Nearly seven out of eight U.S. smartphone owners care more about smoothness and less buffering time on a standard definition video than they do about high definition pixel quality while watching mobile video over a poor connection, according to newly-released results from a survey conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by Skyfire. This new research shows the importance of network data quality, speed of delivery, and smooth multimedia playback for smartphone users.

Last week, Cisco issued results from its annual initiative to forecast and analyze Internet Protocol (IP) networking growth, and found that by 2016, annual global IP traffic is forecast to be 1.3 zettabytes - (a zettabyte is equal to a sextillion bytes, or a trillion gigabytes). The projected increase of global IP traffic between 2015 and 2016 alone is more than 330 exabytes, which is almost equal to the total amount of global IP traffic generated in 2011 (369 exabytes).

The Unified Communications (UC) market is on the cusp of a significant transformation, largely fueled by the advent of new technologies and capabilities such as video, making previously complex features and services within the realm of possibility today. In fact, most industry analysts expect the UC market to grow at an aggressive rate over the next several years. One industry estimate has the UC market at $22 billion by 2016, up from approximately $8 to $10 billion today.

On Wednesday, Calix Inc released a report based on analysis of data aggregated from 45 U.S. communications service providers, which provides new insights into Internet application and usage patterns among rural Americans.

Cisco Systems said on Thursday it will buy NDS, a developer of software for multi-channel television networks, for $5 billion.

Founded in Israel in 1988, NDS (London) is 51% owned by private equity fund Permira and 49% by News Corp. It maintains a large research and development center in Jerusalem.

Imagine Communications, a provider of digital video services, on Wednesday announced a system upgrade to their ICE Video Platform. The new platform upgrade provides system operators with a single unified appliance for processing HD and SD IPTV streams as well as Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) streams for multiscreen delivery. 

According to the Cisco Visual Network Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2011 to 2016, worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold during this time period reaching 10.8 exabytes per month - or an annual run rate of 130 exabytes - by 2016.

Last week, RealNetworks Inc., a provider of internet media delivery software and services, announced that it has signed an agreement to sell its patents and next generation video codec software to Intel Corporation for a purchase price of $120 million. 

Juniper Networks, a networking systems provider, and BitGravity, Inc., a content delivery network (CDN) specialist that is wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Communications, on Monday announced they have signed an agreement under which Juniper will acquire rights to the service management layer of BitGravity's Content Delivery Network (CDN) technology. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Poland's four cellphone operators, including units of Deutsche Telekom (Bonn, Germany) and France Telecom (Paris, France), have been fined a total of $34 million for anti-competitive conduct in the mobile TV market.

"All members of the cartel were told to stop their practices and received fines," Poland's competition watchdog UOKiK said last week. The regulator accused the four operators of obstructing the development of the nascent mobile television market.