The European Parliament approved new and stronger data protection rules designed to give EU residents greater control over personal information and setting minimum standards for how data can be used for police and judicial purposes. Member states would still have two years to implement the general data protection regulation (GDPR), which has been in development since 2012 and is the first major update to data protection in more than 20 years (see 1512160001). The new regulation "makes a high, uniform level of data protection throughout the EU a reality," said European Parliament member Jan Philipp Albrecht, of the Greens/European Free Alliance and Germany, in a Thursday news release. "This is a great success for the European Parliament and a fierce European 'yes' to strong consumer rights and competition in the digital age." GDPR gives EU citizens more control over their information such as the "right to be forgotten" and capability of more easily transferring personal data between service providers. They will also get clearer information about how their data is used. Adoption was hailed by consumer and privacy groups. BEUC-the European Consumer Organisation, an alliance of 41 independent national consumer groups from 31 European countries, said in a statement the law opens "a new chapter for data protection" but isn't the end of the story. "There is work ahead to ensure a successful application of the new rules and guarantee that the EU effectively continues to be a role model for data protection in the world,” said David Martin, BEUC senior legal officer. But, Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, called GDPR a "mistake," in a statement. He said its "provisions will be onerous in practice -- like trying to sail with an anchor overboard." He said "businesses, entrepreneurs, civil society groups, and government all will have an unduly hard time using data to start new ventures, expand well-established ones, or enrich European citizens’ lives by discovering solutions to challenges in health care, education, or the environment." Policymakers have time to craft a more appropriate framework "for a modern data economy" before GDPR is implemented, Atkinson said.
Orbcomm expects to close next month on its planned buy of South Africa's Skygistics and its South Africa and Australia subsidiaries, Orbcomm said in a news release Tuesday. Orbcomm said the Skygistics deal will expand distribution for its product set in various IoT markets, including numerous African nations, and comes as Orbcomm looks to be a global IoT services provider. Skygistics already distributes satellite connectivity products from SkyWave, an Orbcomm subsidiary, it said. The deal's terms weren't announced.
The International Trade Commission seeks comment by April 20 on a request for a Tariff Act Section 337 ban on imports of cellphones that allegedly infringe patents held by Creative Technology and Creative Labs, said an ITC notice slated for Tuesday's Federal Register. In the March 24 complaint, Creative said cellphones imported by BlackBerry, HTC, Lenovo, LG, Motorola Mobility, Samsung, Sony Mobile and ZTE copy its patented technology for organizing songs by artist and album. The technology is also used on Apple phones, but Apple licensed the patent, said Creative. The complaint asks for a limited exclusion order and cease and desist order banning import and sale of infringing products by those companies. Those companies didn't comment Monday.
BT Americas disputed AT&T statements that Ethernet prices are lower in the U.S. than elsewhere due to less regulation here. BT cited data it said showed metro Ethernet services in the U.S. are clearly pricier than elsewhere in 94 percent of cases. "AT&T arrives at the demonstrably false conclusion that Ethernet prices in the US are in fact 'overall lower' and that the correlation between responsible regulation of economic bottlenecks and better outcomes for consumers has magically disappeared. AT&T does this by conveniently ignoring the facts," BT said in a filing Friday responding to a recent AT&T filing in docket 05-25 (see 1603290063).
Nokia said it will cut thousands of jobs worldwide between now and the end of 2018, tied to its recent buy of Alcatel-Lucent. Nokia said it previously indicated it anticipates cutting just over $1 billion in operating costs in 2018. “Nokia is taking steps to adapt to challenging market conditions and to shift resources to future-oriented technologies such as 5G, the Cloud and the Internet of Things,” it said in a Wednesday news release. “As part of the program, the company also continues to target worldwide savings in real estate, services, procurement, supply chain and manufacturing.” Workforce reductions will come largely in areas where there are overlaps, including R&D and sales, Nokia said. Company representatives met Wednesday with two European Works Councils to discuss the job cuts, with similar meetings planned in almost 30 countries in future weeks, the manufacturer said. The actions are "designed to ensure that Nokia remains a strong industry leader," said Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri. "We also know that our actions will have real human consequences and, given this, we will proceed in a way that is consistent with our company values and provide transition and other support to the impacted employees." Nokia plans to cut 1,300 jobs at its Finnish bases in Espoo, Oulu and Tampere and 1,400 of its 4,800 jobs in Germany, said an article in the Wall Street Journal. Nokia plans to keep 4,200 workers in place in France for at least two years in keeping with promises to the French government to win approval of the Alcatel-Lucent acquisition. Nokia has 104,000 employees worldwide.
