WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission has selected the ioXt Alliance (ioXt) to serve as the new Lead Administrator of its U.S. Cyber Trust Mark Program, a voluntary cybersecurity labeling program for consumer wireless Internet of Things (IoT) products.

This program, overseen by the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, builds on significant public and private sector work on IoT cybersecurity.

“The FCC’s U.S. Cyber Trust Mark Program was designed to help consumers make informed decisions about the products they bring into their homes,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said. “With today’s decision, the FCC is ensuring that the Lead Administrator will implement the program in a way that is consistent with that vision, while advancing national and cyber security.”

In recent years, the Commission has worked to advance the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark Program with a greater emphasis on national security.

ioXt is an independent, U.S.-based non-profit organization, whose focus is on improving the security, privacy, and transparency of IoT products. ioXt describes itself as the United States’ preeminent certification body dedicated to the security of IoT products and a leader in the relevant stakeholder community.

The FCC’s U.S. Cyber Trust Mark Program is supported by third party administrators, including a Lead Administrator, whose duties are spelled out in the FCC’s IoT Labeling Order.

The FCC said that ioXt, as the new Lead Administrator, will be responsible for collaborating with stakeholders to develop a consumer outreach campaign and recommending to the Commission additional cybersecurity standards, testing procedures, and label design.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission has adopted a new licensing framework and new sharing rules for the lower 37-GHz spectrum band that the agency said will spur innovation and support the development of the Internet of Things (IoT), wireless broadband and internet backhaul connections and provide greater capacity for mobile systems.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr and commissioners Geoffrey Starks, Nathan Simington, and Anna Gomez voted to approve the Report and Order, which can be found here.

The lower 37-GHz band (37-37.6 GHz) is currently shared by the government and commercial entities, but there are no clear sharing rules for this spectrum, which the FCC said is keeping companies from moving forward with deployments.

To promote access to this spectrum by a wide variety of entities, support innovative uses of the band, and help ensure that spectrum is widely utilized, the FCC reported that the new licensing framework for this band, effectively opens up 600 megahertz of spectrum for new commercial services.

The new rules establish a licensing framework to require users to obtain a nationwide, non-exclusive license, coordinate sites on an individual basis, and then register those sites, the FCC said.

The order prioritizes military use of the 37 to 37.2 GHz portion of the band, establishes coordination processes and requires licensees to start operations within a year of registering a site. The agency will also take further public comment on issues related to emission limits, the coordination mechanism and a potential transition to a dynamic spectrum management system.

The 2024 edition of the NAB Show will be remembered as a turning point in the effort to make ATSC 3.0-based datacasting a profitable proposition. 

Sinclair Broadcast Group advanced its goal of monetizing spectrum from datacasting with the announcement of its Broadspan datacasting platform (see p. 25). AT&T Business was on the show floor in the ATSC booth discussing a significant upcoming trial of 3.0 datacasting that will lead to a Q4 2024 commercial launch for business clients, and a new venture, Peak3, informed public broadcasters at Public Media Venture Group (PMVG) TechConnect one day before the show about its efforts to sell 3.0 datacasting services to Internet of Things (IoT) customers.

Data Verification
The new Broadspan platform gives businesses a way to distribute data over the air to any device with a 3.0 receiver. Leveraging the broadcast core network Sinclair announced at the 2023 NAB Show, the platform enables customers to plan, order and validate delivery of their data. 

“They [customers] can immediately visualize network availability and order distribution tailored to their needs with a full picture of the path their data will take through the network,” said Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley during the company’s NAB Show press conference. 

Initially, Sinclair is making Broadspan available in the 30-plus markets where it is serving as the 3.0 host station; however, the company wishes to work with other broadcasters to grow the service, he said.

There are a couple of key takeaways from the Broadspan announcement. First, Sinclair already has a taker for Broadspan. Content delivery network Edgio will use the platform to deliver data over the air that supplements internet streamed content from OTT subscription services to give viewers access to 4K video. 

Second, the excess bandwidth available on Sinclair’s 3.0 host stations available for Broadspan is 9Mbps for delivery to stationary receivers, said Ripley. While at first glance that may seem paltry when compared to median U.S. mobile and fixed broadband speeds of 130Mbps and 250Mbps, respectively, such a comparison misses the point. 

“It’s apples and oranges,” said Ripley. “When we say 9Mbps, that covers an entire geography…. multiply that by the number of people it covers, you’re going to get very, very big numbers in terms of total capacity.”

AT&T Joins ATSC
On the floor in the Las Vegas Convention Center West Hall, AT&T Business was full of surprises. The first was that the company joined the Advanced Television Systems Committee within the past two months. It is interested in using ATSC 3.0 as a business solution for wireless data delivery, said Cy Smith, founder and CEO of CY Networks, which recently has been hired by AT&T Business to provide engineering services related to 3.0 datacasting.

(Read: NextGen Datacasting: There's Money to be Made)

CY Networks makes a small, portable ATSC 3.0 receiver called Caros>>l (pronounced Carousel) that can receive and parse a 3.0 data stream and offers support for linear, real-time as well as non-real-time datacasting.

The second surprise is AT&T Business this summer will launch a pilot program using 3.0 OTA data delivery to Caros>>l receivers for digital signage applications at its own retail locations—rather than fiber circuits or 5G, said Smith, adding that if all goes as expected AT&T Business will launch a 3.0-datacasting service for businesses before the end of the year.

AT&T Business is talking to “OTA Wireless”—the E.W. Scripps-Nexstar Media Group datacasting venture—about securing 3.0 bandwidth and is “hoping to work with everybody that wants to work with us” to secure bandwidth, said Smith.

