More than two-thirds of U.S. broadband households use a health app or portal on a monthly basis, and that jumps to 80 percent for those with a head of household aged 18-24, said Parks Associates research summarized in a Friday news release from the industry researcher. "Connected health devices and apps are starting to open healthcare services to larger populations, but right now, consumers spend less than 1 percent of their time interacting with the healthcare system through hospitals, clinics, doctors, and health coaches," analyst Harry Wang said. Online health services are starting to open new engagement opportunities, and by 2019, millions of households will benefit from a smart home platform that offers technology for safety/independent living, wellness or health, Wang said. Parks is sponsoring the Connected Health Summit Sept. 9-10 in San Diego.

Vonage agreed to buy unified communications provider iCore Networks for $92 million, the buyer said in a news release Thursday. The acquisition will add significant scale and a national footprint to Vonage's existing sales force, it said. ICore provides unified communications-as-a-service for businesses customers, Vonage said. The transaction is expected to close by the end of Q3, Vonage said.

U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez ruled in favor of Electronic Frontier Foundation client Human Rights Watch’s request for discovery last week in the group’s challenge on the constitutionality of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s bulk surveillance program, EFF Staff Attorney Mark Rumold wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “Friday’s decision is rare, and it’s a decisive victory -- both for HRW and for the general public,” Rumold said. The order “forces the government to answer questions, under oath, about the steps it took to ensure that all illegally collected records have been fully purged from all government systems,” he said. Though the court “narrowed the scope of the discovery HRW can take, the decision is still a victory” and will provide much needed insight into the government’s surveillance program and whether the government continues to retain and use those illegally collected records, Rumold said.

“The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has progressed toward its goal of seamlessly integrating unmanned aerial system (UAS) flights into the national airspace,” a GAO report published Monday said. FAA has issued its UAS comprehensive plan and UAS integration roadmap, and is working with Mitre to “develop a foundation for an implementation plan,” and expects to enact the plan by December, GAO said. FAA approves UAS operations on a case-by-case basis, but the number of approvals in the U.S. has increased each year since 2010, it said. Commercial UAS operations were approved in the U.S. for the first time in 2014, it said. Canada and France allow more commercial operations than the U.S., it said. The FAA’s six designated test sites have been operational since 2014 and had seen more than 195 test flights as of March, GAO said. The test sites faced some challenges such as a need for additional guidance from the FAA on the type of research they should conduct, it said. FAA said it can’t direct the test sites to do specific research, but provided a list of potential research areas to the sites. Other countries, including Australia, Canada, France and the U.K., with well-established UAS regulations have experienced similar “technology shortfalls,” including “unresolved issues involving limited spectrum that limit the progress toward full integration of UASs into the airspace in these countries,” it said.

Kevin Martin, former FCC chairman and now Facebook vice president-mobile and global access policy, emphasized the company’s desire to connect to the Internet unconnected parts of the world. “That’s an increasing point of focus for Facebook, making sure we’re connecting the unconnected,” Martin said in Aspen, Colorado, on a panel hosted by the Technology Policy Institute. He spoke about how he often travels through other countries in the developing world, naming Brazil, India and Mexico, which have areas where “basic access” is the core challenge. These other countries look to the U.S. and Europe in considering telecom frameworks, he said. “We agree with [many at Google] with the concerns about the importance of having strong net neutrality rules in that debate, of making sure there are some limitations on the operators who own infrastructure,” Martin said. “We at the same time agree with some of the operators in making sure we’re not reflexively applying regulations to new services.” Other panelists at the conference emphasized internationally focused concerns. Verizon Senior President Peter Davidson said there's a need for cross-border data protection language in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and he’s optimistic that will get in there. There's “consensus on the broad principles,” Davidson said.

A U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles vacated a hearing scheduled for Monday (see 1508130050) in Human Rights Watch's case against the Drug Enforcement Administration claiming the DEA illegally collected the group's international phone call records, a notice issued Thursday evening said. The DEA asked the court to dismiss the case because the data collection was stopped and the database holding the information has "been purged of the collected data," the agency's motion said. Judge Philip Gutierrez said in the notice that the DEA's motion to dismiss will be considered based on submitted pleadings and that no appearance by counsel is necessary.

Lightower and Fibertech Networks completed a $1.9 billion combination, doubling the individual companies' respective service footprints, a Lightower news release said Thursday. The combined company will operate under the Lightower name, and it said the fiber provider has customers including wireline and wireless carriers.

Payments are to be made from the Telecom Relay Service Fund to Sprint for provision of Web CapTel service, an IP-captioned telephone service, from Jan. 1, 2014, to the present, the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said Friday. "The compensation at issue was withheld by the TRS Fund administrator, Rolka Loube, pending a determination as to whether the service was provided in compliance with the Commission’s emergency call handling requirements," the order said. "We find that there is no valid basis for a finding of noncompliance, and thus, direct Rolka Loube to release all compensation withheld and otherwise owed for the period specified." The bureau directed Sprint to provide Rolka Loube with calling information during the specified period, if it hasn't already done so, to allow for proper payments.

The FCC pushed back comment deadlines in its broadband deployment inquiry to Sept. 15 and Sept. 30, the Wireline Bureau said in an order issued Thursday in docket 15-191. The bureau wants to ensure the public has "sufficient time to respond to the numerous and complex issues" raised in a notice of inquiry the FCC recently adopted and released (see 1508060049 and 1508100054). Under Section 706 of the Telecom Act, the commission must determine if advanced telecom capability is being rolled out to all Americans in a reasonable and timely way, and if it's not, take immediate actions to remove barriers to deployment.

Qualcomm Global Trading, a Qualcomm subsidiary, completed its acquisition of semiconductor and software provider CSR, the company said in a news release Thursday. The $2.4 billion acquisition will complement Qualcomm's current offerings by adding products and customers in the Internet of Everything and automotive sectors, it said.