The U.S. plans to initiate trade discussions with other countries in an effort to boost telecom equipment exports as a means to add American manufacturing jobs, said the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative 2014 trade agenda (http://1.usa.gov/1fGXWH5). “We will seek to negotiate and implement Telecommunications Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) with select countries to facilitate U.S. exports of telecommunications equipment,” said USTR Tuesday. The Obama administration also aims to conclude the World Trade Organization Information Technology Agreement (ITA) in 2014. The elimination of duties on modern information technology products through the ITA would boost U.S. technology exports, said USTR. The telecom industry approved of the prospects. “The President’s 2014 Trade Agenda demonstrates the Administration’s commitment to pursuing high-standard trade agreements that will open markets and level the playing field for the U.S. [information and communications technology] industry,” said Telecommunications Industry Association President Grant Seiffert in a news release (http://bit.ly/NU6lv0). “This will ultimately benefit the United States through economic growth, job creation, and enhancing America’s global competitiveness.” The administration is also prioritizing conclusion of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations in 2014, said USTR. Administration officials had previously aimed to complete the deal by the end of 2013. The USTR said it also expects “significant progress” on free trade agreement negotiations toward the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union during 2014. U.S. trade negotiators intend to use the Trans-Pacific Partnership, WTO and TTIP forums to crack down on intellectual property infringements, said USTR. “We will use all appropriate trade policy tools to address key trade-related IP issues and resolve specific intellectual property rights [IPR] issues that undermine the rights of Americans,” said USTR. “We seek to actively combat global counterfeiting that both threatens American jobs and often endangers the health and safety of global consumers. The United States will continue to use the ‘Special 301’ process and annual report to Congress both to drive continued improvements to the IPR protection and enforcement system and to spotlight challenges."
Ideal data security would combine the U.S.’s strong enforcement efforts with the EU’s legislative efforts, said Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the Dutch Data Protection Authority, at a Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) event Wednesday. Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, president of France’s data privacy regulatory agency Commission Nationale de L'Informatique et des Libertés, acknowledged the benefit of industry-set codes of conduct but said governments should set the codes’ “level of demands.” Washington University School of Law professor Neil Richards cited his forthcoming paper in Intellectual Privacy (http://bit.ly/MUFzSP), in which he says, “Despite calls from industry groups and a few isolated academics that [information privacy laws] somehow menace free public debate, the vast majority of information privacy law is constitutional under ordinary settled understandings of the First Amendment.” FPF is an industry-backed privacy advocate group supported by companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon; data brokers such as Acxiom and retailers such as Walmart.
Voting on the proposed EU single telecom market package was postponed Monday evening in the European Parliament Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee, but could still see plenary action April 11, a European Commission spokeswoman told us. The problem was not having compromise amendments available in all languages, she said. Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement Monday that she’s “confident that this postponement will not distract the ITRE Members from their vote on this important proposal.” Kroes will offer whatever support she can to the Parliament members involved, said the EC spokeswoman. Kroes and her staff “stand ready to help support the Greek Presidency when they begin work on the text next month,” the spokeswoman said. The Wall Street Journal and others reported that some ITRE members welcomed the postponement because it gave them more time to address issues arising from the measure’s net neutrality provisions. The anti-net neutrality lobby doesn’t need breathing space, said European Digital Rights Executive Director Joe McNamee. Having gotten everything they want from the EC and Parliament’s lead rapporteur on the package, “they are worried about protecting their position,” he said. The proposal doesn’t have effective net neutrality provisions, he said. The issue of whether companies should be allowed to offer “specialized services” as long as they don’t interfere with Internet speeds promised to other customers is a major bone of contention in the net neutrality debate (CD Nov 29 p12).
EU lawmakers and governments agreed on draft legislation designed to make broadband infrastructure cheaper to build, said the European Parliament Industry and Energy Committee (ITRE) Tuesday. Committee negotiators want to allow broadband providers to share plans and expenses with companies in sectors such as transport, gas and sewage, and also proposed a voluntary “broadband-ready” label for houses, ITRE said. Broadband companies would have the right to access “promptly,” through a single information point, information about the location, route, size, type and current use, owner’s name and a contact for existing infrastructure, it said. Similar information would also be available about infrastructure work already under way. All newly built public and multi-dwelling buildings should be equipped with in-house broadband infrastructure ready for broadband connection, as should those undergoing major renovation, it said. The full committee is expected to vote on the deal March 18 before an April 11 plenary vote.