IOT Potential
Peak3 also sees the potential of 3.0 for datacasting and has raised venture funding to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) to provide data IoT solutions for enterprises, said Alp Sezen, Peak3 CEO, who spoke at PMVG TechConnect.

Peak3 has inked a deal with Sinclair for 3.0 bandwidth and is weeks away from signing a deal with OTA Wireless as well, said Sezen, who was at the conference to find a way to work with public broadcasters as well. The company already has customers that will soon deploy, including a June rollout in Seattle and another that will launch later in Denver, he said.

IoT customers do not care about whose network is used to deliver their data; they simply care that their IoT devices can receive that data when it’s transmitted. “We feel we can do that on a national basis [leverage ATSC 3.0]” he said.

Sezen noted Peak3 has overcome a pricing impasse that made its launch difficult. The problem stemmed from the newness of 3.0 datacasting. Broadcasters, fearing they were leaving money on the table, were reluctant to assign a value to their 3.0 bandwidth available for datacasting. The solution proved to be a revenue split that would assure broadcasters their capacity was optimally priced.

Together, all of these developments demonstrate ATSC 3.0-based datacasting isn’t just technically possible, but more importantly that it is a viable, new revenue source that will benefit the bottom line of broadcasters.

Perhaps at the 2025 NAB Show, there will finally be some movement on a way to sunset ATSC 1.0 so that NextGen TV—including ATSC 3.0 datacasting—can begin living up to its full potential.

NEEDHAM, Mass.—New data suggests that worldwide spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) is continuing to see rapid growth, with IoT spending set to jump by 10.6% in 2023 to $805.7 billion in 2023, according to a new International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Internet of Things Spending Guide. 

Investments in the IoT ecosystem are expected to surpass $1 trillion in 2026 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.4% over the 2023-2027 forecast period.

"The last few years have shown that connecting with a digital infrastructure is no longer a luxury, but a necessity," said Carlos M. González, research manager for the Internet of Things at IDC. "For organizations to excel in data-driven operations, investing in IoT projects is essential. Connecting devices to data networks to gather insight, expand operations, and increase performance are the hallmarks of executing an IoT ecosystem."

IoT investment is a key building block to supporting an increasingly digital and distributed organizational footprint and in recent years has been a focus of telco and cable operators seeking to offer smart home and security services to their broadband customers. 

The IoT Spending Guide explores spending for Video Analytics, which involved the use of of artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced algorithms to recognize, detect and analyze live or stored video feeds in a variety of uses, including business analytics, security surveillance, and other rapidly evolving adaptations of this technology. 

Video analytics requires IP networked capable cameras to support the advanced software whether embedded in hardware or provided by third party vendors, the IDC said.

IDC expects spending on Video Analytics solutions across all industries to be more than $23.5 billion this year. Future releases of the IoT Spending Guide will include additional broadly adopted use cases, such as smart buildings.

The IDC report notes that the largest use cases, however, are for Manufacturing Operations ($73.0 billion), Production Asset Management ($68.2 billion), Inventory Intelligence ($37.6 billion), Smart Grid (Electricity) ($36.9 billion), and Supply Chain Resilience ($31.6 billion). 

The IDC added that the use cases that will experience the fastest spending growth include: Electric Vehicle Charging (30.9% CAGR), Next Generation Loss Prevention (14.5% CAGR), Agriculture Field Monitoring (13.9% CAGR), and Connected Vending and Lockers (13.8% CAGR).

From a technology perspective, IoT services will be the largest area of spending in 2023 and through the end of the forecast, accounting for nearly 40% of all IoT spending worldwide, the researchers said. 

Hardware spending is the second largest technology category, dominated by module/sensor purchases. Software will be the fastest growing technology category with a five-year CAGR of 11.0% and a focus on application and analytics software purchases.

Western Europe, the United States, and China will account for more than half of all IoT spending throughout the forecast. Although Western Europe and the United States currently have similar levels of spending, Western Europe will expand its lead with an 11.0% CAGR over the 2023-2027 forecast, compared to an 8.0% CAGR for the United States. China's IoT spending is forecast to surpass the United States by the end of the forecast due to its 13.2% CAGR.

PHOENIX—Two seasoned IoT executives Alp Sezen and Chris McGhay have launched PEAK3, which had developed a new ATSC 3.0-based solution offering wireless data-delivery capabilities for IoT and Edge uses.

As part of the company’s launch, PEAK3 also announced that it has secured spectrum-usage agreements with select national broadcasters to offer national coverage by Q4, 2023. 

The company noted that the IP-based ATSC 3.0 standard brings together over-the-air (OTA) broadcasting, the internet, and limitless additional use cases that provide the opportunity for PEAK3 to leverage broadcast spectrum and demonstrate the new wireless data-delivery capabilities that will soon be available for all commercial interests.

“We are going through our sixth evolution of computing and each stage has created opportunities and challenges. The 70s `Mainframe', and 80’s `Client Server', the 2000s brought three-tier architecture, 2010 was the era of multi-tenancy or cloud and now we are going into Distributed-Edge architectures,” explained PEAK3 CEO Sezen. “Computing is shifting towards edge computing to meet new workloads that customers demand. The evolution of distributed computing brings new values through applications residing at the edge but also brings new challenges. The ability to extract data and deliver data from disparate devices at the edge has created a bottleneck that needs to be solved in the coming decade. ATSC 3.0 data delivery over the air will be a critical asset in accomplishing that, especially with the exponential growth of edge devices we have seen. ATSC 3.0 can scale with this growth providing one-to-many connectivity.”

