IEEE said a new amendment to its 802.3bm standard for ethernet supports recent advances in optical networking, “enabling migration to higher-density applications, reducing cost and power demand” of 100 Gbps devices and simplified metropolitan services. “Significantly higher Ethernet performance, capacity and reach in optical networking are needed especially inside and among data centers across metropolitan areas, given the ongoing proliferation of smartphones, video-on-demand, cloud computing and other bandwidth-intensive applications such as the Internet of Things,” said Dan Dove, chairman of the IEEE 802.3bm Task Force, in a Wednesday news release.

Small-business owners looking to attract and retain customers should make the most of email campaigns, said the “2015 Cox Consumer Pulse on Small Businesses” report. Slightly more than half of consumers ranked email as the most effective communications channel, the survey found. Despite the shift to mobile devices, respondents ranked email, at 53 percent; in-person events, 48 percent; social marketing, 45 percent; and direct mail, 32 percent, higher than texts/SMS in terms of their effectiveness. Though the majority of respondents were pleased with their "shopping small" service levels, 20 percent of consumers polled suggested offering free Wi-Fi to help enhance the customer experience. Cox Business surveyed nearly 1,400 U.S. consumers in eight states about their sentiments on the importance of shopping at small and medium-sized businesses.

NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling is to speak at the Internet2 Global Summit Tuesday about the Internet assigned names numbers authority (IANA) process and the continued importance of global Internet governance to the research community, Internet2 said. Strickling’s speech comes days after ICANN’s IANA stewardship cross-community working group (CWG-Stewardship) released its revised draft transition plan proposal for comment. The revised draft addresses several of the criticisms that stakeholders leveled against the CWG-Stewardship’s original draft proposal, which includes claims that the original plan was too bureaucratic (see 1412240048). Strickling was among those who criticized the original CWG-Stewardship proposal (see 1501270042). The revised plan recommends that ICANN create a specific subsidiary, called the Post-Transition IANA, to handle the IANA transition. An ICANN-selected board would govern PTI, while the Customer Standing Committee and the IANA Function Review Team (IFRT) would handle current federal oversight functions, CWG-Stewardship said in the revised plan proposal. The IFRT could propose separating PTI from ICANN entirely under extraordinary circumstances, the revised proposal said. The contents of ICANN’s current IANA contract with the federal government, affirmed in 2009, would become a part of the bylaws for ICANN and IFRT, the revised proposal said. Comments on the revised CWG-Stewardship proposal are due May 20. A separate CWG is anticipated to release a draft proposal on ICANN accountability soon.

The “smartphone opportunity” remains a “strong positive” for Qualcomm, which forecasts “continued healthy global demand in the near term and over the next several years” in that segment, CEO Steve Mollenkopf said on an earnings call. “We also continue to gain traction in adjacent areas where our mobile technologies and capabilities can deliver next-generation solutions.” Areas such as IoT and the connected car “are expected to represent large new opportunities for Qualcomm, with over 5 billion new non-phone connected device shipments expected in calendar year 2018,” he said. In connected car, Qualcomm has more than 40 design wins with “15-plus” OEMs, and its new two LTE modems, the Snapdragon X12 and X5, will “augment our portfolio to support connectivity across all tiers of the automotive industry,” he said.

“People need to trust that their data stored in the cloud will remain accessible to them and to those they designate, while not being disclosed to others without their permission or knowledge,” Brad Smith, Microsoft executive vice president-legal and corporate affairs, wrote in a blog post Wednesday. Microsoft has participated in the World Economic Forum’s Digital Infrastructure and Applications 2020+ initiative for the past two years to “ensure a healthy, growing digital ecosystem,” Smith said, and commends the forum’s recently released report on “the needs of users to securely access and transport their own data with appropriate privacy protections.” In February Microsoft became the first major cloud provider to adopt the world’s first international standard for cloud privacy, he said. “Compliance with this standard ensures that enterprise customers are in control of their data,” Smith said. Microsoft is also “active in the development of the ISO/IEC 19941 standard to address cloud interoperability and data portability, which benefits customers by assuring them they won’t be locked into any single cloud vendor,” Smith said. “Standards like these are key to addressing the ‘sources of friction in transporting, using and accessing data’ referenced in the Forum’s report as barriers to user adoption of networked, cloud-based applications and services,” he said. Smith said uncertainties in “cross-border legal regimes create another important source of friction,” and laws around the world are “woefully outdated.” Microsoft is part of a broad coalition of companies and associations in the technology, telecommunications, manufacturing and cloud computing sectors advocating for passage of common-sense updates to laws to “better balance the protection of public safety and personal privacy,” Smith said.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) issued an alert warning law enforcement personnel and public officials of increased risk of cyberattacks. “Doxing -- the act of gathering and publishing individuals’ personal information without permission -- has been observed,” IC3 said in Tuesday's alert. “Hacking collectives may exploit publicly available information identifying officers or officials, their employers, and their families,” IC3 said. “These target groups should protect their online presence and exposure.”

Internet ad revenue rose to $49.5 billion in 2014, breaking the previous revenue record set in 2013 of $42.8 billion, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) said Wednesday in a report. Internet ad revenue in 2014 rose 16 percent over revenue in 2013 -- the fifth consecutive year of double-digit revenue growth, IAB said in the report. Internet ad revenue increased 17 percent year over year in Q4 to $14.2 billion, IAB said in the report, which was prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Search revenue was $19 billion of the $49.5 billion, while mobile advertising totaled $12.5 billion, IAB said. Social media advertising totaled $7 billion, while digital video advertising was $3.3 billion, IAB said. “Marketers clearly recognize that consumers are leading mobile-first lives and are investing their ad dollars accordingly,” IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg said in a news release. “The news of digital video’s double-digit growth is also no surprise. Brands and agencies are clamoring to get into the upcoming Digital Content NewFronts, where they will experience the latest in storytelling in sight, sound and motion.”

Broadcom is seeing a lot of activity in the IoT market, CEO Scott McGregor said on a Tuesday call about Q1 results. That quarter, it shipped a large number of development kits for “prototyping” IoT products, he said. Broadcom continues to “garner new design wins in a broad set of verticals” for IoT, “ranging across automotive, medical devices, healthcare, life goods and home automation,” McGregor said. Q1 revenue in Broadcom’s connectivity business rose 13 percent on strong consumer adoption of new high-end smartphones and growing penetration of new technologies such as 802.11ac, McGregor said. Broadcom is seeing “significant customer interest” in its latest 5G Wi-Fi BCM4359 chip that offers “industry-first” real simultaneous dual band (RSDB) support, he said. “This technology is expected to ship later this year and allows a smartphone or tablet to transfer data across two bands at the same time, enabling new applications and increasing the performance of existing applications.” Broadcom unveiled the BCM4359 in an early-March announcement, saying that by enabling RSDB support, the BCM4359 is able to connect to the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands simultaneously, “improving the throughput and latency when using multiple applications at the same time, particularly video streaming and gaming.”

Most Americans believe more transparency and data sharing by the government will help journalists and hold officials more accountable, a survey from the Pew Research Center found. Very few individuals think government agencies are doing a great job of providing useful data, the survey, released Tuesday, said.

Netflix subscribers “in regions around the world experienced problems for several hours Sunday connecting and streaming on a number of Samsung devices,” a Netflix spokesman said. The issue was resolved around 7 p.m. PDT, he told us, saying Netflix is “working with Samsung to investigate the issue.” Subscribers who visited the website Sunday evening saw a message that read that Netflix was “currently experiencing issues streaming on some Samsung devices” and was working on the problem. Samsung didn’t immediately comment Monday.