Leaders of the global push to establish 5G should agree on the technology and a roll-out timetable by the end of 2015, European Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes said Monday at the GSM Association mobile world summit in Barcelona. The new technology will bring “exponential” change and is the “key to a new paradigm, to a connected society, to the Internet of Things,” Kroes’ written remarks said. Among other things, 5G enables e-health services such as remote surgery and the ability to use new apps even in crowded places, said an EC memo (bit.ly/Nrm3x). Last year, the EC put 700 million euros ($960 million) on the table to jump-start European research, and the telecom sector responded with more more 3 billion euros, she said. Other countries, such as South Korea, are also putting up funding for 5G research, she said. Global cooperation and convergence is needed to make 5G ubiquitous and interoperable, she said. But Kroes said 5G “does not mean that we can do without 4G.” The newer technology won’t be deployed on a large-scale basis for many years, and it needs 4G and 3G to get there, as well as 2G networks and Wi-Fi, she said. In 2013, 5G was a topic only at conferences, but now it’s happening in the lab, she said, and Europe should lead the way.
The FCC is among federal agencies preparing a draft agreement for Customs and Border Protection that would protect import and export data shared through the International Trade Data System (ITDS), said a recent report on the coming ITDS (http://1.usa.gov/1fwD0yN). President Barack Obama issued an executive order Wednesday establishing Dec. 31, 2016, as the deadline for the completion of the ITDS. The database will simplify the filing of cargo import and export information required by numerous agencies, said the White House. Obama’s order said it’s (http://1.usa.gov/1bLZDlX) meant to propel necessary data sharing agreements among the agencies, including the FCC. “Independent agencies are strongly encouraged to comply with the requirements of this order,” said the White House said.
Fiber-to-the-home/building (FTTH/B) is the leading global high-speed broadband solution, but regional uptake varies widely, IDATE analysts said Wednesday at an FTTH conference in Stockholm. IDATE’s world FTTx database provides data on the high-speed broadband market that covers more than 70 countries and 150 key players, said the firm, which is part of an institute that says it’s backed by “nearly 40 major players in the digital economy.” Revenue is expected to grow 95 percent over the next five years, to 182 billion euros ($250 billion) in 2017, said lead analyst Valérie Chaillou in a news release. Eastern Europe’s ultra-fast broadband subscriptions uptake rate will rise from 28 percent to 49 percent in the five years, much higher than in Western Europe, IDATE said. FTTH/B is clearly the technology of choice in the Asia-Pacific region, while fiber-to-the-last-amplifier leads in Western Europe and North America, it said. VDSL is, however, the technology of choice for some European incumbents, and Latin America and Middle East countries are just beginning their next-generation access network rollouts, it said. Some major European telcos still question the need for investing in FTTH/B, and some are “betting on the future capacities of copperbased networks,” it said. Six Asian and four American telcos make up the world’s top 10 FTTH operators, IDATE said. FTTH/B is gathering speed in Europe, with the total number of fiber subscribers growing by 29 percent in 2103, said the FTTH Council Europe. Thirteen EU countries have experienced subscriber growth of more than 30 percent, including Spain, the Netherlands, France and Portugal, it said. The region’s leaders, however, are France and Sweden, each with more than 1.2 million FTTH/B subscribers. Russia “remains a heavyweight” with around 9 million subscribers, it said. Outside Europe, China and Japan “are the unmatched world leaders,” it said. The numbers may sound impressive, but there’s still a long way to go, the council said. A country only reaches “fiber maturity” when 20 percent of its households are FTTH/B subscribers, and so far, only nine countries have reached that point, it said. The United Arab Emirates led the global FTTH rankings, it said. Germany and the U.K. have less than 1 percent penetration, “and once again conspicuously failed to qualify” for the ranking, the council said. “We need to do more and I can’t help but feel that some policy makers underestimate the danger of not getting to fibre to the home networks quickly enough,” said FTTH Council Europe President Karin Ahl in a news release. Within the next 30 years, Ahl said 70 percent of the economy “is likely to be driven by firms and products we know nothing about today."