ATSC 3.0 is optimized to support highly flexible Distributed Transmission System (“DTS”) network architectures, which will dramatically improve signal reception in indoor and outdoor environments, including small portable devices and mobile receivers, PEAK3 said. 

The protocols implemented in the new broadcast standard are very similar to those used in 5G cellular networks, but optimized for broadcasting over a much larger area, due to the relatively higher transmission power levels, thus requiring far fewer transmission sites compared to traditional cellular network base stations.

PEAK3 said its teams are currently field testing several use cases with technical partners to draft supportive white papers for the technical community that clearly demonstrate multiple ways whereby the ATSC 3.0 spectrum will provide value to its customers.

One key area of focus is the internet of things. PEAK3 noted that it has been estimated that six billion edge or IoT devices will be deployed and connected by 2030 within North America, encompassing both the commercial and consumer markets and wireless services provided by broadcasters.  

“With PEAK3 holding long-term licensing agreement on the broadcast spectrum with the National Broadcasters, we will be able to support the delivery of data and services to customers that alleviates the data download congestion the incumbents are starting to see,” said Sezen.

More information is available at www.peak3spectrum.com.

Las Vegas, NV – Electronics innovation will be on vibrant display in the Hong Kong Trade Development Council’s (HKTDC) 43rd annual Hong Kong Pavilion at CES, featuring 47 companies in bold and exciting exhibits that showcase why electronics is the number one export for the world city.

Strategically located in the heart of Asia, within a five-hour flight to half of the world's population, Hong Kong has long been a hotbed of entrepreneurship. The city boasts the fifth-fastest growing start-up ecosystem in the world and was the world's #1 IPO center in 2019. It's strong global financial hub, coupled with the city's supportive regulatory structures, low taxes, attract top investments to help fuel new and long-term development.

Today, more than 3,100 start-ups call Hong Kong home, a 21% increase from 2018. Co-organized with the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP)

20 of these start-ups will be exhibiting in Eureka Park, including 6 winners from the Start-up Express – a development program launched by HKTDC to assist Hong Kong start-ups in building networks, marketing their business and enhancing brand awareness globally. There are also two winners from IPHatch Hong Kong – an open-innovation competition to bring business concepts to fruition by commercializing the intellectual property and technology portfolios from renowned multinational corporations.

As a key international sourcing hub, 27 Hong Kong innovators will also be featured in the Design and Source to supply the needs of global buyers who attend CES this week.

Exhibitors representing a broad spectrum of applications will be on display, including:

1. Artificial Intelligence: Jedies Advance Tech, Veztan

2. Wellness/Wellbeing: CYC Motor, Contact Beverage

3. Lifestyle: Knitwarm, Maxconcept

4. Wearables and Medical/Healthcare: Taison Digital, MedEXO, Incus

5. Eco/ Smart Home: AIRXED, Hi-Cooler, Epro

6. Smart City: RaSpect, , Affluent Growth & Innovation Tech

7. IoT & Sensors: R-Guardian, Prodigy, Meridian Innovation

8. Lighting: LiPhy, Rayson

9. Safety & Security: GL Technologies, KiLax

10. R&D: NAMI, Innoplay

11. AR/VR: PPK, Kazoo

12. 3D: PlusD,

13. E-commerce: LinkedMarts

14. Electro/Acoustic: Innovation Technology, Kan Tsang, Chiba, Shiba

15. Testing & Certification: ECTest, STC

As the world’s freest economy for the past 25 years, and ranked as the world’s third best and easiest place for business by the World Bank’s Doing Business Report 2020, Hong Kong presents an ideal opportunity and platform for companies seeking to enter the fast-growing Asian market. Electronics products are currently Hong Kong's biggest export, accounting for over 68% of Hong Kong's total exports in 2018 and supplying global demand for high-tech products including telecommunications equipment, semiconductors and computer items, etc.

For more about HKTDC, please visit www.hktdc.com and for registration details for CES, please visit www.ces.tech.

To learn more about the 47 Hong Kong companies exhibiting at CES, click here.

About HKTDC
The Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is a statutory body established in 1966 to promote, assist and develop Hong Kong's trade. With 50 offices globally, including 13 in Mainland China, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a two-way global investment and business hub. The HKTDC organizes international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to create business opportunities for companies, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in the mainland and international markets. The HKTDC also provides up-to-date market insights and product information via trade publications, research reports and digital news channels. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. 

Although the U.S. video and TV industry saw a meager 1 percent growth in consumer spending in 2018, the small uptick masks a “seismic” shift in how viewers consume television, according Futuresource Consulting.

That shift is being driven by several phenomenons, according to the market researcher: The increasing presence of connected devices, the rise of subscription-based video on demand (SVOD) services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, and perhaps most importantly, the increasing consolidation in the media industry that is being driven by these changes.

“There’s no doubt that 2018 was a significant year for the US video and TV industries,” comments David Sidebottom, Principal Consultant at Futuresource Consulting. “The entertainment landscape was redefined with companies changing their strategies and undergoing some major M&A activity. Disney’s proposed acquisition of Fox and confirmation of its direct-to-consumer service, Disney+, along with the completion of AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, were key moments in a turbulent twelve months. Internationally, Comcast’s acquisition of Sky brings two like-minded companies together, both considered to have best-in-class pay-TV service offerings. It also provides Comcast with wider geographical reach and entry into key European markets. Such acquisitions and collaboration will help redefine customer relationships and play a pivotal role in the battle for the living room, but the dust isn’t going to settle any time soon.”

But despite the ongoing consolidation, Futuresource expects the market will become more fragmented, something that Sidebottom attributes to increasing concerns about private data.

