A summary of interesting industry news from last week:

Companies and Products

Analog Devices released a silicon SPDT switch covering 9 kHz to 13 GHz, with 0.6 dB insertion loss and 48 dB isolation at 8 GHz. The company also launched a 12-bit, 2.5 GSPS A/D converter for spectrum analyzer, radar, EW and MilCom applications.

Wishing to retain its leadership market share, Ericsson is mulling options to respond to the Nokia-Alcatel consolidation.

Deja vu: on Thursday, GigOptix CEO Avi Katz renewed his courtship of GSI Technology, offering to buy the company for $6.50 per share. Last year, his proposal was rejected by GSI's board. On Friday GSI's stock closed at $5.51.

Google is developing a 60 GHz radar for sensing sub-millimeter motion, which will enable intuitive finger-motion control. Infineon is providing the 60 GHz transceiver for Project Soli.

The rumored acquisition became official: Intel will buy FPGA supplier Altera for $16.7 billion.

Norsat said it has seen a ramp in orders for Positive Train Control (PTC), as regulators and operators scurry to improve railroad safety.

The Trans-Tech division of Skyworks announced new ceramic-based filters with coverage to 7 GHz.

TRAK Microwave released a Ka-Band latching circulator-isolator with 0.2 dB transmit and 0.4 dB receive loss, 25 dB isolation and 39 dBm power handling.

Markets and Technologies

Why all the semiconductor mergers? The Wall Street Journal says to improve margins in a mature industry with falling prices.

Cisco updated the annual Internet traffic forecast, the Visual Networking Index. They keep adding zeros, estimating that annual global IP traffic will pass 1000 exabytes (1 zettabyte) in 2016 and 2 zettabytes in 2019.

Similarly, Ericsson's CTO Rima Qureshi shared Ericsson's view of mobile in 2020. She equated today's mobile world to the floppy disk.

A prototype of Google’s solar-powered drone crashed after takeoff. Google is exploring drones to provide Internet access in remote or developing regions that don't have either wired or high speed cellular infrastructure.

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler is proposing a plan to help poor Americans cross the digital divide by subsidizing broadband access. The New York Times looks at the political environment and one single mom who will benefit.

Arguably, access to broadband will define a country's economic prosperity and the quality of life for its citizens.

Germany is auctioning spectrum at 700 MHz, which some see as a key enabler for Germany's Industrie 4.0. In Round 70, each of the six 700 MHz bands had bids of at least 75 million euros ($83 million).

The Marines are testing the behind-schedule, over-budget F-35 off the coast of Virginia. Is it ready to fly?

The number of U.S. patents grew 8 percent in 2014, to 326,033. The number of patents issued globally was 2.15 million, up 3.3 percent. Yet Thomson Reuters — doing the counting — says innovation is slowing.