The role of technical support is changing amid connected homes, said Parks Associates analyst Patrice Samuels on a webcast with Emily Rickman, Support.com vice president-services sales and account management. An increasingly competitive landscape is making support a bigger priority to brands, Samuels said Tuesday. Some companies let customers use smartphones for diagnostic purposes, said Rickman of Support.com, which has customers including Comcast and Staples. Cable connections with smart TVs have benefited from smartphone diagnostics, said Rickman. “Sometimes, it takes putting eyes on it. Using the camera to quickly and easily do that is by far a better customer experience than having to schedule a truck to come out to the home -- and in some cases days, later, with a four-to-five-hour window" of a consumer's day, she said. Ease of getting to a tech support agent is an area where consumers aren't satisfied, said Samuels. A start is with “self-healing” options on desktop PCs and mobile devices, said Rickman. Although data breaches have gotten attention from high-profile hacks of Home Depot, Target and others, Rickman said, “Very few customers changed their shopping habits because of them.” Customer onboarding can help overcome “inertia,” she said, providing steps people can take to improve security.

CenturyLink reached further into the cloud with an acquisition of startup ElasticBox. The deal closed Monday; no terms were disclosed, a CenturyLink spokesman said. ElasticBox, which has offices in San Francisco and Madrid, helps enterprises deploy and manage apps across a variety of cloud platforms, CenturyLink said in a news release. It "enhances CenturyLink's development and deployment of multi-cloud services management capabilities, as well as our ability to deliver end-to-end network and hybrid IT services to business customers globally,” said CenturyLink Chief Technology Officer Aamir Hussain.

Richard Bennett, free-market blogger and network architect, explained his concerns about FCC-proposed ISP privacy rules, in a meeting with an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler and others at the agency. “I reiterated my concern about the overly-concentrated nature of the Internet’s advertising market and how this has led to high prices and poor quality ads,” Bennett said in a filing in docket 16-106. “I stressed the importance of regulating on the nature of the sensitivity of information rather than on the nature of the industry that collects it.” A sharply divided FCC approved a privacy NPRM March 31 (see 1603310049).

The FCC Tuesday solicited applications for membership on its Consumer Advisory Committee. The committee is expected to be rechartered with a new two-year term to start Oct. 22, the FCC said in a notice. Applications are due July 25. The CAC met last week at the FCC (see 1606100066).

The FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council will meet at 1 p.m. June 22 in the Commission Meeting Room at commission HQ, the agency said in a notice Monday. It said the CSRIC is to vote on reports on the emergency alert system, submarine cable resiliency, network timing, cybersecurity information sharing and the priority services framework.

The FCC granted a Somos petition to temporarily waive a "first-come, first served" rule for allocating the toll-free 800 numbers Somos has. Somos (formerly SMS/800) sought the waiver in order to restrict "Responsible Organizations," which manage toll-free numbers for others, to obtaining 100 numbers per day for a period of five days to prevent hoarding. "We agree with the Somos allocation proposal for 96,000 recently-available toll free numbers in the 800 code currently controlled by the Somos Help Desk," said a Wireline Bureau order in docket 95-155 listed in Monday's Daily Digest. "We therefore find good cause to waive section 52.111 for the first five days following the release of these 800 numbers." The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions and others backed the Somos petition (see 1604220038).

The winners of the FCC chairman's fifth annual Awards for Advancement in Accessibility were announced Monday by Tom Wheeler. The awards honor innovations in communications technology that benefit persons with disabilities, said a commission release. “We can use today’s technologies to address so many of the communications barriers facing Americans with disabilities,” said Wheeler. “These innovative efforts help us move forward as a nation toward more accessible technologies.” The release said the six honorees were: SOS QR, an emergency record and alert notification app for people with cognitive disabilities; UnusTactus, an app for people with cognitive disabilities meant to simplify smartphone access; a Texas A&M wearable sign-language recognition system prototype; a Disney Movies Anywhere app for iOS devices that includes a sync function allowing users to access audio descriptions for a movie in progress; a Sesame Enable project that provides smartphones with modified Android OS installations for users who can't control smartphones with their hands; and an eSight Eyewear headset with a videocam to help people with low vision. The six winners and three recipients of honorable mention citations were being recognized Monday at a ceremony at the M-Enabling Summit in Arlington, Virginia.

Several public interest groups plan to unveil their 2016 Internet Policy Platform Monday, they said in a news advisory Friday. “The platform is built around six guiding principles supported by the millions of Americans who have become forceful advocates for internet rights,” the release said. “These principles include: free speech, access, choice, privacy, transparency and openness. … The 2016 Internet Policy Platform has been endorsed by the internet rights, social justice and consumer advocacy organizations that have played leading roles in these campaigns, including 18 Million Rising, ColorOfChange, Demand Progress, Free Press, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, New America’s Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge.” Several affiliated officials plan a call with journalists Monday, including Free Press President Craig Aaron, National Hispanic Media Coalition Executive Vice President Jessica Gonzalez and New America Open Technology Institute open internet policy director Sarah Morris.

PricewaterhouseCoopers plans a local number portability administration transition webinar June 21, 3-4 p.m., said the FCC Wireline Bureau. Officials from PwC, which is managing the planned LNPA transition from Neustar to Telcordia, also will be available to meet with interested parties Monday and Tuesday at the Marriott Indianapolis Downtown hotel, next to where a National Emergency Number Association meeting is being held. Registration is needed for the webcast; it isn't needed for the in-person meetings, nor do parties have to schedule appointments, but they can express a time preference, said a Wednesday public notice in docket 09-109.

Global PC shipments will decline 7.3 percent this year, about 2 percentage points higher than previous forecasts, IDC said in a Thursday report. The Q1 year-over-year decline was 12.5 percent, said the researcher. “Although growth rates for devices such as phones and tablets continue to fall, potentially reducing the competitive pressure on PCs, we have not seen this translate into stronger PC shipments.” Detachable tablets are another strong “challenge” to PC market stability because “specs and price increasingly compare favorably against notebook PCs,” IDC said. With the PC market having now experienced four consecutive quarters of double-digit volume declines, “this type of prolonged slump is unprecedented,” it said.