“Many consumers don’t like the idea of relying solely on one company to control the living room and smart home,” says Sidebottom. “They may feel uncomfortable with a single brand being responsible for so much of their personal data. As a result, the wider sector will stay competitive, but there will no doubt be further consolidation. Those with big aspirations of becoming super aggregators of services will need deep pockets and the determination to evolve beyond entertainment.”

The strength of SVOD is reflected in the fact that, for the first time ever, SVOD revenues exceeded video rental and purchase revenues for the first time. Futuresource predicts that SVOD revenues will have risen 30 percent in 2018 while it expects a 2 percent decline in pay-TV revenues for 2018 to $97 billion. Futuresource says pay-TV will continue to play a significant role for the near future, however, accounting for more than two-thirds of total entertainment spending through 2022.

Futuresource also thinks the TV set will continue to be a key driver in streaming adoption. “Despite the growth in second screen viewing, the TV screen remains the preferred viewing platform for premium streaming services,” the researcher said. 

If there is a single truth about trends in the Internet security space, it’s that every year brings more of the same. Akamai’s 2018 State of the Internet (SOTI) report looks forward to 2019 by describing ongoing patterns from the past few years, and suggests they’ll likely continue to evolve in the ways that they already have. Broadcasters, like other internet users, should continue to expect threats in the form of brute force DDoS attacks, application level attacks, credential stuffing and the theft and sale of credentials.

A more specific portfolio of threats exists for broadcasters, who are heavily invested in the Internet of Things, which are also vulnerable. A recent Gartner report estimates that by 2020 there will be over 26 billion connected devices, excluding PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

[Read: Cybersecurity: What Execs Should Know]

There are a number of weaknesses in IoT devices, which make them vulnerable to hackers.

• Very little security is built into the device itself, often as an economy measure, but also because some safeguards may impede operation.

• Because of poor network segmentation, the device may be directly exposed to the web. It can act as a pivot to the internal network, opening up a backdoor to let criminals in.

• Developers of IoT devices sometimes leave behind code or features developed in beta that are no longer relevant. This hidden functionality can provide a way in for hackers.

• Default credentials are often hard coded. That means that the software won't force you to create a unique password. Typing “1-2-3-4-5” can get you into a surprising number of devices.

A glimpse at best practices might be gleaned by looking at the U.S. government, which introduced the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act. It requires that any devices sold to the American government be patchable, not have any known security vulnerabilities, and allow users to change their default passwords. If you’re not working for the government, you’re on your own to figure all of this out.

President Donald Trump is lighting a fire under federal agency's in an effort to free up more government spectrum for advanced communications, including calling for a National Spectrum Strategy by the third quarter of next year.

That came in a presidential memorandum to the heads of executive departments and agencies Thursday under the heading "Developing a Sustainable Spectrum Strategy for America's Future." It contained a bunch of action items, though mostly reports and studies and a Spectrum Strategy Task Force.

President Donald Trump is lighting a fire under federal agency's in an effort to free up more government spectrum for advanced communications, including calling for a National Spectrum Strategy by the third quarter of next year.

That came in a presidential memorandum to the heads of executive departments and agencies Thursday under the heading "Developing a Sustainable Spectrum Strategy for America's Future." It contained a bunch of action items, though mostly reports and studies and a Spectrum Strategy Task Force.

“We support the President’s spectrum memorandum and applaud his strong commitment to American leadership in 5G," said an FCC spokesperson. "The FCC will continue to work aggressively to push more spectrum into the commercial marketplace, including through our 28 GHz spectrum auction which will commence in November.”

"American companies and institutions rely heavily on high-speed wireless connections, with increasing demands on both speed and capacity," the memorandum read. "Wireless technologies are helping to bring broadband to rural, unserved, and underserved parts of America. Spectrum-dependent systems also are indispensable to the performance of many important United States Government missions. And as a Nation, our dependence on these airwaves is likely to continue to grow."

"While American industry continues to extract greater and greater value from spectrum, each technological leap also increases demands on its usage. Those demands have never been greater than today, with the advent of autonomous vehicles and precision agriculture, the expansion of commercial space operations, and the burgeoning Internet of Things signaling a nearly insatiable demand for spectrum access. Moreover, it is imperative that America be first in fifth-generation (5G) wireless technologies -- wireless technologies capable of meeting the high-capacity, low-latency, and high-speed requirements that can unleash innovation broadly across diverse sectors of the economy and the public sector. Flexible, predictable spectrum access by the United States Government will help ensure that Federal users can meet current and future mission requirements for a broad range of both communications- and non-communications-based systems."

The action items were:

1. Within 180 days, those agencies and departments, working with the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, the President's chief telecom policy adviser, have to report to the Secretary of Commerce (NTIA is under Commerce) on their future spectrum requirements as well as on a review of their current frequency assignments and usage. The secretary may release a summary of the report, but is not required to.

2. Within 180 days, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) "shall submit a report to the President on emerging technologies and their expected impact on non-Federal spectrum demand" and "a report to the President on recommendations for research and development priorities that advance spectrum access and efficiency."

3. Within 180 days, and annually after that, Commerce, working with the FCC and other agencies, must submit a report, that will be made public "to the extent practicable," on "the status of existing efforts and planned near- to mid-term spectrum repurposing initiatives."

4. Within 270 days, Commerce, against working with the FCC and others, shall submit to the President, through the Director of the National Economic Council and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, a long-term National Spectrum Strategy that includes legislative, regulatory, or other policy recommendations."

