We took the most talked about disaster subjects from Google trending topics," he explained.  "Consumers don't think in the same language as we do."

He said the study was structured in "disaster" terms that respondents could understand. Although the company called the research its first Internet of Things (IoT) Disaster Response Study" to identify how narrowband radio can be used for "highly reliable and secure transmissions across long distances," it acknowledged that the focus was on the "Industrial Internet of Things" since its customer base overwhelmingly consists of utility and energy providers, federal and local agencies and non-U.S. telecommunications providers. 

If IoT is largely unrecognized by consumers, the Industrial IoT is even more obscure. Nonetheless, the study found that 79% of Americans indicated that "industrial use of IoT ... is important to them." Most of the applications addressed in the disaster response study focused on existing Web-based services that do not involve sensor-related or other services usually categorized as IoT ventures.

Among the study's findings, Americans agreed that Internet access would be "a disaster response priority" in a variety of categories:

• 75%  - directions on where to go for food/safety
• 74%  - advisories on need to evacuate
• 69%  - medical professionals sharing information
• 65%  - police sharing timely information
• 44%  - reporters/journalists to deliver information to readers/viewers
• 25%  - politicians to determine where urgent disaster funds should go.

The company concluded that "industrial uses of IoT are important to Americans" because they can be used for disaster-relief operations involving satellite communications, smart electrical grids, military drone operations for surveillance and intelligence-gathering and for smarter border control."

The political survey segment of the study was even more random than the industrial IoT sections, finding, for example, that 34% of respondents in Western states believe that Clinton would be most supportive of IoT compared with just 23% of Midwesterners. Americans living in the South are more likely to say Donald Trump would be the best at IoT support, compared to those in the West (26% vs. 19%), according to the study. 

Harris Poll, which conducted the online survey of about 2,000 adults last month, said the research did not include a probability sample and "therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated."

The company that promoted this opportunistic research was Cambium Networks. Tomas Puig, marketing VP, pointed out that beyond the hype about zombies and political candidates, the study also identified disaster situations in which Americans consider Internet access to be vital for first respondersl the survey respondents cited terrorist attacks (75%); tornadoes or earthquakes (68%); hurricanes (67%); floods (66%); virus outbreaks (58%); drought (30%); and famine (28%).

Hence, according to this biblical disaster litany, "zombie apocalypse" -- cited by at 25% of respondents -- is a lesser fear than other natural disasters. Yet reading the breathless SEO-centric headlines of the Cambium revelations makes you wonder whether a company that uses the slogan "connecting the unconnected"also has the "undead" on its mind.

The study was released to accompany the debut of Cambium's "cnReach," a narrowband radio for  reliable, secure transmissions across long distances that it calls "essential for Industrial Internet of Things" services by oil and gas, electric and water utilities, rail, transportation and mining companies. Cambium's point-to-point backhaul and WiFi solutions can carry signals ranging from two meters to 245 kilometers in one hop.

A resolution calling for "a national strategy for the Internet of Things to promote economic growth and consumer empowerment" was adopted almost unanimously last week by the House of Representatives.

H.Res. 847mirrors a Senate resolution (S. Res. 110) unanimously adopted in March, calling for the federal government to promote public-private initiatives to accelerate IoT development.

The bipartisan House resolution calls for federal policies to "prioritize accelerating the development and deployment of the Internet of Things in a way that recognizes its benefits, allows for future innovation, and responsibly protects against misuse."  Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), who is vice chair of the House Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade subcommittee and sits on the Communications and Technology subcommittee, introduced theresolution, which was adopted just weeks after it was submitted. Co-sponsors are Reps. Yvette Clark (D-N.Y.), Robert Latta (R-Ohio) and Peter Welch (D-V.t). The earlier Senate resolution was backed by Sens. Cory A. Booker (D-N.J.,  Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and  Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

Daniel Castro, director of the non-profit Center for Data Innovation,compared this Congressional attention to IoT with the Federal Communication Commission's National Broadband Plan of 2010, which he said "helped coordinate and accelerate the deployment of broadband Internet."

"A national strategy for the Internet of Things will ensure that the United States positions itself to capture the considerable economic and social benefits of this important technology," Castro said.  He commended the value of a federal plan "designed in concert with public and private sector stakeholders to accelerate deployment of the technology and overcome regulatory barriers that limit its growth.

"Now that Congress has formally expressed its support for a national strategy," Castro added, "the Obama administration, and its successor, should act quickly to launch an effort to develop one."

Rep. Lance, whose Congressional district includes tech firms such as Qualcomm, Nokia and Verizon that are involved in IoT activities, said "our role in Congress should be to help make the Internet of Things thrive, to facilitate a federal support system that empowers exciting new ideas."

"This is really at the heart of what we should be doing in Congress in a bipartisan capacity: getting ahead of the curve on the future of technology in the United States," Lance said.

A spokesman in Lance's office told Multichannel News that "the resolution raised a lot of awareness, which was the whole idea."  There is no indication that any further action will be taken in the waning days of the 114th Congress.

Rep. Michael Clifton Burgess (R-Texas), who chairs the  Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, called IoT a "kind of a novel concept" as he extolled it as a "significant opportunity for economic growth and for innovation" in remarks on the House floor.

