Sonos will launch the limited-time “Sonos Two” bundle Friday, offering two voice-enabled Sonos One speakers, regularly $199 each, for $349, it said in a Thursday announcement. That’s the same price as one Apple HomePod, which goes on preorder Friday, ahead of Feb. 9 availability (see 1801230058). Apple pushed Apple Music integration in its Tuesday HomePod news release. The bundle announcement coincided with an ad Sonos ran in The New York Times Thursday headlined “Freedom of Choice.” The full-page ad shows a Sonos One speaker with logos of nine music services: Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Apple Music, SiriusXM, TuneIn and Tidal. Copy for the ad reads: “Big Tech wants to lock you into one music service. We think what you listen to should be up to you. That’s why we support over 80 music services, more than any other smart speaker system.” The announcement said Sonos has always been agnostic about sources of music and audio available for its speakers and said the company is “doing the same with voice assistants, preferring to stay open-minded and let listeners make the choices.” On whether Sonos would work with Siri or Bixby voice assistants in the future, a spokeswoman said the company is “always looking to add more voice partners.” On the timing of the Times ad, she said: “With several conversations around smart speakers, the ad calls out a trend where we are seeing big tech try to lock people into a single ecosystem.” She repeated Sonos’ agnosticism with music services and said Sonos has “always been about creating a home sound system to fill any room with your favorite music and content, not just a single speaker.” Sonos is continuing to work on Google Assistant and AirPlay 2 integration for later this year, she said.

Data privacy concerns are slowing sales cycles for up to 65 percent for businesses globally, with an average estimated delay of 7.8 weeks, Cisco reported. Enforcement of EU’s general data protection regulation to begin in May might be a factor, the study said, noting customers are increasingly concerned products and services they buy provide appropriate privacy protections. GDPR provisions apply to any company that processes, stores or uses this data. Also Thursday, the Identity Theft Resource Center and CyberScout reported U.S. data breaches in 2016 hit a record high of 1,093, a 40 percent gain over 2015. That could be partially attributed to better data breach notification reporting by states, said CEO Eva Velasquez.

As the need grows for “complex, differentiated" uses for wearables, so will the devices’ size and weight increase, causing discomfort, reported Strategy Analytics Wednesday. It said hardware design “is one of the most obstructive factors for wearable devices because it inhibits what they can actually do.” Even smart earbuds and headset features "are inhibited by their short battery life and dependency on a smartphone,” said SA.

U.S. broadband households have average 9.1 connected devices, putting increasing demands on networks, Parks data show, with sales of such devices seen reaching 442 million by 2020. More than 60 percent of such households received their router from their ISP, the researcher reported Wednesday. If a household with five accounts streamed HD video simultaneously, it would need at least 30 Mbps for optimal viewing, said the report done for Calix. The average connection is 18.7 Mbps, Akamai finds, and Cisco forecasts consumer VOD traffic will nearly double by 2021, said Parks. Streaming media use strains home networks: nearly 70 percent of U.S. households subscribe to at least one over-the-top service, the firm said. In the past year, 37 percent of U.S. broadband households reported “slow” Wi-Fi networks, and nearly a fifth of consumers said their Wi-Fi network stops working “almost weekly.” The rapidly growing installed base of devices creates opportunities for MVPD support for premium Wi-Fi performance, universal support for IoT devices and data security from edge devices to the cloud, said Parks.

The National Institute for Standards and Technology explained blockchain technology and potential uses in a report released Wednesday. “We want to help people understand how blockchains work so that they can appropriately and usefully apply them to technology problems,” said Dylan Yaga, a NIST computer scientist and one of the report’s authors. It provides an overview of the technology seen as having potential for increasing currency and financial transaction security (see 1710100061) by letting users record transactions in a public ledger "such that no transaction can be changed once published."

