AT&T revamped the Innovations Center store in Arlington Heights, Ill., to feature its first Digital Life-dedicated showroom, store staffers told us. The back half of the 10,200-square-foot store was renovated in recent months to display the home security and automation platform in kitchen, home office and living room settings, store staffers said. AT&T expects to have Digital Life available in 50 markets by year-end. The interactive display, which is stocked with tablets, smartphones and AT&T’s U-verse service, is designed to demonstrate Digital Life, which is available in packages carrying $29 and $39 monthly fees. The packages also carry $150 and $250 equipment costs for sensors, thermostats and other products, although the latter was recently discounted $100, store employees said. All Digital Life rooms in the store are equipped with the energy package, which enables homeowners to control their appliances, lighting and thermostats from any location, store staffers said. The Arlington Heights location, more than double the size of AT&T’s standard stores, opened in November 2011 and is frequently used to debut new technologies, said store staff. AT&T has about 2,300 retail stores. Susan Johnson, senior vice president-investor relations, declined to comment at a Goldman Sachs investor conference last week on whether AT&T would expand Digital Life displays to other locations. Meanwhile, AT&T will likely convert its more than 240 Aio no-contract service stores to Leap Wireless’s Cricket banner, once its proposed $1.2 billion acquisition of Leap is complete, CEO Randall Stevenson said at the same conference. Leap shareholders are scheduled to vote on the company’s proposed sale to AT&T on Oct. 24 at a special shareholders meeting in Denver. AT&T launched its Aio prepaid subsidiary earlier this year starting in Houston, Orlando and Tampa. Leap operated 230 Cricket stores and had 4,350 indirect dealers as of Dec. 31, the company said. The Cricket stores range from 800 to 11,000 square feet. Leap, which sells Cricket wireless, broadband and PayGo prepaid and no contract services, had 4.83 million subscribers as of June 30, down from 5.29 million in December and 5.9 million a year earlier. Leap, which had 292 million points-of-presence including 21 million for LTE, had a wholesale agreement with Sprint for network access.

HDTV sets are now installed in 75 percent of U.S. homes and 40 percent of those homes adopted it only in the last four years, Leichtman Research Group President Bruce Leichtman told reporters Thursday. More than 40 percent of TVs in U.S. homes are not HD-capable, suggesting “there’s still a lot of growth” potential in replacement set sales, he said. Other findings, which Leichtman said were culled from research his firm had done in recent months: (1) DVRs of all types are now installed in half of U.S. homes; (2) Fifty-three percent of American adults now watch some form of over-the-top video each week, up from 37 percent two years ago. Among 18-34 year olds, the percentage is 77 percent; (3) Forty-four percent of all U.S. homes now have a connected TV, up from 24 percent three years ago; (4) Tablets are now in 44 percent of U.S. homes; (5) Smartphones are in 60 percent of U.S. homes, up from 44 percent two years ago; (6) Twenty-two percent of American adults stream Netflix on a weekly basis, up from 4 percent in 2010.

Taxes on computer and software services in Massachusetts were repealed in the Legislature this week, two months after being enacted. The House voted to repeal the tax 156-1 and the Senate repealed it unanimously. Twenty Massachusetts business leaders filed an initiative petition with the attorney general in August to repeal the 6.25 percent sales tax on these services (http://bit.ly/18a93lJ). Earlier this month, the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation released a study on how the tax compares with other states (http://bit.ly/18vJlZB). MTF said Massachusetts is only state that singles out computer and software services for taxation. “Repealing the tax would return Massachusetts to the mainstream of the 50 states,” said MTF President Michael Widmer. “With Massachusetts losing 3,000 jobs since January, placing the highest tax burden in the country on innovation and technology -- the state’s greatest economic strength -- is simply bad policy.” The tax would cost businesses at least half a billion dollars and it would “inevitably lead tech companies to seriously consider relocating,” said TechAmerica in a statement (http://bit.ly/1fO29qv).

BlackBerry said Friday it lost a net $965 million in its Q2 on revenue of $1.6 billion; it had reported a net loss of $229 million on $2.9 billion revenue during the same period last year (http://bit.ly/1auNZ9J). Much of the net loss -- $934 million -- was due to a writedown for BlackBerry’s inventory of unsold Z10 smartphones. The company had hoped the new touch-screen model would mean an improved economic outlook. BlackBerry sold 5.9 million mobile phones during the quarter, though most were older models; the company only recognized revenue from 3.7 million of the phones because the rest had been purchased before the start of the quarter. BlackBerry had planned a conference call with investors Friday, but cancelled it after top shareholder Fairfax Financial reached an agreement to buy the company and take it private.