"As a physician...I see great potential for the Internet of Things, particularly in the healthcare space," Burgess said. "Connected healthcare devices help reduce healthcare costs and other health-related expenses that have long been a drag on our economy and on consumers' wallets." He said a national strategy can encourage more effective and efficient IoT development and "will foster more consumer confidence, more consumer trust, and more consumer acceptance in the Internet of Things."

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), also a member of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, observed that "technology is moving at a rapid pace, and our laws need to keep pace."

"With passing this resolution, we are setting the table for future work to make sure that we encourage these developments," she said.

Nomi Bergman, president of Advance/Newhouse Partnership and the former president of Bright House Networks, has been elected to the board of Visteon Corp., a maker of cockpit electronics and connected car products under brands such as Lightscape, OpenAir and SmartCore.

Bergman’s board seat at Visteon becomes effective October 1. Bergman was alsorecently named to the board of Mediamorph, a cloud-based rights management systems for programmers and video distributors.

Those appointments followed Charter Communications’s acquisition of Bright House and Time Warner Cable in May.

“We are honored to welcome Nomi to our board of directors,” said Francis Scricco, chairman of Visteon’s board of directors, in a statement. “She adds a tremendous amount of industry leadership as proven by her role in leading the cable television industry into the software phase of its development.”

“I am honored to join the talented, dedicated members of the Visteon board and company, who have courageously led the firm through a significant transformation,” added Bergman. Both inspired confidence in me, as they have done with their customers. Visteon has clearly emerged with a strong balance sheet, a robust foundation of successful design and manufacturing experience, and a crisp, innovative focus on cockpit electronics and connected car solutions.”

Dr. Rouzbeh Yassini, a Visteon board member and DOCSIS pioneer known as the “Father of the Cable Modem,” said: “Visteon’s transformation to provide software platforms for the auto industry began in 2014, gained momentum with the 2015 hiring of Sachin [Lawande] as its CEO, and now adds more strength with the addition of Nomi to Visteon’s board with her solid technical and service- oriented leadership.”

Visteon posted Q2 sales of of $773 million and net income of $26 million, or $0.76 per diluted share.

Sage By Hughes, EchoStar’s short-lived do-it-your-self home security and automation service, will officially shut down on Friday, Sept. 30.

EchoStar posted this statement on the Sage By Hughes site:

EchoStar has made the difficult decision to discontinue the SAGE by Hughes product and service offering.This shutdown is effective as of 11:59 p.m. on Friday, September 30th. All of our current customers have been notified.

Although we decided to discontinue SAGE, we believe its product development shed light on distinct market opportunities within the security and home automation space that will benefit the industry as a whole in the long run.

We are grateful for our customer’s business and support.For more information on this matter, you can contactmediarelations@echostar.com.

According to Digital Trends, Sage has sent emails to customers telling them they are in line for refunds for Sage system equipment and services they may have purchased. Customers don’t need to return the equipment to receive a refund, but continued use of Sage products are no longer covered by any warranty previously offered.

EchoStar, which launched Sage by Hughes in March, announced the plan to drop the product last month amid difficulty gaining traction in a competitive market alongside a decision to focus on other parts of EchoStar’s business.

At the time, EchoStar, the set-top and technology spin-off of Dish Network, also disclosed that long-time president Mark Jackson was leaving the company to pursue other opportunities. Stepping into that role is Vivek Khemka, who was recently promoted to CTO at Dish Network. Khemka is retaining the CTO role and is now an employee of both companies.

The constantly percolating promises for the Internet of Things heated up this month as several forecasts envisioned accelerating IoT momentum. 

The new spate of predictions leapfrogged the promises described here. Now numbers such as $1.7 trillion or $3 trillion are the revenue targets (depending on who you believe), and 27 billion or 50 billion devices will be in use (again chose your preferred prognosticator).

Related:The IoT Customers Are Coming. Are You Ready?

Beyond the predictable inconsistent hype, though, is a fundamental recognition that processes are moving quickly now to develop applications and distribution systems for IoT ecosystems. There's plenty of talk about wireless facilities, including broadband in the IoT outlooks, but "cable" is missing from the prognosticators' papers.

Not that existing telecom carriers are absent from the IoT predictions. Indeed, this month's spate of forecasts -- from groups including Gartner, International Data Corp. (IDC),  Machina Research, ABI Research, Cisco and others -- repeatedly emphasized the importance of very short-range IoT connections, similar to the ones that cable companies' "smart home" services are beginning to offer.

Many of the IoT forecasts also concentrate on the role of "smart cities," an opportunity in which cable's core infrastructure becomes a factor.

A McKinsey research report expects that hundreds of "smart cities" worldwide by 2025 will generate 60% of global GDP. Building systems for that capacity is clearly part of the IoT equation -- especially with corporate users expected to be the primary engine for IoT initially.  

That's another opportunity for integrated cable infrastructure. (Separately, several policy development - such as the FCC's ongoing Business Data Servicesrulemaking also raise smart cities issues. In addition, groups such as the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) are examining the technical aspects of IoT security and privacy.

