COMMUNIQUE

APRIL 2016

FCC Announces Reform for USF

Several industry associations announced the release of the FCC’s order on March 30^th, which will reform the federal Universal Service Fund (USF) distribution mechanisms. NTCA’s Chief Executive Officer Shirley Bloomfield called the order’s release a “watershed moment” for the rural telecom industry. View a webniar with more information here:  FCCRate of Return Reform Order Webinar

Shifting Media Habits for Millennials: Video Remains Important

New market research from Nielsen sheds light on media habits for Millennials, which change as they age. Dividing the young adult lives of Millennials (18-34 years old) into three life stages, Nielsen found a coincidence of patterns in device and media usage within each stage. 

Wearable Device Survey: 63% Say Price is Too High
Although wearable devices like smart watches and fitness devices are getting a lot of attention, a wearable device survey from Colloquy Research suggests prices may have to come down before the technology can go mainstream.

Utility Company Website Research: J.D. Powers Finds Problems
Utilities increasingly are offering customers a mobile-enabled channel but the utilities are struggling with designing and running mobile-enabled websites and apps, according to new utility company website research from J.D. Power. The research comes from the J.D. Power 2016 Utility Website Evaluation Study.

OneM2M IoT Standard Released
A new OneM2M IoT standard aims to address issues pertinent to how Internet of Things devices communicate with one another. OneM2M is a global IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications standards development organization based in Sophie Antipolis, France. On March 15, OneM2M released OneM2M Release 1, which sets standards and functional requirements for IoT/M2M architecture, application programming interfaces (APIs), security solutions and mapping to common industry protocols, such as CoAP, MQTT and HTTP. The release is an update to an earlier version of OneM2M’s IoT/M2M interoperability specifications.

Utility Company Use of Cloud Services Measured at 45%

Utilities are adopting cloud services faster and to a greater extent than is commonly believed, according to new market research from Oracle Utilities. Researchers found that 45% of utilities are using cloud services at present and 52% intend to.