The goal of that strategy include to:

(a) "increase spectrum access for all users, including on a shared basis, through transparency of spectrum use and improved cooperation and collaboration between Federal and non-Federal spectrum stakeholders;

(b) "create flexible models for spectrum management, including standards, incentives, and enforcement mechanisms that promote efficient and effective spectrum use, including flexible-use spectrum licenses, while accounting for critical safety and security concerns;

(c) "use ongoing research, development, testing, and evaluation to develop advanced technologies, innovative spectrum-utilization methods, and spectrum-sharing tools and techniques that increase spectrum access, efficiency, and effectiveness;

(d) "build a secure, automated capability to facilitate assessments of spectrum use and expedite coordination of shared access among Federal and non-Federal spectrum stakeholders; and

(e) "improve the global competitiveness of United States terrestrial and space-related industries and augment the mission capabilities of Federal entities through spectrum policies, domestic regulations, and leadership in international forums."

The spectrum strategy task force will be co-chaired by the nation's CTO and director of the National Economic Council (or their appointee) and will need to include representatives of OMB, OSTP, the National Security Council, the National Space Council, and the Council of Economic Advisers, in consultation with the FCC.

“We commend the administration for recognizing the importance of establishing a national spectrum strategy," said CTIA President Meredith Attwell Baker. "With the right approach based on licensed wireless spectrum, America’s wireless carriers will invest hundreds of billions of dollars and create millions of jobs to deploy next-generation networks and win the global 5G race.”

Cable operators are in search of more spectrum for unlicensed WI-FI and potentially their own licensed mobile wireless businesses, so NCTA-the Internet & Television Association was pleased as well.

“We welcome the Presidential Memorandum calling for the development of a comprehensive, long-term national spectrum strategy," the trade group said. "Spectrum has become one of the most critical inputs for the communications and information technologies that are driving America’s economic growth. The services that rely on unlicensed spectrum alone generated more than $525 billion in value for the U.S. economy in 2017. We look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue with the White House, NTIA, and the FCC on the development of a balanced national spectrum policy that will meet the growing need for both licensed and unlicensed spectrum to support next-generation wireless technologies.”

Public Knowledge praised the President's initiative. "The President's Memorandum is a pragmatic, common sense approach to developing a sustainable spectrum policy to guarantee our wireless future that maintains American leadership while continuing to meet our public safety and national security needs," asid SVP Harold Feld. "We particularly applaud the president for embracing the need for a balanced approach that facilitates new technologies for sharing spectrum between federal and non-federal users. We look forward to working with the newly established Spectrum Task Force to develop a National Spectrum Policy that promotes competition and ensures the benefits of the public airwaves for all Americans."

Dateline 2014—at the time, the “digital universe” was growing at a phenomenal 40 percent annually and expected to continue “on into the next decade.” At the time, that growth rate reflected conglomerate sets of data that not only included people and enterprise, but included the relatively new term “Internet of Things (IoT).”

To a broadcast engineer, the term IoT used to mean “inductive output tube”—an alternative to the klystron, and both referencing transmitting tubes used in high-power TV transmitters, the latter in analog television and the former a most cost-effective device, which emerged full strength during the ATSC transition.

The modern day IoT may have equally as broad an impact for society as it did for the digital TV broadcast marketplace. The Internet of Things has propelled storage demands and solutions (including the object store) into the next universe, aiding and changing the perspective and dimensions of “big data” forever.

COMPREHENDING THE ZETTABYTE ERA

When the IDC conducted its study in 2014, they predicted the volume of unstructured data created and copied all over the world would reach 44 zettabytes (1 zettabyte = 2 to the 70th power bytes), i.e., 44 trillion GB, annually, by 2020. By perspective, just a year before that 2014 IDC prognostication, the amount of data created and stored in 2013 sat at a mere 4.4 trillion GB per year. If correct, the amount of data growth is outpacing Moore’s Law, and will increase tenfold in six years.

Ironically, according to that IDC report, the amount of useful data (if tagged and analyzed) grew by a much lesser amount. In 2013, only 22 percent of the data accumulated in the digital universe was considered “useful”—that is, it was relevant because it was meaningfully tagged or categorized and was searchable and retrievable.

By the year 2020, the IDC prediction reported in April 2014 stated that only 37 percent of the data collected will be useful because of that same criteria.

USELESS DATA RETENTION

So why do we continue to store data that isn’t useful? The simple answer: “Because we can.”

Irrespective of how, where, when or why we create this mass of data, we find that most companies, enterprises or individuals collect and save literally everything because, fundamentally, there isn’t the time to sort, catalog or even physically hit the delete key once the data is collected. On the personal level, think of how many VHS tapes or compact discs or DVDs you still have in boxes or on shelves in the basement or the attic.

Putting those collections into today’s perspective, all those memories are essentially just another set of data. If we digitized all those analog VHS tapes into compressed ones and zeros, we’d still have enormous sets of data that would likely remain unmanageable, ignored and probably lost in the digital quagmire of never-never land.

At least while in a tape format there was a storage container (the wrapper), information about the content (the metadata) and an easy methodology to catalog the content by orderly arrangements on shelves, boxes or with a 3x5 card catalog or even a digital picture of the box.

EXPONENTIAL EXPANSION

Production companies, news organizations, broadcasters all generate enormous amounts of data. The volumes continue to expand exponentially and will likely end up in the “no-where’s-land” of the digital landfill. For today, this enterprise digital repository is now an ambiguous, unknown depot that might be one of many ubiquitous “clouds”—some on premises, some in that atomic number 26 mountain place, some in a public cloud, and a lot more of it ending up in privately managed datacenters scattered around the globe.

