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Consolidation in the wireless market could finally result in a third major wireless operator with the network footprint to finally rival AT&T and Verizon, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said.

Networks that offer loads of capacity and fast speeds are important when it comes to competing in the wireless market. So is something as basic as network coverage. But covering rural and suburban markets is expensive.

Today, AT&T and Verizon dominate the US wireless industry with more than 73 percent of all mobile subscribers. One key reason for this dominance is the fact that these providers offer service in more markets than either of the two smaller national carriers, Sprint and T-Mobile. And because Sprint and T-Mobile have far fewer customers than either AT&T or Verizon, neither has the revenue or capital to invest in expansion.

"If you have more customers, you can afford to build a larger network," Hesse said. "Only then do you have the revenue to justify building in smaller suburbs and rural areas."

In order to truly compete against AT&T and Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile need wider network footprints of their own. "If you live in an urban core, you will have access to AT&T and Verizon and you'll also likely have access to T-Mobile and Sprint," Hesse said. "But when you go to less populated areas, Sprint and T-Mobile might not be there."

Smartphones and tablets are playing a key role in the consumption of online videos, a new study from video technology company Ooyala shows. During the first quarter of 2014, 21 percent of all online video-plays around the world were completed through mobile devices or tablets, Ooyala reported.

In the first quarter of 2012, that figure was at 3.4 percent. It jumped to 9 percent in the first quarter of 2013. The massive growth in online video consumption via mobile devices has changed the paradigm in content availability. Since 2012, mobile and tablet video viewership is up 532 percent.

The data is an important consideration for broadcasters. Over the last couple of years, several companies, including most notably Microsoft with its Xbox One, have been promoting the benefits of multiscreen viewing.

Microsoft in particular believes that there's an opportunity for broadcasters to share relevant content to viewers on their mobile devices as they're viewing something on their televisions. Other companies are eyeing the ways in which tablets and smartphones can be integrated into the viewing experience, though no single firm has established itself as the leader in the multiscreen space.

Ooyala CEO Jay Fulcher said companies need to think about multiscreen viewing to "build a fundamentally better video business."

A Q&A with Verizon's vice president David Young. Netflix has been accusing Verizon and other Internet service providers, such as Comcast, of not providing enough network capacity to handle an increase in demand for its video streaming service, citing this as a cause for the poor performance of its service.

The standoff between the companies is curious given that Verizon and Netflix actually signed a commercial arrangement in April, which should improve Netflix performance on Verizon's network. Apparently, Netflix is still unhappy about the outcome of that deal.

Young denied that Verizon is throttling Netflix.

“What seems to be occurring is that there is congestion on the connection between Netflix and our network, which is what is causing the video to buffer for some Verizon FiOS subscribers,” he said. Rather than throttling, he said the congestion was simply caused by the high demand of customers trying to utilize the network. He said it was not Verizon’s responsibility to provide another company like Netflix free upgrades to the service.

If there's ever a situation where you need to text a 911 operator instead of dialing the number directly, listen up now. The country's four big carriers: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, will officially route texts addressed to 911 to your local police.

This is a good thing -- with more than 6 billion texts sent every day since 2012, being able to reach the police by typing rather than talking is a logical next step that could make a huge impact for people seeking help. But that doesn't mean you can -- or even should -- start texting your emergency instead of calling.

The first -- and most important -- point to understand is that although these four carriers have now enabled Text-to-911 on their end, they have no say over whether your local police station implements it or not. Each emergency call center, or PSAP (public safety answering point), as it's known in the public-safety sphere, has to decide how and when to allow Text-to-911.

Some already have, but others may take longer as they tackle a large set of issues that may include their size and financial resources. Not only do these PSAPs have to buy or license the right tools to carry on conversations over text, they must also establish protocols for communicating with texters, and then train their dispatchers. All of this can take time, especially in the face of a few thorns.

A California bill that mandates smartphones sold in the state come preloaded with antitheft software cleared its first legislative hurdle.

SB962, introduced by state Sen Mark Leno (D-CA) and sponsored by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon, asks that device makers including Apple and Samsung put so-called "kill-switch" technology on every smartphone and have the switch automatically turned on when people buy a phone.