Apple highlighted homegrown “audio innovations” and “advanced technologies” such as real-time acoustic modeling in its long-awaited (see 1711170065) HomePod announcement Tuesday. The speaker was originally slated for a December release. Apple positioned HomePod as a “powerful speaker that sounds amazing and adapts to wherever it’s playing.” At 7 inches high, HomePod’s form factor is shorter and wider than the Amazon Echo or smart speakers from Harman/Kardon and JBL. The speaker uses the company's proprietary tech and learns the preferences and tastes of users, which are “shared across devices,” and it works with Apple Music. The company pushed security and privacy, saying only after “Hey Siri” is recognized locally on the device will any information be sent to Apple servers. Information will be encrypted and sent using an anonymous Siri identifier, it said. Apple didn’t respond to questions.

The Entertainment Software Association backed core findings in an FCC draft report on the status of broadband-like deployment under Telecom Act Section 706. ESA supports the draft's plan to keep the fixed speed benchmark for advanced telecom capability (ATC) at 25/3 Mbps and not declare that mobile is a full substitute for fixed service. But the group believes the fixed benchmark will "need to be raised over time," said a filing Monday in docket 17-199 on a meeting with an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai, who shared the draft last week with colleagues (see 1801180053). The report should clearly state "that low latency is an important element of ATC and that going forward it would explore the appropriate ATC benchmark for latency," ESA said, referring to data retrieval time. The "Commission should eventually set a latency benchmark of 75 milliseconds or less, since such latency is necessary for real-time interactive online applications, such as video games," it said. The report's effective due date is Feb. 2, an agency spokesman told us Tuesday.

Netflix had 8.3 million global net subscriber additions in Q4, significantly beating its October forecast of 6.3 million, the company reported Monday. “We had a beautiful Q4, completing a great year as internet TV expands globally,” said the company in its quarterly letter to shareholders. The net adds marked the highest quarter for that metric in the company’s history and was an 18 percent increase from 2016's record Q4 7.05 million net adds, said Netflix. It credited its strong “original content slate and the ongoing global adoption of internet entertainment.” Geographically, "outperformance vs. guidance was broad-based,” it said, including 2 million net adds in the U.S., compared with 1.25 million in October's forecast. Internationally, it added 6.36 million memberships, a new record for quarterly net adds for this segment and above guidance, it said. Netflix has been “talking about the transition from linear to streaming for the past 10 years,” said the shareholder letter. “As this trend becomes increasingly evident, more companies are entering the market for premium video content.” Since the market for entertainment time is “vast,” Netflix thinks it “can support many successful services,” it said. “Entertainment services are often complementary given their unique content offerings. We believe this is largely why both we and Hulu have been able to succeed and grow.” The stock rose 8.2 percent in after-hours trading to $246.25.

Tech companies have improved takedowns of online hate speech but need better communication with users about removal policies, said the European Commission Friday in its third code of conduct evaluation since the effort started in 2016 (see 1605310051). Google+ and Facebook’s Instagram told the EU they're joining the code of conduct, which includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, plus nongovernmental organizations and privacy groups. Companies within 24 hours removed about 70 percent of illegal hate speech reported to them, but “challenges still remain, in particular the lack of systematic feedback to users,” EU said. The takedown rate was 59 percent in May and 28 percent in the first monitoring round. All companies participating in the code of conduct “fully meet the target” of reviewing notifications within 24 hours, EU said. The commission said it will continue to monitor code implementation and hopes to expand the number of participating online platforms. Google confirmed its commitment. Facebook didn't comment.

USTelecom welcomed the National Institute of Standards and Technology's second draft of its Cybersecurity Framework (see 1712060043), calling it a "substantial improvement" over the first draft. "While Draft 2 of Version 1.1 addresses for the first time other important cybersecurity challenges such as supply chain risk management and coordinated vulnerability disclosure, this submission places its primary focus on cybersecurity measurement," said USTelecom comments Friday. "Applying this maturing discipline to an organization’s self-assessment of cybersecurity risk and risk management is at the heart of individual organizations’ efforts to develop effective, customized methods to conduct cybersecurity risk management." The Internet Security Alliance said the new draft is a "significant step" toward becoming "cost-effective, prioritized and supported by appropriate incentives."