For how long and what purpose do organizations intend to keep that data? It’s relatively inexpensive to hide those bits in a cloud and nearly zero cost to keep it there—until you want to retrieve it. However, to get meaningful use out of those bits, you needed to catalog it. Otherwise, you must pull it all down from the cloud, store it again (locally) and then search through it to find something usable.

For an enterprise of any size, this takes labor—which costs money. And that’s a resource that doesn’t grow automatically, like the data you and your friends and their friends are generating every second of the day.

INTELLIGENT DATA STORAGE

When you consider the daily couple of billion pieces of data “about” you, your friends and their friends, too, you can see the storage challenges which entities like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the other social media or shopping platforms have on their hands. The difference is these companies have figured out how to intelligently collect the data, identifying each piece using artificial intelligence algorithms that are, incidentally, developed either by their own organization or acquired by buying another company with that expertise. Across each social group, they will cross-relationship every piece of their data and then store it in one-to-many of their “private” clouds—which are liberally dispersed data centers interconnected by networks based upon volumetric accessibility per region.

Their data is never stored just once. Instead, it is replicated multiple times for accessibility, protection and resiliency. How each organization diagnostically and dynamically protects that information and makes it nearly instantly retrievable is their secret sauce.

Yet today, some of the concepts and principles which social media companies have developed for their own applications are now becoming available to individuals and organizations. The goal in these products is to start diminishing the “uselessness” of the data by applying intelligent metadata that can then utilize more conventional search engine approaches for cataloging and retrieving those assets. These new AI-based approaches now differentiate the future from the more traditional legacy media asset management methodologies.

STRUCTURING THE UNSTRUCTURED

What we’ve learned by collecting huge sets of information about known places around the world is now supporting machine learning techniques that create accurate metadata tagged not just to a single image, but to an entire generation of data sets grouped as objects. Such information may use the angle of a shadow which then identifies a time of day, which, when coupled to a geographic (GPS) location, gives more information about the season or the atmospheric conditions. People in images can now be related to their siblings or parents, based upon data sets generated from favorites or albums. Road signs, window lettering on buildings, and other distinguishing characteristics add to the databases about the actual surroundings where that image, and those of others, were collected. What was heretofore considered useless information is now branded and repurposed by machines which “look” for this data and then catalog it without any direct human intervention.

Using these new autonomous techniques, every time a new piece of content (still image, sound or video) enters a system equipped with these technologies, the system turns that previously “unstructured” data into “structured” data that is then cataloged not just as a single image, but as collections of data sets bound into a global storage platform.

These are the roots of where we’re headed as the future of storage becomes an indirect, unsuspecting model that makes potentially useless data valuable again, for all.

Karl Paulsen is CTO at Diversified (www.diversifiedus.com) and a SMPTE Fellow. Read more about this and other storage topics in his book “Moving Media Storage Technologies.” Contact Karl atkpaulsen@diversifiedus.com.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission today by a 4-0 vote adopted an order and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to open C-band downlink spectrum for flexible use, including deployment of 5G services in the mid-band.

The action, taken during the FCC’s monthly Open Meeting, makes available 500 MHz between 3.7 and 4.2 GHz for flexible use to encourage development of advanced wireless services, including 5G.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr noted the rapidly growing demand of consumers for mobile data, noting that today’s monthly total exceeds 1 exabyte, and echoed the sentiments of his three fellow commissioners about the urgency of finding more spectrum to meet that demand.

INFORMATION GATHERING

The order requires fixed satellite service earth station operators in the 3.7-4.2 GHz band to certify their existing registration and license information. It also requires collection of information from space station licensees on their use of the band. The FCC will use the information to find the most efficient way to drive use of the band for 5G, IoT and other service, while protecting incumbents.

The NPRM proposes adding a mobile allocation to all 500 MHz identified for C-band flexible use and asks for comments on different proposals, including market-based, auction and other mechanisms, for bringing flexible use to the band.

It also seeks comment on allowing more intensive point-to-multipoint fixed use in a portion of the band on a shared basis as well as on ways to protect incumbents from harmful interference.

[Read: Rep. Cole: Noncoms Must Be Protected In C Band Sharing]

Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the agency must do even more to make spectrum available, including freeing the 3.5GHz band that for years has been “ready to go” but remains “mired in the agency’s bureaucracy.” Rosenworcel called for publication of a spectrum calendar that puts “every band on a schedule for all to see,” and removes the opaqueness regarding when certain bands will become available for more intensive use.

In response, the NAB reminded the commission of the value of C-band services for broadcasting.

“Nearly every American depends on C-band satellite spectrum to receive radio and television programming,” the association said. “The FCC should tread lightly when looking at repurposing even more spectrum for the commercial wireless industry. Slogans and promises are what led the FCC to repurpose spectrum for Dish, and that spectrum still sits fallow. NAB looks forward to working with the Commission to take a close look at widespread existing uses of C-band spectrum, and determining the best path forward.”

TWEAKING EAS

The agency also took steps to enhance the nation’s emergency alerting systems during the meeting. It adopted a Report and Order laying out procedures for authorized state and local officials to conduct “live code” tests of the Emergency Alert System using the codes and processes used during an actual emergency.

Commissioner Michael O’Rielly opposed the use of actual EAS tones for these tests. “Americans should not fear they are in imminent danger,” he said. While voting to approve the item, O’Rielly dissented to this portion of the R&O.

[Read: Missouri The Next State To Conduct A Solo EAS/WEA Test]

However, the other commissioners generally expressed that using the actual codes will increase the proficiency of local alerting officials and educate the public about how to respond to an actual alert. The R&O requires steps to coordinate and plan the tests as well as disclaimers to inform the public that such warnings are only test.

