President Barack Obama’s statement in favor of broadband reclassification potentially weakened “perhaps significantly, the case for granting deference” to the FCC's ultimate decision on net neutrality, said Free State Foundation President Randolph May Thursday in a blog post on The Hill website. “The president's intervention politicized the agency's decision-making process in a way that may give a reviewing court considerable pause before granting any deference.”

The Federal Aviation Administration’s final rule for small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operations and other key requirements defined in the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act remain incomplete, said a GAO report released Wednesday. FAA officials have indicated that they are hoping to issue a rulemaking notice soon, with a timeline for issuing the final rule in late 2016 or early 2017, the report said. Although the FAA established the test sites required in the act, some test site operators “are uncertain about what research should be done at the site, and believe incentives are needed for industry to use the test sites,” the report said. Absent regulations, “unauthorized UAS operations have, in some instances, compromised safety,” it said. FAA granted seven exemptions for the filmmaking industry as of Dec. 4, it said (see 1406030065). More than 140 applications awaited review for other industries for uses like electric power line monitoring, the report said.

APCO plans a series of seminars across the U.S. on communications during incidents involving active shooters, APCO said. “Active shooter incidents and their response pose several unique concerns for all facets of public safety including public safety communications,” the group said. There is "a multitude of issues that make responding to an active shooter incident more difficult than other armed subject calls or violent in-progress incidents.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Cybersecurity and Communications gave CenturyLink a task order to provide Einstein 3 Accelerated intrusion prevention security services to federal civilian agencies, the company said Monday. DHS’s Einstein program measures network traffic patterns to indicate possible malicious cyberactivity, CenturyLink said. DHS gave the company the one-year task order in 2013. The new task order asks the telco to provide additional managed security services beyond those included in the original task order by integrating with CenturyLink systems specifically designed to provide cybersecurity services for federal agencies, the company said.

The FCC seeks nominations to fill two open seats on its Intergovernmental Advisory Committee, said a Monday public notice. The openings were created after Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, was defeated for re-election and New Jersey Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula was appointed as a commissioner on his state's Board of Public Utilities. Nominations are due Jan. 12 to the 15-member committee. The current IAC is to expire in July 2016.

Cisco filed two lawsuits against Arista Networks Friday, alleging the defendant committed numerous copyright and patent violations (see complaints here and here). Cisco’s suits -- filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California -- allege that because many of Arista’s executives were former Cisco employees, they used several of Cisco’s patents and copied Cisco’s command line interface. “Arista’s EOS [Extensible Operating System] was developed from the ground up as a nextgeneration network operating system for the cloud based upon the pioneering technologies invented by Arista -- far from the ugly messaging pursued by Cisco on Friday,” said Dan Scheinman, Arista board member, in a blog post Sunday. “Cisco’s lawsuit is just like the lawsuits (actual and threatened) brought against it in the 90’s by Lucent, IBM and Nortel -- an attempt by a legacy vendor that is falling behind in the marketplace to use the legal system to try and slow a competitor who is innovating and winning,” he said. “Arista incorporates features knowing that Cisco holds intellectual property rights related to those features, all of which are Cisco proprietary and none of which are industry standards,” said Mark Chandler, Cisco general counsel, in a blog post Friday.

Some 21 million smart home devices will be sold this year, and ADT and AT&T are the best known among consumers as service providers for such products, said a white paper released Friday from CEA and Parks Associates. The number of total devices will grow to 25 million next year, 30 million in 2016 and 36 million in 2017, the report said. Fueling the growth is the increased penetration of broadband in homes, said the white paper, predicting that by the end of this year, 79 percent of U.S. households will be connected to the Internet, and 80 percent of those will have a working home network. Broadband connectivity has led to a new generation of smart home devices -- born out of networked security systems taking advantage of broadband for surveillance purposes -- and that's changing how systems and devices are managed in the home, it said. No smart home device in a Parks consumer survey of 10,000 broadband households claimed more than 6 percent ownership, it said. Low awareness has been an obstacle to broader acceptance of smart home products, Parks said. Security companies have provided some awareness, and more has come from the “cool factor” of products like Nest’s Thermostat, it said. Among respondents who headed a household, roughly one in 10 was aware of smart home products or services, and fewer knew where to buy them, it said. Brand awareness among those surveyed was low, and not accurate. Respondents were asked to cite three manufacturers of smart home products, and 5 percent of respondents named Apple, which has not yet delivered product to the market. Nest followed Apple with 3 percent. ADT and AT&T ranked first and second with 6-7 percent awareness as smart home product manufacturers. When asked about service providers, 16 percent of respondents named ADT and AT&T, Parks said. For the most part, manufacturers in the product area “haven’t yet made a significant mark,” Parks said.

Frontier Communications said it’s offering a “Threebie” bundle of broadband, cable and voice services through Dec. 31 that includes a three-year guarantee that broadband service for bundle subscribers will cost $19.99 per month with a qualifying voice service. “Through most of this year, Frontier included a two-year price guarantee on Internet and phone,” said Frontier Executive Vice President Cecilia McKenney in a Thursday news release. Frontier said it’s also offering identity protection service to its customers. The $9.99-per-month Frontier Secure service will secure a subscriber’s personal financial information, along with offering credit bureau monitoring and lost wallet services. “High-profile data breaches at major retailers in 2014 prove that protection from financial fraud is more important than ever,” McKenney said.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau asked for comment on whether the agency should drop more than 30 seemingly “dormant” proceedings, launched between 2002 and 2006. The comment deadline will be sent when the notice is published in the Federal Register. The bureau “seeks to determine whether the long-term pending filings listed in the Attachment are candidates for dismissal because the items either have been abandoned, are no longer of interest to the filing party, or for which no further action is required or contemplated,” the Friday notice said.

The global software defined storage (SDS) market will grow from an estimated $1.4 billion this year to $6.2 billion in 2019, the MarketsandMarkets research firm said Thursday in a report. The financial services, healthcare and manufacturing sectors will be the largest adopters of SDS technology, the report said. North America will be the largest market in 2019, but the Asia Pacific region will experience higher growth over time, MarketsandMarkets said.