Representatives of AT&T, Comcast, MPAA and NCTA met with FCC Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, bureau staff and FCC Chief Technologist Scott Jordan Tuesday at the bureau's request to discuss set-top box proposals, said an ex parte filing in docket 16-42 Thursday. The officials discussed copyright licensing agreements, the timing and nature of possible set-top standards, privacy, and whether the commission is contemplating licenses, agreements “or other means of enforcement,” the ex parte said. It was filed for a lawyer for NCTA.

The FCC Media Bureau extended the deadline for comments on proposed changes to set-top box rules by seven days, to April 22, said an order and public notice in Friday's Daily Digest. Replies are now due May 23. The American Cable Association had requested a 30-day extension. The seven-day extension will “ensure that parties have enough time to file comments” and takes into account NCTA’s mid-May INTX trade show, the bureau said. “We are committed to resolving the issues raised in the Navigation Choice NPRM in a timely manner and do not believe that a 30-day extension is necessary to give interested parties sufficient opportunity to submit their view.” The bureau said it set aside a specific period for ex parte meetings on the matter with its staff, from June 6 to June 10, “given the interest in the proceeding.”

ProSource has added 19 custom integrators, the buying group said Thursday. All generate at least $1 million revenue annually, it said. The new members “strengthen our group” with various skill sets ranging from traditional consumer electronics and custom integration to information technology, said ProSource Membership Director Sherry Dantonio. The member adds are Audio Video Concepts & Design, Indian Trail, North Carolina; AV Design Group, Bridgehampton, New York; Bravo AV Consulting, Bernardsville, New Jersey; CommTech, Pierre, South Dakota; DB Media Solutions, Southlake, Texas; Electronics Professionals, Lafayette, Louisiana; Greenhome Automations, Miami; Home Theater Evolutions, Sugar Land, Texas; Imagine Audio Video, Franklin, Tennessee; Impact Audio Video, Ocean City, Maryland; Integrity Sound, Sarasota, Florida; National Technology Integrators, Rockville, Maryland; Next Level Audio & Video, Farmington, New Mexico; Phoenix AVS, Broomall, Pennsylvania; Real Audio Video, Lindon, Utah; Simply Automated, Lawrence, Pennsylvania; Southeaston Systems, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina; Westfair TV, Fairfield, Connecticut; and Woody's Home, Pasadena, California.

Azione Unlimited added sales software company Slateplan as a vendor member, it said Wednesday. The Slateplan software sales and design tool helps integrators present options to customers, select systems and performance levels and finalize budgets in real time, Azione said. Slateplan helps dealers qualify potential customers while "simplifying the early stages of the system design" and reducing precontract design and engineering time, said Azione President Richard Glikes. One of Azione’s 2016 goals is to partner with software companies that can unify the group via a common platform, said Glikes. D-Tools joined Azione last week.

The ZigBee Alliance passed the 1,500-product milestone and added two vice chairmen, an indication that growth “is happening and going to continue to grow at a faster pace,” CEO Tobin Richardson emailed us Friday. Musa Unmehopa, Philips Lighting director-intellectual property standards, moved from secretary-treasurer to vice chairman, and board member Jean-Pierre Desbenoit, Schneider Electric ICT standardization and industry relations director-global strategy, was elected vice chairman. Michael Koster, SmartThings principal research engineer, succeeds Unmehopa as board secretary and Dee Denteneer, Philips Lighting director-standards, was elected treasurer. The board shift means there’s "more interest in leadership of the ZigBee Alliance across industry segments,” said Richardson. The alliance passed 1,500 certified products, from more than 200 manufacturers, last month, spanning applications in smart home, smart building and smart city that are in use “across continents, in space and under the oceans,” it said. At The ZigBee Alliance Winter Summit last month, participants shared developments on ZigBee 3.0 and the alliance’s Common Applications Library that consolidates previous market-specific ZigBee profiles into a single offering, it said.

DirecTV and the FTC are at loggerheads over the agency's requests for consumer complaints documents as part of its 2015 lawsuit alleging DirecTV wasn't properly communicating early cancellation fee terms to subscribers (see 1503110042). In a letter brief filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, the FTC -- which is seeking a court order compelling DirecTV to produce the documents -- said consumer complaint evidence "has direct bearing on DirecTV's misconduct" and its burden arguments "are even less persuasive in light of DirecTV's refusal to accept numerous FTC proposals to reasonably limit the company's burden in responding." DirecTV said the commission is seeking literally billions of records by requesting every communication between DirecTV and its customers: "The task of gathering, reviewing and redacting these communications ... would be oppressive." It also said it offered to provide "a relevant set" of its Office of the President complaint files and all notes from its Rio Main Bank customer service notes system relating to those complaints. "These complaints are representative of the type of complaints all consumers raise with the company," DirecTV said, saying the FTC's motion should be denied.

AudioVisions, Lake Forest, California, has joined the Home Technology Specialists of America.

Private sector chief information officers from the U.S., U.K., France and Germany overwhelmingly said they're wasting millions of dollars on failing cybersecurity tools because they "blindly trust" vulnerable cryptographic keys and digital certificates, a survey from cybersecurity company Venafi found. The survey released Wednesday said that 90 percent of 500 CIO respondents said they have been attacked or expect to be by "bad guys" using encrypted traffic to hide their actions, while 87 percent said security controls are inadequate or ineffective because they don't inspect malicious activity or data exfiltration inside encrypted traffic. Eighty-five percent of CIOs expect criminal misuse of keys and certificates to get worse. Venafi said that organizations don't understand just how important keys and certificates are to cybersecurity. Technology researcher Vanson Bourne conducted the survey of CIOs from the financial services, manufacturing, retail, distribution, transport and other commercial sectors in January.

Mobile money accounts increased globally 31 percent to 411 million in 2015, the GSM Association said in a report released Tuesday. More than a billion transactions were processed in December, and mobile money is available in 85 percent of nations where most of the population lacks access to formal financial institutions, GSMA reported. In 2015, there were 29 cross-border mobile money initiatives that connected 19 countries, the group said. “Mobile money is driving social and economic impact for millions of people in emerging markets,” said John Giusti, chief regulatory officer of GSMA, in a news release. “Over the last decade, mobile money has done more to extend the reach of financial services than traditional bricks and mortar banking were able to do over the last century.”

Facebook announced a new collaborative project among operators, infrastructure providers, system integrators and other technology companies that would "reimagine traditional approaches to building and deploying telecom network infrastructure," wrote Jay Parikh, the company's global head of engineering and infrastructure, in a news release. He wrote Sunday that the current infrastructure isn't moving fast enough to meet the "data-intensive experiences like video and virtual reality." In its new Telecom Infra Project, member companies will contribute designs in access, backhaul and core and management areas through a more open framework to get better cost and operational efficiencies, which could lead to faster development of technologies like 5G, he said. In one example, he said, Facebook collaborated on a pilot, based on the project's principles, to provide cellular coverage for the first time to a small Philippines village. Facebook along with members Intel and Nokia would contribute an initial suite of reference designs, while Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom would help define and deploy technology tailored to their needs, he added. Other partnership members include Harman, its website said.