The item also authorizes Public Service Announcements using the two-tone attention signal and the simulated header code of three audible tones that come before the attention signal as long as an appropriate disclaimer is included in the PSA.

The R&O gives EAS participants 24 hours to report any false emergency alert message to the FCC operations center.

KIDVID FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

The agency also adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking aimed at modernizing so-called Kid Vid rules set up in 1996 as directed by the Children’s Television Act.

The genesis of the NPRM is the dramatic transformation in the way children are accessing content. Rather than relying almost exclusively on TV as in 1996, today’s kids can find content on dedicated children’s channels carried by MVPDs, on multicast broadcast channels, and over the top, said O’Rielly, who is spearheading the changes.

NAB applauded the move.

“NAB thanks the FCC for its proposal to update children’s television programming rules and Commissioner O’Rielly for his leadership on this issue,” the association said in a statement. :Broadcasters remain committed to delivering educational programming to kids. But given the seismic changes in how children consume media, it makes perfect sense for the Commission to take a fresh look at these regulations. We will work with the FCC and other stakeholders to craft common-sense, flexible and effective rules that allow local TV stations to continue serving the educational needs of children.”

LAS VEGAS--At NAB Show 2018, there was plenty of talk about data, connected cars, how to use the data generated and how the data generated needs to be protected. With the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IOT), that is no small task. A Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference presentation, “Hacking Everything: The Dark Side of the Internet” provided some perspective on that task.

IBM security architect Jeff Crume says “with IOT, everything is a computer. A car is not just a car; in fact it’s a computer that carries you places.” That mobile computer (a/k/a “connected car”) contains data on listening, location, and a portal to control vehicle systems. “We have cars on the road today that have twice the amount of code in them, that are in (computer) operating systems.” He raised another point about information security: “All computers can be hacked. If they’re operational, and you give someone enough time, there will be a way to break into it (the computer or device).”

[Read: Akamai: Rise Of IoT Devices Causes Some Security Concerns]

As an example, he mentioned how connected DVR, players and other devices like pacemakers, insulin pumps, even airplanes have had the potential to be hacked. “The way you go in and make changes to these devices, and they have to be changed over time, is through a wireless connection. That means the “good guys” can install patches wirelessly and there remains the potential that the “bad guys” can install patches wirelessly as well, and what they would patch with is not the same thing.”

Crume said “I’m not saying this to be an alarmist; I say this so we get people’s attention and will start working on the problem.”

This article originally appeared in Radio World. 

In an era of cybersecurity intrusions, Next Gen TV developers are looking at how to secure the all-IP ATSC 3.0 signals, which are a potential delivery vehicle for Internet of Things (IoT) services. Whether to fixed devices in the home, smart cars in transit, wearable products, public-space advertising or “smart city” capabilities (such as transit routing and in-vehicle infotainment), local opportunities abound, as IoT enthusiasts continue to demonstrate.

Although the emerging fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology is angling for a dominant role in IoT applications, some broadcasters see significant roles for Next Gen TV—and they recognize that security and privacy are crucial to establishing IoT services.

In addition to the wireless telco visions for IoT, Dish Networks is expected to use its spectrum assets by building a dedicated IoT network. When Dish Co-founder Charlie Ergen resigned as CEO in late 2017, he said he’d concentrate on building a NarrowBand IoT (NBIoT) network using spectrum Dish acquired in a $6.2 billion spending spree that created a near-nationwide footprint in the 600 and 700 MHz bands.

Kevin Gage, executive vice president, strategic development and chief technology officer at Sinclair-owned ONE Media LLC, told TV Technology that medical data companies have approached ONE Media “looking to pair with 3.0 to develop hybrid solutions” for keeping in touch with IoT sensors, monitoring devices and other applications. He said it was especially encouraging that new ventures are looking to broadcast bandwidth for spectrum solutions.

“We haven’t had a robust start-up community in broadcasting,” Gage observed about the legacy relationships of TV stations. “Our goals with 3.0 are to support the security needs of any new business or industry that wants to make use of 3.0 as a delivery or communications service.” He emphasized that ONE Media’s objective is to “adapt already proven and approved security solutions from new industries to 3.0.”

‘INTERNET OF THREATS’?

At the same time that the IoT business cases are being built, legislators and regulators—from Capitol Hill to the Federal Trade Commission to the National Institute of Technology and Standards, among others—are accelerating their efforts to figure out how and what they should do to assure secure use of IoT systems. On overlapping days, NIST ran its second annual workshop on “enhancing resilience” of IoT and other parts of the “communications ecosystem” while the FTC’s third annual PrivacyCom conference again featured warnings about smart TVs in the privacy/security scenario, Barely a week earlier, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) were talking up their Cyber Shield Act of 2017 (S.2020 and H.R.4163) at a Capitol Hill seminar sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute.

Collectively, the policymakers explained that they want to make sure consumers can trust IoT products and services. Markey and Lieu’s legislation would create a voluntary cybersecurity “seal of approval” (probably administered through the Commerce Department) for IoT devices; one objective is to create product labels (physical or digital) to show consumers that products—ranging from baby monitors to phones, laptops and other networked items—are safe from intrusions.

At the AEI event, Markey warned that every IoT device (which he repeatedly called “Internet of Threats”) is “something that can be compromised ... in ways that people don’t think about but they should.” He said the proposed legislation would “create a roadmap of improvements for manufacturers and their devices.”

SPECTRUMCO AFFIRMS NEED FOR SECURITY

SpectrumCo LLC President John Hane acknowledged that “some IoT applications require extremely high levels of security.”

