A concern with the coming era of smart cities is a potential for data misuse or a surveillance state, said FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly at a Charter Communications event Tuesday (remarks later posted). He said privacy advocates are misguided to fret about consumer data being used for marketing purposes when far greater harms could come from the state using data to control or punish citizens. He said the FCC has been trying to ensure the proper regulatory framework for smart city rollouts as it tries to remove state and local deployment barriers and guard against its own mission creep. He said beyond the various millimeter band auctions to come, starting with the 28 GHz band, a number of other bands need FCC attention, such as 26, 23 and 50 GHz. He said the agency needs to focus on opening the 3.7-4.2 GHz band and spectrum below 3.5 GHz. He said the FCC should start a proceeding to review the 5.9 GHz band and determine its best use since dedicated short-range communications systems there seem increasingly unlikely due to alternatives like cellular vehicle-to-everything technology. Monday, the FCC released initial results on Wi-Fi coexistence with DSRC (see 1810290063). Columbia, South Carolina, Mayor Steve Benjamin (D) said smart cities raise a variety of questions, such as ensuring network deployment in public rights of way doesn't impede other users and that all ROW users "pay their fair share" for that access. On rollout in rural areas, "we don't yet have the answers" or the economies of scale that would make the technology available, said NTIA Senior Broadband Program Specialist Jean Rice. Tests are ongoing in states involving aspects of smart cities such as telehealth or agriculture, Rice noted. Criticizing the privacy law California passed this summer, Chamber of Commerce Assistant Policy Counsel Jordan Crenshaw said the Chamber wants to stem the tide of different state laws and has a working group on developing privacy principles for model legislation to be pitched to Congress. He wants protection ensuring localities don't charge unreasonable siting fees and regulatory certainty in the form of "a permanent net neutrality solution" that doesn't involve treating cable as a Communications Act Title II common carrier.

D-Link announced the first Built on Thread-certified border router, the DSH-G300-TBR, Monday. Using Silicon Labs’ wireless Gecko SoC, the router supports Thread, Zigbee, Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth mesh and proprietary protocols, said the companies. The router features simplified IP bridging between the mesh network and the internet with security at the network and application layers, they said. The router will be shown at the next Thread Group members meeting in Munich Oct. 16-18.

Intelsat joined the Seamless Air Alliance, it said Wednesday. Other members of the in-flight connectivity standards consortium started earlier this year include Nokia, Air France, OneWeb, Airbus, Delta and Sprint (see 1806040059).

With not much growth projected at satellite-connected oil and gas production sites by 2027, service providers and satellite operators instead should look to invest in capacity and infrastructure allowing maximum bits per site, Northern Sky Research analyst Brad Grady blogged Tuesday. He said demand will increase for latency-sensitive digital applications at such sites, plus numerous applications where data pipe size will be of greater importance.

Virtual-private-network usage likely will double during the World Cup, said service provider NordVPN Tuesday. Many who have never before used a VPN “will turn to one” for watching a World Cip match online, it said. A VPN service links a user’s computer to a server “in a country of their choice via an encrypted tunnel,” it said. NordVPN has seen increases in VPN usage “during any big sporting event,” it said. During the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil, NordVPN sales grew 105 percent, “showing a growing digital awareness of viewers,” it said.

Casio’s first connected MT-G timepieces in the G-Shock line will go on sale next month, the company said Friday. The watches ($800, $900) have Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy time-sync, said to keep accurate time using radio wave time-calibration signals or Casio’s engine module that connects to a time server via a paired smartphone. They are shock resistant and water resistant down to 200 meters, Casio said.

The IEEE Standards Association formed IEEE 802.11 study groups for Wi-Fi in “vehicular environments” and for broadcast services, said the organization Monday. The V2X (vehicle-to-everything) study group will explore ways to “leverage more recent 802.11 technologies to address new applications of wireless access in vehicular environments, where new requirements for higher throughput, improved reliability and efficiency, and/or extended range are anticipated,” it said. The broadcast services study group will explore “new use cases for simultaneously broadcasting local information” over IEEE 802.11 without the need for broadcast recipients “to actively connect to an access point, and to do so with enhanced security features in place,” it said. Uses can include transmission of information at shopping malls and airports, and traffic updates, emergency information or data from IoT devices, it said. Both study groups are in their “initial stage” and are encouraging broad “stakeholder participation,” it said.

Nokia, Air France, Aeromexico and GOL-Linhas Aereas Inteligentes are joining the Seamless Air Alliance, the in-flight connectivity group said Monday. It said one of the next steps is working group collaborations on a set of standards. OneWeb, Airbus, Airtel, Delta and Sprint formed the alliance earlier this year (see 1803050009).

The in-flight connectivity market will generate $37 billion in cumulative revenue by 2027, driven largely by high-throughput services (HTS) and more market penetration globally, Northern Sky Research said Monday. NSR said demand will hit nearly 295 Gbps of HTS capacity and more than 92 transponders of fixed satellite service Ku-band demand by then. It said only one in four International Air Transport Association-registered airlines had passenger in-flight connectivity at the end of 2017. The researcher said the pace of installations has been slower than expected, and profit margins have been squeezed by lower capacity pricing. It said revenue should close to double this year, with a 50 percent growth in the number of aircraft with in-flight connectivity capabilities.

Ligado -- facing pushback from certified aviation GPS interests about possible interference from its terrestrial low-power broadband service (TLPS) (see 1805160009, 1709260048 and 1708070025) -- is pledging new power limits on its use of the 1526-1536 MHz band to protect those GPS receivers. A docket 11-109 filing Thursday amended its modification applications to set equivalent isotropically radiated power limits on its ancillary terrestrial component base stations and to require that its ATC base stations can't operate in that band near an FAA-established obstacle clearance surface. That should "fully protect" certified aviation GPS receivers, it said, adding those protections are consistent with issues brought up in Transportation Department test results on adjacent-band compatibility to GPS (see 1805160009). The company will take mitigation steps that include upgrading or replacing government devices as a fix to concerns about potential effects on U.S. government devices, "and expects a requirement." It said if the FCC approves its TLPS plans, it will invest as much as $800 million on its satellite and terrestrial network. Competitive Carriers Association President Steve Berry in a statement said the group agrees with Ligado "that mid-band spectrum offers important opportunities for deploying next generation technologies," and the FCC should "make as much spectrum available as possible for commercial use. ... The overwhelming consumer demand for wireless connectivity and next generation technologies including 5G have made it more important than ever for the FCC to look at every opportunity to free up additional spectrum where possible." The National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing didn't immediately comment.