Startup Talk: SEC schedules quarterly meeting on small, emerging companies

Startup Talk is a round-up of entrepreneurial, startup and tech news.

SEC SCHEDULES QUARTERLY MEETING ON SMALL, EMERGING COMPANIES
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies has scheduled a meeting on Feb. 15 to discuss secondary market liquidity for Regulation A companies and reporting companies not listed on an exchange, and to explore why more companies may be choosing to stay private. It also will consider recommendations on corporate board diversity and on the treatment of so-called “finders” that assist companies in capital raising activities.

The committee provides a formal mechanism for the SEC to receive advice and recommendations on privately held small businesses and publicly traded companies with a market capitalization less than $250 million. The meeting will be webcast live on the SEC’s website and archived on the website for later viewing.

INTEL TO INVEST $7 BILLION IN ARIZONA SEMICONDUCTOR FACTORY, WILL CREATE 3,000 HI-TECH JOBS
Intel Corp. on Wednesday (Feb. 8) announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete Fab 42, which is expected to be the most advanced semiconductor factory in the world. The high-volume factory is in Chandler, Ariz., and is targeted to use the 7 nanometer (nm) manufacturing process. It will produce microprocessors to power data centers and hundreds of millions of smart and connected devices worldwide. The announcement was made by U.S. President Donald Trump and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich at the White House.

The completion of Fab 42 in 3 to 4 years will directly create approximately 3,000 high-tech, high-wage Intel jobs for process engineers, equipment technicians, and facilities-support engineers and technicians who will work at the site. Combined with the indirect impact on businesses that will help support the factory’s operations, Fab 42 is expected to create more than 10,000 total long-term jobs in Arizona.

AT&T TESTING 5G, BROADBAND-OVER-POWER LINE TECHNOLOGIES IN 2017
Early this year, AT&T provided outlook on it 5G Evolution and other initiatives to provide ultra-fast Internet access. In lab trials, AT&T said it has successfully tested a connection with less than 3 milliseconds of latency, which surpasses any current LTE network technology. Latency impacts things like the time between pressing play and seeing a video start to stream or between hitting a web link and seeing a webpage begin to load. The industry expectation for 5G is latency less than 5 milliseconds.

Last fall, AT&T launched what it believes to be the industry’s first 5G business customer trial in Austin with Intel and Ericsson using millimeter wave (mmWave) technology, which can deliver multi-gigabit speeds using an unlicensed band of spectrum. In the first half of 2017, AT&T plans to conduct a trial in Austin where residential customers can stream DIRECTV NOW video service over a fixed wireless 5G connection.

AT&T also said last week it is in advanced discussions with power companies and others to trial Project AirGig in at least two locations by this fall. One location will be in the U.S. with others to be determined in the coming months. AT&T has experimented with this unique, patented broadband-over-power lines (BPL) technology for some time with positive results.