“We expect to support industry standard security and authentication protocols, and proprietary solutions of our customers,” said Hane, who in February was hired to run Spectrum Co., LLC, the ATSC 3.0 spectrum consortium founded by Sinclair Broadcasting Group and Nexstar Media Group.

Hane said SpectrumCo’s platform will be able to enhance security in several ways. “One of the biggest challenges of IoT security is updating the firmware of so many devices in so many locations,” he said. “As vulnerabilities are found, they have to be patched, and fast. SpectrumCo’s low-band broadcast platform will allow our customers to update devices at a small fraction of the cost of cellular updates. Even where wireless or wired connections already exist, a redundant path can provide an additional layer of security.”

READY FOR IOT CYBERSECURITY CHALLENGES

Against this backdrop and the growing promise for IoT systems, ATSC 3.0 developers believe the new standard is ready to handle security challenges, according to technologists who have worked on Next Gen TV.

“ATSC 3.0 specifies use of encrypted data on the internet," said Adam Goldberg, principal of AGP, LLC and chair of the Technology Group 3 Specialist Group on ATSC 3.0 Security. “It also specifies use of cryptographic code signing which allows devices to verify that software updates (or other software) was created by trusted parties and not by hackers.”

Goldberg also pointed out that the 3.0 standard’s A/360 (“Security and Service Protection” layer) calls for use of Transport Layer Security for encrypted internet communications, “with an eye toward greenfield implementations.”

“This is useful for IoT,” Goldberg added because A/360’s code signing “is rather vital for IoT” implementations such as online updates.

Dr. Richard Chernock, chief science officer of Triveni Digital and chair of Technology Group 3, which guided 3.0 creation, also acknowledged the potential massive scale of IoT.

“IoT implies the need to communicate with a very large number of devices,” Chernock said. “When the same information needs to be sent, then broadcast economies-of-scale come into play. Sending common information to millions of devices takes no more resources than sending to hundreds of devices. This is useful for things like firmware updates.”

CHALLENGES EXPECTED

At the NIST workshop, Lisa Carnahan, Manager-Interoperability Group at NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory, urged the IoT industry to identify a model to manage and reduce cybersecurity risks, focusing on the need to align IoT security with consumer expectations and other market considerations. Warning that “the alternative is regulation,” Carnahan emphasized the value of inter-industry collaboration to understand and agree upon the approach to security protection.

Overall the NIST workshop focused on botnet threats and was part of a “conformity assessment process” as the agency prepares a report to the White House on automated threats to IoT and other systems. Other NIST speakers emphasized that the government prefers voluntary industry protections rather than regulatory mandates.

Chris Boyer, assistant vice president for global public policy at AT&T, urged the industry to create security guidelines for IoT devices, modeled on another NIST framework for cybersecurity standards. He cited the “need to do something similar to what we did for the NIST Framework for IoT, that we can promote internationally.”

“I think it’s very important to get our arms around how we deal with IoT in the U.S., because other countries are aggressively pursuing IoT standards and guidelines,” Boyer said.

As with many IoT conferences, the NIST program eventually moved toward the “liabilities”—that is, who in the value chain would bear the burden of problems created by IoT flaws or security intrusions.

[Disney Studios Partners With Accenture to Assist With StudioLAB]

Meanwhile, the Consumer Reports/Consumers Union presentation focused less on IoT than on other data-related aspects of TV technology. The presentation repeated the CU mantra that there should be greater protections from the data-collecting capabilities of smart TVs.

Katie McInnis, Consumers Union’s Washington office, explained that, “as more consumer devices contain smart or connected functionality, these devices may collect or share information in ways consumers may not expect — or otherwise limit or compromise a consumer’s control over their purchases.”

She also offered a peek at the results of the television study that Consumer Reports Online will publish later this year.

“While we will not be scoring the televisions using traditional Consumer Reports ratings,” McInnis said in prepared remarks, “we will indicate which televisions performed generally better or worse according to our metrics.”

At the AEI seminar, Rep. Lieu also called for a cautious approach to IoT regulation.

“The reason we’re not very specific in this statute is [because]... when it comes to technology, government should have a very light touch,” Lieu said, emphasizing his expectation that that industry will “self-regulate.” He explained that the voluntary program established by the proposed legislation would rely on a commission of diverse experts to set standards.

Gary Arlen is president of Arlen Communications LLC, a research and consulting firm. He can be reached atwww.ArlenCom.com

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

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LAS VEGAS—Less than a week after calendars flipped to 2016, thousands packed their bags for Las Vegas for the first major conference of the year, CES 2016. The conference kicked off on Wednesday, Jan. 6, with a number of keynotes and sessions covering a wide range of topics. Among them were the likes of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who discussed one of the year’s big issues, the upcoming spectrum auction.

During the “Insights with the FCC and FTC SuperSession,” Wheeler explained how the auction, which is less than 90 days away, is an opportunity for broadcasters to think how they want to do their business. He also talked about how spectrum can support emerging technology, like the Internet of Things: “The auction is essential to the kinds of things that are going on downstairs on the show floor.”

Speaking of the IoT, Ginni Rometty, the chairman and president of IBM, talked about her company’s role in the next phase of IoT, cognitive computing, and the challenges of making sense of all the data that is being captured and created. CTA President and CEO Gary Shapiro also announced that IBM and CTA are forming a research partnership to study IoT.

Streaming giant Netflix was also on hand to give a keynote speech. Reed Hasting, co-founder and CEO of Netflix, and Ted Sarantos, chief content officer, discussed a number of the new original series that the platform will premiere in 2016, as well as announced that Netflix is now available in 130 new countries, including India, Poland, South Korea and Turkey.

CES 2016 concluded Jan. 9 in Las Vegas.