Personal safety and emergency notifications are the most desired smart home features among European broadband households with at least one smartphone, said a Tuesday Strategy Analytics report. Alerts to fire and other emergencies were five times more desired than the ability to schedule or adjust window coverings remotely, said the survey of 6,000 broadband households. The least desired functions were ability to program lights, cover windows and control a gate.

Commercial passenger air travel is booming in Asia, and air carriers -- trying to entice customers to pay for in-flight connectivity -- could see some success by first providing such service for free, Northern Sky Research analyst Claude Rousseau blogged Tuesday. NSR said Asia will dominate in-flight connectivity demand growth over the next decade, with 20-plus airlines having installed the satellite-based systems. NSR said more than 1,000 in-service passenger jets likely will be offering such connectivity by year-end, reaching 5,400 over the next 10 years.

Representatives from the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America are scheduled to meet with the FCC this week about their concerns about the agency's elimination of Form 740 filing requirements for imported RF devices (see 1707130032). NCBFAA is pleased the requirements went away, but worries about what's seen as new liabilities for customs brokers included in the order, said Alan Klestadt, a lawyer with Grunfeld Desiderio, who represents the NCBFAA. “The new regulations talk about customs brokers being responsible to validate FCC compliance,” Klestadt said during an NCBFAA conference Monday. “There isn't a person in this room who's qualified to do that, and I say that without any disrespect. There's just no way.” Naming customs brokers as “one of the parties with responsibility to validate” is a “huge additional burden,” he said.

Decusoft, Md7 and Tru Communication, doing business as TCPrinting.net, separately settled FTC allegations they misled consumers about participation in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement and failed to complete the certification process, said the agency in a Friday news release. Commissioners voted 2-0 to issue the administrative complaints and accept the consent agreements, which will be published in the Federal Register and available for comment through Oct. 10. The complaints are the first enforcement cases since the trans-Atlantic data protection and sharing arrangement was established in early 2016 (see 1602020040 and 1602040018). The companies are barred from misrepresenting their participation in privacy or data security programs sponsored by governments, self-regulatory regimes or standard-setting organizations and must comply with FTC reporting requirements, the release said. Tru Communication owner Jon Harris told us he used a third party to get self-certified with Privacy Shield and received a letter from the organization saying his small business was certified. But he said the letter may have meant he was certified with the third party, not Privacy Shield. "We got confused," he said. Harris said the website statement his company is Privacy Shield-compliant was removed. He said he isn't pursuing Privacy Shield certification because it's long and complicated and it was at the behest of one of his foreign customers. The other companies didn't comment. The agency said it also filed a complaint against Decusoft for falsely claiming participation in the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield framework. Almost 2,500 companies participate in the EU-US framework.

Intel won a reprieve from the European Court of Justice, which sided with the company's appeal against a lower court ruling that upheld a 1.06 billion euro ($1.26 billion) European Commission fine (see 0912170127). The ECJ said in a Wednesday news release it's sending the case back to the General Court to re-examine Intel's arguments whether its rebates to computer makers and a retailer restricted competition. "While this case concerns events that happened more than a decade ago, we have always believed that our actions were lawful and did not harm competition," said Intel General Counsel Steven Rodgers in a statement. In 2009, the EC alleged Intel "abused" its market dominance for x86 CPUs from 2002 to 2007, with a 70 percent market share that made it difficult for competitors like Advanced Micro Devices to enter, said the release. Regulators alleged that Intel gave rebates to Dell, Lenovo, HP and NEC as long as they bought from the chipmaker "all, or almost all, of their x86 CPUs," and also made payments to Germany-based microelectronics retailer Media-Saturn-Holding to exclusively sell computers with the x86 CPUs. The EC said Intel's strategy "induced the loyalty" of those companies, significantly reducing competition and consumer choice, and imposed the penalty, noted the ECJ. Intel appealed the EC decision but the General Court dismissed that action in 2014. Intel appealed to ECJ. The court said the lower court failed to examine "errors allegedly committed" by regulators on an "as efficient competitor" test, which Intel raised. ECJ said the lower court failed to analyze "whether the rebates at issue were capable of restricting competition." The high court rejected Intel's argument that the EC lacked territorial jurisdiction.

Chilean regulators OK'd AT&T's proposed buy of Time Warner. AT&T said Monday that Chilean Fiscalía Nacional Económica approval came with "targeted behavioral conditions" aimed at specific competition issues, not requiring sales or divestitures. Regulatory reviews are ongoing in the U.S. and Brazil.

Product launches at IFA gave a peek into the holiday selling season. Lenovo announced smart devices that “challenge the conventions” by incorporating artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Lenovo touted its “open approach” to partnerships and “building new experiences” in VR including Microsoft products and others' content. Lenovo also bowed the fourth-generation Moto X smartphone, with Amazon's Alexa. Qualcomm said more than 30 devices including smartphones support aptX HD audio, which supports 24-bit music quality.

In Shanghai, Taiwan, Tokyo and Berlin, Sharp Friday launched what it called an 8K Ecosystem dubbed “Horizon Broadened.” Calling it a “core strategy,” with the help of Foxconn, Sharp pushed 8K cameras, content editing, storing, and transferring and broadcasting. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou referred to 8K manufacturing when he announced the company’s $10 billion investment in a Kenosha, Wisconsin, plant in July (see 1707270018). Sharp also said it will participate in construction of a Foxconn global R&D center for future display technology in Shenzhen, China, where it will test 8K + 5G applications.

Ofcom gave additional advice to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport secretary of state on Fox's proposed buy of Sky, as that department required earlier this month (see 1708080041), the U.K. department said Friday. It said Ofcom would release its advice "in due course."

When the U.K. leaves the EU, new arrangements will be needed to govern the free flow of personal data between the two jurisdictions, said a paper from the British government's Department of Exiting the European Union Thursday. It said a new data exchange model "could build on the existing adequacy model, by providing sufficient stability for businesses, public authorities and individuals" and help regulators on both sides continue to cooperate and communicate. The department said regulatory cooperation between the two sides is important because the general data protection regulation, which will become effective in nine months (see 1708210030), will continue to apply to U.K. businesses and provide "greater ongoing certainty." The agency said the U.K., set to replace a 1998 data protection law, wants both sides to recognize each other's frameworks early on after the exit is complete and to ensure data flows with other countries "with existing EU adequacy decisions" can continue.