The COVID-19 pandemic pushed retailers to experiment with new ways to engage with consumers shopping from home, said a Wednesday report from ICF Next on changing retail trends. Increased use of technology and personalization are now an expected part of consumer shopping, it said, and shopping experiences are increasingly blending physical and online retail experiences.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed cyber incident reporting legislation Wednesday. It plans to attach the bill to the National Defense Authorization Act, mirroring efforts in the House (see 2110010045).

Sky booked the new Magazine London event venue on Thursday in the city’s Greenwich neighborhood and brought in a live audience of journalists and media analysts to introduce a line of smart TVs called Sky Glass, billed by Sky Group CEO Dana Strong as the first smart sets to use Wi-Fi connectivity for Sky pay-TV service reception with “no dish, no box, no fuss.” The venue ran temperature scans on all who attended, but required no vaccinations or masks, and few in the crowd wore them.

Microsoft has agreed to expand consumers’ options to repair their own devices by the end of 2022, said As You Sow on Thursday. The green group agreed in exchange to withdraw its shareholder resolution urging the company to liberalize its third-party repair practices, it said. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the accord.

Streaming is trending toward advertising-supported services, with three in five consumers willing to pay for an ad-supported VOD service if AVOD lowers the monthly subscription cost, said a Roku-National Research Group study Wednesday. More than eight in 10 consumers said one of the biggest factors when choosing a new streaming service is whether there's a choice of free and paid tiers, said the report.

Infrastructure companies should view Wi-Fi not as a threat but a way of making networks more efficient, said Kevin Robinson, Wi-Fi Alliance senior vice president-marketing. The Wireless Infrastructure Association conference where he spoke Tuesday was both in person and streamed from Orlando. Wi-Fi and 5G compete with each other but more often work together to “deliver more value to the end customer,” Robinson said. When data is shifted from a smartphone to Wi-Fi, it means “a better user experience” for those still on the network, he said.

Amazon Prime will especially shape consumer shopping behavior this holiday, and retailers “should assume” that their customers will bear “expectations” set by Amazon’s “speed and efficiency,” a Convey by project44 survey found. The company sells “predictive” supply chain data to Walmart, Ingram Micro and other large logistics organizations, and tracks last-mile e-commerce shipment “exception trends.” It said consumers’ top concerns this holiday are out-of-stock items, shipping delays, high prices of goods and higher shipping costs than last year.

Dish Network is serious about building a 5G network, said Executive Vice President Network Development Dave Mayo at the Wireless Infrastructure conference Wednesday, streamed from Orlando. A T-Mobile veteran, Mayo said since he joined in June 2020, Dish has put in place the building blocks for a cloud-native, open radio access network. The company faces a June deadline to cover 20% of the U.S. population, 70% a year later.

Abu Dhabi investment group Mubadala is sole owner of the 500 million shares in wafer supplier GlobalFoundries, said an F-1 registration statement Monday at the SEC for an initial public offering. GF is an “exempted” company in the Cayman Islands where it's incorporated, and that means it isn't required to hold annual meetings, said the filing. Mubadala CEO Ahmed Yahia Al Idrissi is GF’s chairman. The company applied to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol GFS.

“In the new reality, you have to go where people are,” said Brightcove CEO Jeff Ray opening the company’s virtual Play 2021 event Tuesday on the future of video. The way companies connect with audiences and employees is changing, he said, and opportunities to reach larger audiences through streaming video is at a massive scale.