With the onslaught of new IoT forecasts, it's easy to get lost in the deluge of data.  A sage analysis in the IEEE Spectrumrecently pointed out that many of the IoT forecasts are based "on the demand for devices that have largely not yet been invented or commercialized."

Therein lies the challenge for cable and other infrastructure providers who are trying to foresee the facilities need to reach those unknown (unknowable) devices.

Nonetheless, the enthusiasm of this month's forecasts recognizes the quickening pace of IoT creativity. For example, IDC issued several reports in the past fortnight, including its "2016 Mid-Year Review of IoT"and its globalsurvey "International Initiatives in IoT."IDC characterized IoT as "one of the hottest technology trends across a multitude of industries."

IDC's forecasts envision a nearly 10-fold growth in IoT "actionable data" delivery between 2020 and 2025, resulting in a global annual 180 Zettabytes (that is 180 trillion gigabytes) of data created nine years from now (up from 10 Zettabytes last year).

Machina Research brings a much more conservative perspective, but still foresees a  $3 trillion  revenue opportunity from IoT by 2025. It expects that IoT will generate only 2 Zettabytes of data, mostly from consumer electronics devices. It envisions that many of the connections will be handled by Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) connections, such as LoRa (a low-power, long-range wireless protocol), Sigfox (a proprietary IoT format developed by a French firm), and LTE-NB1 (a Narrow Band wireless technology optimized for IoT).

The ABI Research study looked at the role of IoT in the emerging market for machine learning technologies for data analytics. It forecasts nearly $20 billion in revenue in 2021 "as Machine-Learning-as-a-Service (MLaaS) models take off."

To put the recent IoT hype into further perspective: They emerged just as Cisco and Intel announced massive layoffs in their traditional businesses to focus on IoT. Cisco said early this month that it would shed 5,500 staff as it "refocuses" on IoT, security, next-generation data centers and cloud" services. Intel's announcement at last week's Intel Developers Forum that it would concentrate on IoT and virtual reality followed its decision in April to lay off 12,000 employees, most of them involved with Intel's historic (but slowing) personal computer activities.

Collectively, this month's reports about IoT opportunities should fuel attention to the role that broadband operators -- with their forays into wireless micro-local delivery -- will play in the new IoT category that is both over-hyped and under-hyped simultaneously.

The post-PC era is well underway as usage continues to gravitate to devices such as tablets, smartphones, gaming consoles and specialized streaming players, according to a new study from bandwidth management firm Sandvine.

Windows PCs are still the biggest generator of downstream traffic in the home, at 18.49%, Sandvine found in  the study -- Global Internet Phenomena Spotlight: Inside the Connected Home– which built its findings on anonymous data collected in July from almost 500,000 North American homes.

But that lead appears to be fleeting, as downstream traffic on Windows PCs are now followed by iPhones (12.54%), Android devices (11.33%), PlayStation 4 consoles (6.23%), iPads (5.39%), Xbox One consoles (4.66%), Roku devices (4.29%), Macs (3.73%), Samsung-made smart TVs (2.31%), and Apple TV boxes (2.27).

With upstream traffic added in, Windows PCs still lead with way with 19.67% of traffic, followed by iPhones (12.77), Android devices (13.05%), PS4s (5.78%), iPads (5.62%), Xbox One (4.38%),  Macs (4.02%), Roku devices (3.9%), Samsung TVs (2.10%) and Apple TV (2.06%).

To shine a brighter light on usage shifts, Sandvine found in 2012 that mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) accounted for 9% of traffic. Those same devices, now account for 29.3% of all downstream traffic on fixed access networks in North America.

Regarding traffic composition, real-time entertainment, a category that includes video streaming, is  the most prevalent form across all device types.

While 45.44% of traffic on Windows PCs is for real-time entertainment, it jumps to 61.56% on Android devices, 65.2% on PS4 consoles, 81.28% on tablets, and surges to 95.05% on Roku devices.

Notably, Sandvine found that, on one network, the top consuming Netflix device (at over 12%) was not a game console or Web browser, but the service operator’s branded set-top that supports OTT apps. Sandvine didn’t identify the operator or the device, but several U.S. MVPDs, including WideOpenWest, Suddenlink (Altice), Mediacom Communications, GCI, Midco, Atlantic Broadband, Grande Communications and RCN, support Netflix on leased set-top boxes. Comcast is preparing to integrate Netflix on its X1 platform later this year.

Among other tidbits, Sandvine found that just 2.5% of traffic on PS4s are for game play traffic, versus 65% for video streaming and 25% for game downloads.

Per Sandvine’s examination of data on selected cable and DSL networks in North American, the study also found that there are 7.1 devices connected to the Internet for every home with an active fixed access connection.

Sandvine’s also spotlighted streaming trends during the Summer Games in Rio. On August 10 on a “sample” U.S. fixed network, Windows PCs were the most-used device for streaming Olympics content (47.44%), followed by Macs (14.10%), Roku devices (9.97%), Android devices (9.89%), iPads (5.7%), Amazon Fire TV boxes (3.93%), Apple TV boxes (3.28%), and iPhones (3.05%).