An average of 580 small satellites will be launched annually by 2022 as initial constellations are deployed, Euroconsult said Monday. The numbers should jump to 850 a year in 2027, it said. It said broadband communications will be the biggest application, accounting for close to 3,500 smallsats expected to be launched between now and 2027. It said earth observation smallsats will almost triple, growing 540 to close to 1,400 by 2027. It said information for data collection and narrowband communications for IoT and ADS-B is a growing market, with 850 satellites expected. It said the 7,000 smallsats to be launched between now and 2027 are a $38 billion manufacturing and launch market. It said smallsat launch services are expected to generate $16 billion over the next 10 years.
Trouble with communications sector companies was the seventh-highest source of 2017 consumer complaints, the Consumer Federation of America reported Monday. CFA cited complaints about communications companies for “misleading offers, installation issues, service problems, billing disputes with phone and internet services.” Misrepresentations or other deceptive practices and failure to deliver online purchases made through online sales also made the list tied for 10th The report was based on a survey of city, county and state consumer agencies. CFA said 38 agencies handled 908,595 complaints last year.
Qualcomm will terminate its agreement to buy NXP Semiconductors when the deal expires at the end Wednesday, CEO Steve Mollenkopf said, accompanying release of results for the quarter ended June 24. Qualcomm will buy back up to $30 billion worth of stock, he said. Buying NXP would have created “the semiconductor engine for the connected world,” said Mollenkopf announcing the $38 billion deal in October 2016 (see 1610270028).
Though Fox had raised concerns about the regulatory heavy lifting that a deal for its nonbroadcast assets with Comcast might represent (see 1806260038), antitrust issues and the DOJ's AT&T/Time Warner appeal likely didn't play a notable role in Comcast taking itself out of the Fox running, some experts told us. But others see the AT&T/TW appeal raising notable regulatory concerns for the MVPD. Comcast didn't comment.
Why would California want to adopt India’s “failed internet regulation?” American Enterprise Visiting Scholar Roslyn Layton asked Monday in a blog post. From 2009 to 2014, India’s year-over-year growth in adoption averaged 38 percent, but after 2015 and the approval of its net neutrality rules, it plummeted to 13.6 percent, Layton said. “Only 1 in 3 Indians is online today, a ratio that hasn’t budged since the policy took effect,” she said. “Had adoption remained at its previous rate, there could be as many as 400 million more Indian internet users today, almost doubling the number of people online in just 4 years.” California lawmakers are considering net neutrality rules (see 1807050036).
Facebook will continue sharing user data with Apple, Amazon, Tobii, Mozilla, Alibaba and Opera, it said in another round of responses to Congress involving CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s April testimony (see 1806120038). Facebook’s data-sharing agreements were criticized in June, with lawmakers saying Zuckerberg wasn't forthcoming enough (see 1806080045). Facebook submitted some 750 pages of responses to the House Commerce Committee, in addition to 500 pages to the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees. The company said it discontinued 38 of the 52 partnerships in question, which included deals with AT&T, Huawei, Microsoft, Samsung, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and Yahoo. Full partnerships will continue with Apple, Amazon and Tobii through October, but Mozilla, Alibaba and Opera won't have access to friend data, Facebook said. It said it compiled the list of partnerships “to the best of our ability.” Ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said that raises more questions: “It’s disconcerting that four months after this scandal became public Facebook still has no idea how many others have its users’ data and how that data is being used today.” Monday, the platform didn’t comment.
Global distributed denial-of-service attacks rose 16 percent November-April, Akamai reported Tuesday. Reflection-based DDoS attacks rose 4 percent, and application-layer attacks like Structured Query Language injections or cross-site scripting gained 38 percent.
The AT&T/Time Warner verdict doesn't alter that Disney has an easier and quicker path to regulatory approval for buying Fox's nonbroadcast assets than Comcast does, Disney CEO Bob Iger said on an analyst call Wednesday after the company said it sweetened its offer for Fox's assets. Iger said Disney worked with regulatory authorities around the globe for the past six months "and made a lot of progress" toward approvals.
Sixty percent of American teens and parents of teens have heard only “a little” or “nothing at all” about the recent Facebook-Cambridge Analytica privacy breach, said a survey from Common Sense and SurveyMonkey Monday (see 1806060067). About 38 percent of each group said they heard “a lot” about the controversy. The poll was of 19,063 adults and 985 teens online May 5-22. Seventy-seven percent of parents and 69 percent of teens said it’s “extremely important” that social media sites ask for permission before sharing or selling personal data.
Facebook content moderation technology for hate speech is lagging compared with systems for flagging adult and violent content, the company said Tuesday. Facebook took down 21 million pieces of adult content in Q1, took down or applied warnings to about 3.5 million pieces of violent content and removed 2.5 million pieces of hate speech. Only about 38 percent of hate speech was flagged by Facebook technology, the platform said. Its technology identified about 96 percent of adult content before it was reported and 86 percent of violent content.