The FCC Media Bureau fined Abundant Life Broadcasting $14,400 for failing to place all required documentation in the public inspection file for its low-power Class A station K20JX-D in Sacramento, Calif. Because the online public file is a crucial source of information, the bureau said “the failure to upload the documentation to the online public file is a serious and substantive violation of our rules,” in a forfeiture order (http://bit.ly/1fNZHA6). The bureau also said New Age Media of Tennessee, Harpole Telecom and Rebecca White are apparently liable for failure to timely file the Children’s Television Programming reports for their stations. White is apparently liable for $15,000 for her station WHAN-LP, Salem, Ind. (http://bit.ly/1dOjUE9); Harpole, owner of WUWT-CD, Union City, Tenn., is apparently liable for $20,000 (http://bit.ly/18vI8lg); and New Age is apparently liable for $3,000 concerning WPDP-LP, Cleveland, Tenn. (http://bit.ly/19GpNQF), the bureau said in separate notices of apparent liability.

The FCC Media Bureau set an Oct. 1-Dec. 2 filing window for the 2013 media ownership report. All commercial AM, FM, TV, low-power TV and Class A stations, “as well as all entities with attributable interests in such stations,” are required to file a Form 323 on or before Dec. 2, it said in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1bdYsYj).

The FCC adopted final rules to ensure a timely and successful completion of the low-power TV digital transition. The commission set a Sept. 1, 2015, deadline for LPTV stations to complete their transition, the FCC said in an order (http://bit.ly/1940T1c). With the full-power transition now complete, and a vast majority of viewers that are able to receive digital broadcasts, “we believe it is appropriate to require low power TV stations to complete their transition to digital,” it said. Even if the reallocation isn’t concluded before the conversion deadline, “a 2015 deadline would permit low power operators to take specific proposals into account when finalizing their transition plans,” it said. The commission granted the clarification petitions of NPR and Hammett & Edison, a wireless and broadcast engineering firm, on the protection of noncommercial educational FM radio stations by LPTV stations. Given the lower power of their operations, “interference between LPTV stations and NCE FM stations would not likely occur,” it said. The FCC also cautioned digital LPTV stations, as secondary licensees, to endeavor to design their digital facilities to avoid interference to primary NCE FM radio stations, the commission said.

A company that asked the FTC to find its parental verification technology falls under the agency’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act rule rebutted two privacy groups’ criticism. The reasons the Center for Digital Democracy and Electronic Privacy Information Center give for wanting the commission to reject the COPPA request “are based on invalid assumptions and faulty analysis,” wrote AssertID President Keith Dennis in a blog post on the company’s website Friday (http://bit.ly/14PEbq9). Using Facebook to verify that someone’s a parent, and therefore can give a kid under 13 permission to register with a website or mobile app, is based on “extensive academic research,” he wrote. “Our method also requires a parent to divulge less information than other approved” parental verification methods, Dennis wrote. CDD and EPIC make “some valid points,” and it’s correct that the company only lets parents verify their identity using a credit card for “premium” services, he said. The website or mobile app operator should be able to choose to bypass credit-card verification, which costs more than other sorts of identification checks, Dennis said. “The alternative is for AssertID to raise the pricing of our basic service offering thereby forcing all Operators to incur the costs of the alternate verification methods.” Dennis had no comment about criticism of AssertID’s plan by other COPPA participants (CD Sept 26 p20). CDD and EPIC will meet with FTC officials about the groups’ concerns, CDD Executive Director Jeff Chester told us. “We look forward to the FTC’s investigation, and addressing the objections” from the two groups, he said. “Companies can’t expect that they'll get a free pass to help children be targeted online.”

Google said it was “disappointed” with a Thursday decision from the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., that rejected the company’s claims that wiretapping laws don’t apply to Gmail. “We're disappointed in this decision and are considering our options. Automated scanning lets us provide Gmail users with security and spam protection, as well as great features like Priority Inbox,” a spokesman said Thursday. The decision said reading emails is not a necessary part of Google’s business operations and that invasion of privacy laws apply to opening and reading online communications without consent (CD Sept 27 p23).

U.S. intelligence agencies committed “12 substantiated instances of intentional misuse of the signals intelligence (SIGINT) of the Director of the National Security Agency” since 2003, NSA Inspector General George Ellard told Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. He sent the senator a letter in response to Grassley’s query, which Grassley released Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/15zy5HK). There are two investigations open of alleged misuse and a review of one allegation, Ellard said. The five-page letter details the instances of misuse of workers, describing anecdotes in which employees queried the metadata of their romantic partners and other instances of misbehavior. The letter fits with testimony from top intelligence officials before the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing earlier Thursday. Those officials reported about one instance of misuse per year (CD Sept 27 p7).