A kill switch lets users lock the phone if it is stolen, making it inoperable.

The bill, which was initially shot down by senators on April 24 -- now has to make it through the California Assembly. Eventually it will need to be approved by California Gov Jerry Brown, as well. The bill applies only to smartphones, and not to other devices like tablets, manufactured after July 1, 2015.

Apple has published a new set of guidelines regarding how law enforcement agencies and other government entities may request information from the company about user data. The new rules, which were posted to Apple's website, reflect Apple's move toward notifying its customers when it receives law enforcement requests for user data. "Apple will notify its customers when their personal information is being sought in response to legal process except where providing notice is prohibited by the legal process itself, by a court order Apple receives, or by applicable law or where Apple, in its sole discretion, believes that providing notice could create a risk of injury or death to an identifiable individual or group of individuals or in situations where the case relates to child endangerment," the guidelines state. Apple's new rules specify how agencies should file their request and what information they could expect to receive upon the receipt of a valid search warrant. However, the guidelines do not apply to requests made outside the US Apple's local subsidiaries. Apple also said that upon the receipt of a valid wiretap order, it can intercept users' email communications but not their iMessage or FaceTime communications because those communications are encrypted.

Following in the steps of the OpenSSL vulnerability Heartbleed, another major flaw has been found in popular open-source security software.

This time, the holes have been found in the login tools OAuth and OpenID, used by many websites and tech titans including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and LinkedIn, among others.

Wang Jing, a Ph.D student at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, discovered that the serious vulnerability "Covert Redirect" flaw can masquerade as a login popup based on an affected site's domain.

Facebook isn't the only site affected. Wang says he has reported this to Google, LinkedIn and Microsoft, who gave him various responses on how they would handle the matter.

Google (which uses OpenID) told him that the problem was being tracked, while LinkedIn said that the company would publish a blog on the matter soon. Microsoft, on the other hand, said that an investigation had been done and that the vulnerability existed on a the domain of a third-party and not on its own sites.

Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Rob Marcus said the emergence of Internet-based television may compete with cable companies' video product but it goes to show how important cable companies have been to broadband connectivity.

"Over-the-top video is one of the things that highlights the value of high-speed connection," Marcus said, speaking at the Cable Show conference in Los Angeles. It creates the potential for competition on the video side, but "there's a whole lot out there that makes our offering more valuable."

Cable companies have long been on a trend of bleeding video subscribers, attributed to ever-rising bill prices and to a lesser extent the emergence of online television alternatives like Netflix, even as broadband subscription business has grown.

Time Warner Cable's proposed $45.2 billion merger with Comcast, which would combine the No. 1 and No. 2 cable operators in the country, has raised competitive worries among consumer advocates less so for the concentration of video distribution it would create than for the consolidation of so much high-speed broadband delivery in one corporation.

Sprint recently cut a significant chunk of its staff dedicated to repairing and refurbishing phones and shut down its slower-performing stores, part of a broader effort to reduce the company's costs in the face of continued financial struggles.

Sprint laid off 330 technical consultants, closing 150 service and repair centers across the country. It also shut down 55 of its worst-performing retail stores. The moves were part of a larger plan for layoffs and cuts that was announced in January.

Sprint is attempting to streamline itself and return to profitability now that it is under the ownership of Japanese carrier SoftBank. The company, while narrowing its loss from a year ago, was still in the red by $1.62 billion in the fourth quarter amid declining revenue. In January, the company warned it would cut jobs in areas including customer care centers and less-profitable retail stores, according to the Kansas City Star. Earlier, Sprint said that it is cutting about 1,550 customer service jobs.

A Q&A with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Internet.

Twenty-five years ago, on March 12, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee proposed "a universal linked information system" to help itinerant academics from across the globe run a complicated particle accelerator. Boy, did the World Wide Web ever exceed those initial expectations. For Berners-Lee, the job is nowhere near done. His to-do list includes reining in governmental spying, ensuring personal privacy, getting people to look beyond their own narrow cultural interests, and reshaping the Web into a better foundation for software instead of just documents. Berners-Lee spoke about what he sees as the Web's next priorities.