Intel President James steps down; Chicago puts in place a 'cloud tax' on Netflix and other services

Wireless news from across the Web.

> AT&T's $48.5 billion deal to buy DirecTV is reportedly set to be cleared by U.S. antitrust officials without any conditions. Bloomberg article

> Apple Music is just $2 per month in India, 80 percent cheaper than the U.S. Quartz article

> A U.S. judge signed off on a $50 million settlement between the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Sprint over claims the mobile carrier added unauthorized charges to customer phone bills. Reuters article

> Apple has started selling its own brand of SIM cards for Australians with iPads travelling overseas. ZDNet article

> Verizon Wireless experienced a service problem on cell sites in the Harrisburg/York area in Pennsylvania yesterday. Fox 43 article

> Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brad Hargreaves cut his estimate for 2015 Apple Watch sales in the third and fourth fiscal quarters to 10.5 million from 11 million. For 2016 sales, Hargreaves slashed his forecast to 21 million watches from an earlier forecast of 24 million. NY Post article

> Chicago instituted a 9 percent "cloud tax" on consumers and businesses that use cloud-based services, targeting everything from Netflix to online court databases. Chicago Tribune article

> Apple employees are seeking class-action status in a California lawsuit over whether the workers should be compensated for what one called "demoralizing" security searches during meal breaks and after shifts. Bloomberg article

> Facebook is offering video creators like the NBA, Fox Sports and Funny or Die a revenue split from ads sold alongside their videos beginning this fall. Re/code article

> BMW is open to building cars for other companies such as Google or Apple, the automaker's production chief said. Reuters article

> SoftBank has deployed Procera's PacketLogic solutions to enhance its LTE service offerings in Japan. Release

> For the first time since the market's inception, the branded media tablets market experienced its largest quarter-over-quarter decline to date of 35 percent in the first quarter, according to ABI Research. Release

Wireless Tech News

> A surprisingly wide range of companies, trade groups and technical associations this week announced plans to work on the building block of 5G networks, news that further underscores the wireless industry's interest in moving past LTE and into 5G. Article

> Responding to claims that LTE Unlicensed (LTE-U) will interfere with Wi-Fi under certain conditions, Qualcomm ran additional tests to show that LTE-U not only plays nice with Wi-Fi, but it also protects Wi-Fi to a greater degree than Wi-Fi protects itself. Article

Cable News

> Will streaming video on demand make programming networks like HGTV, NBC and AMC obsolete? Editor's Corner

> A Delaware court has ruled that Dolan family members had no say in Cablevision boardroom decisions that collectively netted them more than $100 million in executive pay. Article

> Alticast, which sells products and software for multi-screen viewing and TV interactivity, proposed in a recently published white paper that cable boxes could become protocol-agnostic Internet of Things hubs. Such a design, the company argued, could help address the competing protocols and closed systems that are hampering the IoT industry. Article

Telecom News

> AT&T may have asked for another extension to complete its $49 billion acquisition of DirecTV but when it ultimately does complete the deal it plans to bring its 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) service to 11.7 million customer locations. Article

> Masergy is offering Virtual f(n), a virtualized network function platform that will enable its business customers to add routing and firewall capabilities via software and forgo the need to purchase network appliances and the associated management requirements. Article

And finally... Michael Fassbender is Steve Jobs in a new trailer for the biopic about the Apple co-founder. Article