Many over-the-top video offerings are “seeing substantial success” during the pandemic, said Akamai CEO Tom Leighton on a Q3 call Tuesday evening. “Some are doing better than others, but I do think OTT is here to stay.” As people view more content online, “that becomes more of the pattern and that will outlive the pandemic,” he said. “We'd all like to get back to a world when you can go out and see a movie,” but that’s not likely to happen “anytime soon,” he said. Akamai’s Asavie buy, announced Tuesday, will “complement” its security product lines with a “cellular-specific” security offering, “an important step in our strategy to capture the emerging opportunity in 5G,” said Leighton. “Deployment of 5G and IoT applications can provide significant opportunities for Akamai.” The impact of 5G on innovation will be “similar to the way broadband enabled new social networking apps that few could have imagined before,” he said. “As 5G networks come online, we believe that end users and connected devices will demand faster performance and greater scale than cloud data centers can provide.” The stock closed 8.7% lower Wednesday at $97.40.

Dialog Semiconductor's DA7280 high-definition haptics driver is being used by Alps Alpine with its linear resonant actuators for interactive experiences in vehicles, Dialog said Wednesday. This addresses a growing trend in the automotive industry for dynamic control panels that use haptics for immediate driver feedback, it said. The combination creates a vibrational force that's said to be 10 times that generated by smartphones.

The California Public Utilities Commission scheduled a three-part overhaul of the California Advanced Services Fund. The CPUC will first consider “the most time-sensitive issues,” including how to complement CASF with federal Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support and data submission requirements, said a scoping memo by Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves posted Monday. The commission plans to propose an RDOF decision Nov. 13 and vote in December, then propose a data decision Jan. 4 and vote in February, it said. A second phase would follow on “near-term program refinements.” CPUC staff plans to issue second-phase proposals in January, then the commission would issue a proposed decision in April and vote in May. Phase 3, starting in the second half of 2021, might include changes to several other CASF programs. The commission expects to propose a third-phase decision by the end of next year and vote in early 2022, the memo said.

Holiday demand is likely to tax Amazon’s fulfillment, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter wrote investors Monday. “We expect to see signs of strain, with some third parties likely to shift warehousing during the holidays to other online vendors,” said Pachter, calling it a “high class problem” with overall online holiday demand expected to "set records.” Amazon’s Holiday Dash deals began Oct. 16, earlier than 2019, when sales didn’t begin until its Black Friday deals week Nov. 22-29. Earlier holiday sales, the Prime Day shift to October, and likely share shift toward e-commerce spend from brick-and-mortar locations this year “all position Amazon to perform exceedingly well over the holiday period." Wedbush expects Amazon’s Q3 revenue to be at or above the high end of guidance -- $87 billion to $93 billion -- when the company reports earnings after U.S. market close Thursday. “Substantial revenue upside is likely,” said the analyst: Wedbush estimates 2020 Prime Day sales of roughly $6.1 billion, some 25% growth over its 2019 estimate of about $4.9 billion. In Q4, Amazon will "likely leave ample room to beat" despite another "record Prime Day and expected share gains for ecommerce over the holidays.” Amazon Web Services, Fulfillment by Amazon and ads should drive margin expansion, with Prime memberships driving overall retail revenue growth, Pachter said.

Enable portable operations in the 6 GHz band for immersive 5G services, Broadcom, Intel and Microsoft asked FCC Office of Engineering and Technology staff. “Enable communication between client devices when they are within range of an authorized 6 GHz Low Power Indoor Access Point,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 18-295. “The record clearly demonstrates that such operations would not increase the risk of harmful interference because clients would operate at the same power level as a client device communicating with the nearby access point … and only within that access point’s service area.” Commissioners may vote on changes in December (see 2010190040).

The “mid to high tier” in smartphones “is the place to be” in the test solutions business, said Teradyne CEO Mark Jagiela on a Q3 investor call Wednesday. “These phones are seeing disproportionate growth and complexity related to multiple high-density camera arrays and the associated processing power and storage to manage this data.” The company supplies test and automation equipment to semiconductor makers and smartphone OEMs, with Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung among top customers. The migration to 5G is a big “complexity driver” in smartphones, said Jagiela. “These high tier phones are early adopters of the extra silicon needed to enable these features.” Fewer than 250 million phones will be 5G-enabled in 2020, “and only a fraction of those” will support millimeter-wave, he said. “So despite the bump in 2020, we are still in the very early stages of 5G adoption.”

The concept of the attention economy, where people's attention can help measure aspects of technology, may have merit for government and industry, stakeholders told the Technology Policy Institute. The FTC could "look at how someone" is giving attention as the agency uses various alternative metrics, said Competition Bureau Director Ian Conner in Q&A with TPI President Scott Wallsten. Connor, noting he was speaking only for himself, said he "would never typically define books" as in direct "competition with social media" and with movies, which could compete for a person's attention at "any given moment." The attention economy could be a way to measure markets that lack prices for consumers in the typical sense, he said in a video released Tuesday. "We’re trying to look for different metrics when we don’t have our normal price or revenue measures." Attention can be "kind of like a price" for a product or service, and "it has a price that is very subjective" to each person, said Brown University associate professor of economics Kareen Rozen. "There’s more complementarity between the services than we’re giving them credit for" sometimes, she said of technology. Because consumers can use multiple tech services at once, spending attention may not be a zero-sum game, said participants including Comscore Senior Director-Product Management James Muldrow.

Three consumers had their “unique, biometric voiceprints” collected without their consent when they contacted call centers using Amazon Web Services and Pindrop Security voice authentication technologies, violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), alleged a complaint (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware. The suit seeks class-action status on behalf of others who made similar call center contacts. Plaintiffs suffered “significant damage” because their biometric data was “intercepted, collected, and disseminated without their knowledge or consent," substantially increasing the likelihood "they will suffer as victims of fraud and/or identity theft,” said the complaint. It seeks $5,000 in statutory damages for each “intentional and reckless” BIPA violation. AWS and Pindrop didn’t respond to questions Monday.

A working group of the FCC Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment will host a virtual tech supplier diversity opportunity showcase Oct. 23, said a public notice Friday. The showcase is intended to provide information and resources to diverse communications businesses on doing business with tech companies and government agencies, the PN said. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, Internet Association interim President John Berroya and National Urban League CEO Marc Morial will speak. Panels will focus on traditional and alternative sources of capital and on running a diverse communications business during and after the pandemic, the PN said.

The Copyright Office will recommend readopting “all existing exemptions” under Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 1201, the agency announced Thursday with an NPRM in the eighth triennial proceeding (see 2006220041). The CO based the decision on a “lack of meaningful opposition” amid renewal petitions. The notice includes 17 proposed classes of exemptions, for which there will be three rounds of comment. Supportive and neutral comments are due Dec. 14, oppositions Feb. 9, and replies from the first group March 10.