The House Consumer Protection Subcommittee plans to mark up privacy legislation next week, Chair Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., told reporters Tuesday, as expected (see 2206080054). An aide said those details aren’t yet official.

CTA is partnering with the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) on a CES 2023 initiative to show the role of technology in support of U.N. efforts “to advance human security for all [HS4A],” CTA said Wednesday. Conferences and keynotes will highlight innovation and products that are improving people’s lives around the world, CTA said. “Tech innovation gives us the tools to work toward a better world and has always been the catalyst for historic change,” said CTA CEO Gary Shapiro.

As the focus on 6G intensifies, Henning Schulzrinne, former FCC chief technology officer, warned an IEEE summit Tuesday that 5G hasn’t turned out as expected, at least not yet. We’re at “an inflection point” in the discussion of next-generation networks, said Schulzrinne, now a Columbia University professor.

U.S. electronics and appliances retail sales are projected to grow 5.9% year over year in the back-to-school period July 14-Sept. 5, reported Mastercard’s SpendingPulse service Tuesday. It forecast 17.6% sales growth in the electronics sector compared with the same pre-COVID-19 pandemic period in 2019.

As streaming service providers start to take video piracy more seriously, they face big obstacles such as that pirates may offer services that rival the customer experience of legitimate ones, and that the financial cost of piracy remains a big question mark, experts said during a video piracy event Tuesday.

After nearly a decade in the works, Amazon is planning to launch its drone delivery service this year with customers in Lockeford, California, among the first to receive Prime Air deliveries, Amazon blogged Monday. The drone program is a combined effort of “hundreds of scientists, engineers, aerospace professionals, and futurists,” it said.

How well ATSC 3.0 performs commercially “is up to us in this room and the companies we represent,” CTA CEO Gary Shapiro told ATSC’s NextGen Broadcast Conference Thursday in Detroit. “It could be a total flop, or it could be a great success,” he said. He told the conference broadcasters will need to “promote the heck” out of 3.0 for it to become a commercial success (see 2206090065).

Seven witnesses representing industry and consumer groups are expected to testify with a former FTC chair at Tuesday’s House Consumer Protection Subcommittee legislative hearing on a bipartisan privacy discussion draft, according to committee materials reviewed Friday.

Facing a deluge of federal and state spending aimed at closing the digital divide, broadband internet access service providers and network construction contractors foresee a logjam of work orders. Some tell us they anticipate what could be significant delays in work to extend networks to unserved rural areas.

Expect a subcommittee markup on bipartisan privacy legislation in the weeks after a June 14 legislative hearing (see 2206070062), House Consumer Protection Subcommittee ranking member Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., told us Wednesday.