First off, CBRS is an acronym for Citizens Broadband Radio Service, and the upshot for IT pros is that it could enable enterprises to build their own private 4G/5G networks and result in improved 4G/5G offerings from service providers. Here’s a primer on CBRS — because you are going to want to know about this.

Citizens Band/CB, as in CB radio?

No, good buddy, this has nothing to do with the Citizens’ Band radio service used by truckers for two-way voice communications and that lives in the 27MHz band in the U.S.  CBRS lives in the 3.5GHz band.

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The carrier-led Small Cell Forum has revealed the names of the founding members of an Enterprise Advisory Council designed to help address the need for more wireless coverage to meet rising demand.

The Forum — whose members include the likes of AT&T, Cisco and Huawei —had previously said it was forming such a council, but had not disclosed any member organization names. It also had said it was working with hotels and others in the hospitality industry to plot strategies for boosting cellular coverage to meet the needs of their customers (an industry, by the way, that hasn't always been very hospitable when it comes to wireless service, as seen in the Wi-Fi blocking schemes of some).

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Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) for years has been a promising approach to protecting data while it’s being computed on, but making it fast enough and easy enough to use has been a challenge.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, which has been leading the Department of Defense’s examination of this topic, recently awarded research and development firm Galois a $1M contract to explore ways to bring FHE to programmers. 

The goal, says Galois Principal Investigator Dr. David Archer, is making FHE “practical and usable,” and his outfit is working with researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology on this front via the Rapid Machine-learning Processing Applications and Reconfigurable Targeting of Security (RAMPARTS) initiative. 

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Enough with the iPhone 8 (or iPhone X) rumors: News about the 10th anniversary Apple iPhone seems to be getting real...

PROCESSOR IN PRODUCTION

Much of the speculation about the expected 5.8-inch iPhone 8 of late has been about delays and more delays, but a report from DigiTimes that has been picked up by a slew of others states that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has started cranking out the main processors for the much anticipated iOS device. 

The presumed 10nm A11 system-on-chips would likely show up in the iPhone 8 as well as expected iPhone 7s and 7s Plus phones. While Apple uses multiple suppliers for other components, such as modems, TSMC is believed to be the only A11 supplier.

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Amazon is cranking out new products as fast as it can, such as the new Alexa-powered Echo Show device with a screen, but SNL has an even more practical idea.

The SNL spoof ad, from the minds of Amazon and AARP, addresses the unique needs of older people unable to quite get the latest gadgets. It even includes Uh Huh mode to deal with those situations where people make a short story longer...

MORE: Most memorable SNL tech bits and skits

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When I saw that the creators of the Andrew File System (AFS) had been named recipients of the $35K ACM Software System Award, I said to myself "That's cool, I remember AFS from the days of companies like Sun Microsystems... just please don't ask me to explain what the heck it is."

Don't ask my colleagues either. A quick walking-around-the-office survey of a half dozen of them turned up mostly blank stares at the mention of the Andrew File System, a technology developed in the early 1980s and named after Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon. But as the Association for Computing Machinery's award would indicate, AFS is indeed worth knowing about as a foundational technology that paved the way for widely used cloud computing techniques and applications.

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Staples has hired its first chief information security officer (CISO), a key new member of the office supply giant's team that combines traditional IT and digital transformation.

Staples

CISO Brett Wahlin, who will report to the company's CTO, will be responsible for enterprise-wide information, product and data security during a time in which Staples looks to expand its delivery business.  His responsibilities extend into areas such as connected devices (think Amazon Echo/Google Home digital assistant competition in the office), fraud and loss prevention. 

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Vendor partnerships usually don't raise too many eyebrows or pulse rates around here, but when I came across an announcement by Lemko and Federated Wireless promoting a joint effort on the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) it did get my attention.

CBRS, if you aren't familiar, refers to shared 3.5 GHz spectrum recently opened by the FCC for commercial applications, and everyone from the big carriers to the likes of Cisco and Google are throwing their weight behind it. One possible application would be LTE services, which could come in the form of extended carrier networks, new cable service provider networks, and even private enterprise networks for IoT or other connectivity.

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If you think you’re sick of the iPhone 8 rumors, pity Apple CEO Tim Cook, who acknowledged during a Q&A following the company’s earnings results announcement this past week that “earlier and much more frequent reports about future iPhones” did in fact “pause” purchases of current models.

451 Research, issuing smartphone demand survey findings this week, concurred with Cook's assessment, noting that while Apple remains the preferred manufacturer among planned smartphone buyers surveyed, much fewer of them are planning purchases in the next 90 days as they anticipate iPhone 7s, iPhone 7s Plus and possibly a 10th-anniversary premium phone. 

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Columbia University has announced that Jeannette Wing, who has led Microsoft Research since the start of 2013, will be circling back to the world of academia in July as director of Columbia’s Data Science Institute and professor of computer science. 

“Jeannette Wing is a pioneering figure in the world of computer science research and education, and her addition to the University’s academic leadership team reflects the continuing expansion of our work in this field,” said Columbia President Lee Bollinger said in a statement. “Our Data Science Institute is indispensable to virtually every scholarly initiative at the University dedicated to addressing a societal problem.  The benefits to be derived from Jeannette’s leadership and her presence here will be immense.” 

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I did wonder whether my youngest teenage son would return from a recent week-long service trip on which electronic devices were banned quivering from some sort of social media withdrawal, but he survived just fine and the salmon in Washington State thank him for his efforts.

Despite what you might see all around you, teens taking either voluntary or involuntary hiatuses from social media apparently isn't entirely unusual: A new survey of nearly 800 Americans between the ages of 13 and 17 found that 58% of them reported taking significant breaks from the likes of Snapchat and Instagram.

What's more, 65% of those teens claimed to have done so voluntarily, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey. Also, one in five teens who haven't taken a break say they would like to do so.

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Verizon has begun warning customers that it’s getting out of the email game and that you need to act soon if you want to keep your Verizon.net email address.

One alternative is to actually keep that Verizon.net address, but have Verizon acquisition AOL manage it for you. So your address would be yourname@Verizon.net on the surface, but AOL underneath due to Verizon ending its email service. (See also: "How to keep your Verizon email account from being killed off")

But if this whole situation might be prompting you to make a clean break from your carrier’s email system, here are a few free messaging services that you might want to consider, some more obvious than others. I’ve taken a fresh spin through each of the email systems to collect the latest info on them, figuring at least a good chunk of the 4.5 million email accounts controlled by Verizon will be moving elsewhere sooner than later.

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