The National Security Agency’s surveillance “has been excessive,” said German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière during the opening panel session of a security conference in Munich on Friday. Countering the assertion of U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., that some media reports on NSA surveillance are factually incorrect, de Maizière said an easy way to end dependency on ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden for such information would be if U.S. government officials would share information with German colleagues directly. De Maizière also said during the session, which was packed with heads of state, ministers and security experts, that he was not expecting too much from a no-spy agreement. Countering allegations by Rogers that the U.S., too, was a target of broad espionage activities, de Maizière said that “we don’t spy on the government.” Rogers rejected allegations NSA could be involved in industry espionage. “If they do it, they go to jail,” he said. The lawmaker warned Europe against losing sight of what is the real threat. “We work through it as a family,” he said with regard to the loss in trust. “But the Chinese are on your networks, the Russians are on your networks. The Iranians are and the North Koreans are buying capacity to get on.” Rogers warned against commingling the negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Agreement with spying revelations. Elmar Brok, member of the European Parliament, warned if the U.S. would not move, for example, with regard to the long-debated data protection framework agreement, TTIP was doomed to fail in the European Parliament. Representatives of Microsoft, Huawei and others called for better defenses, but also global standards. The security conference was to have ended Sunday, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday to have talked about a so-called transatlantic renaissance.
Europe needs a new data protection compact, said EU Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Commissioner Viviane Reding Tuesday. From a citizen’s perspective, the issues of data collection by companies and government surveillance are connected, Reding said at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. Surveillance involves companies whose services people use daily, through which governments build back doors and weaken encryption, she said. Concerns about snooping drive consumers away from digital services. From citizens’ perspectives, the underlying issue is the same in both cases, she said. “Data should not be processed simply because algorithms are refined.” Europe is responding to the revelations of U.S. spying by pressuring the U.S. to make the safe harbor agreement for transfer of Europeans’ personal data to the U.S. stronger, she said. It’s also pushing for a strong EU-U.S. data protection pact in the law enforcement arena and to ensure that European concerns are addressed in the reform of U.S surveillance programs, she said. But Reding warned that if the EU wants to be credible in its efforts to rebuild trust in the digital economy, it must clean up its own act. EU lawmakers want a strong data protection regulation now, but governments haven’t agreed on anything other than finishing data protection reform in a “timely” manner, at the latest by year’s end, she said. “This is a lowest and slowest common denominator approach” when high standards and protection levels, and speedy completion of the work, are needed, she said. She also criticized some EU members for failing to serve as an example on privacy for other parts of the world. Reding singled out the U.K.’s Tempora surveillance program, saying national security is up to each individual administration, but “if I come across a single email, a single piece of evidence” that Tempora isn’t used strictly for national security, “I will launch infringement proceedings.” Other bad examples are the lack of independence of Germany’s federal data protection commissioner, and Europe’s faulty data retention law, which allows information to be held for too long and to be too easily accessed, she said. Reding outlined data protection principles to govern the way the public and private sector process personal information: (1) Quick approval of the data protection reform package, which should apply to the public and private sectors alike. (2) Public debate on laws setting out data protection rules or affecting privacy. (3) Restricting data collection in surveillance to what’s proportionate to the goals of the spying. (4) Clear laws that are updated for technological change. (5) Invoking national security needs for data collection sparingly. (6) Oversight by judicial authorities. Reding also sent a message to the U.S. saying “data protection rules should apply irrespective of the nationality of the person concerned.”
A proposal by the U.K. Office of Communications to quadruple annual license fees for 900 MHz and 1800 MHz spectrum will jeopardize operators’ efforts to upgrade for 4G services, said GSM Association Chief Regulatory Officer Tom Phillips Thursday in a press release (http://xrl.us/bqhfxz). The association was responding to an Ofcom consultation that closed Jan. 16 (http://xrl.us/bqhfxi). GSMA research shows Europe lags significantly behind the U.S. in rolling out next-generation wireless infrastructure, he said. Raising the fees from £24.8 million (around $41 million) to more than £138 million for the 900 MHz band, and from around £40 million to £170 million for 1800 MHz, could slow buildout, potentially putting British businesses at an international disadvantage and denying consumers access to the latest mobile services, he said.