MPAA and the National Federation of the Blind jointly called on the Senate to ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization's Marrakech Treaty on improving access to published works for the blind and otherwise print disabled. The treaty “provides a strong example of how nations and stakeholders can work together to improve access for the blind and those otherwise print disabled, while also remaining consistent with existing international copyright norms,” said MPAA CEO Chris Dodd and NFB President Mark Riccobono in a joint statement. “The agreement will have substantial benefits for blind and print disabled individuals, who will gain vastly increased access to the world's published works.” The treaty “strikes a meaningful balance that came about through collective action by a wide range of parties and the WIPO countries themselves,” Dodd and Riccobono said Tuesday.
Inmarsat's Global Xpress mobile broadband service is now commercially available through resellers for enterprise customers, the satellite company said in a news release. It said satellite services company Global RadioData Communication is the first company to have an enterprise Global Xpress terminal go live commercially. It's being used in Africa by a mining organization, Inmarsat said.
Broader collaboration within trade negotiations is necessary for governments to fully embrace the transformative effect the Internet is having on global trade, said David Weller, head of global trade policy at Google, in a blog post Friday. Although most people think of physical goods when discussing trade, "data flows enabled by the Internet -- practically non-existent just 15 years ago -- now contribute to global economic growth more than the flow of goods" and "governments are rightly taking note of this transformation," Weller said. "In agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiators have started to address Internet issues. They are starting to recognize that restrictive Internet policies can damage trade just as much as high tariffs and quotas." Despite the recognition of the Internet's growing importance, "the traditionally closed and complex nature of trade negotiations makes engagement by this broader range of stakeholders difficult," said Weller. In order "for trade and Internet policy to work together, trade negotiators need to have input from the full range of Internet stakeholders. At the same time, Internet stakeholders need to start engaging in the trade policy process. Small businesses, startups, civil society groups, the Internet technical community, and everyday users all have a stake."
New tests by the Korea-based Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute found that LTE-unlicensed and Wi-Fi can peacefully coexist in unlicensed 5 GHz bands, said a blog post Thursday by Patrik Lundqvist, Qualcomm director-technical marketing. “In this over-the-air demonstration, LTE-U co-existence was put to the test in scenarios with a large number of Wi-Fi access points (APs) from Cisco and Wi-Fi stations (STAs) from Samsung, all sharing the same 20 MHz channel in 5 GHz,” Lundqvist wrote. The baseline was made up of 15 Wi-Fi APs, “all on the same channel, where each AP was connected to one user (STA),” he said. “Each STA was at a relatively close distance to its corresponding AP, which means that the signal quality was sufficiently guaranteed.” The tests verified the LTE-U operations didn’t interfere with the Wi-Fi operations, he said. Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America, said concerns remain. “It is helpful that the Korean institute tested one of several scenarios related to the still open question of whether LTE-U can coexist with Wi-Fi without disrupting the ecosystem nearly every consumer depends on for affordable mobile device connectivity,” he said. But other very different scenarios still must be examined, Calabrese said. “For example, the Koreans apparently assumed users would be close to the Wi-Fi access point,” he said. “Consumers, schools and smart city deployments need to be very worried about the impact on Wi-Fi when users are further away from the access point. If LTE-U does not detect [access points] at a signal level similar to the coexistence protocol in use by Wi-Fi, the coverage areas of deployed Wi-Fi hotspots could be cut in half. In that case, LTE-U would create an unnecessary tragedy of the commons.”
Quebec’s largest cable provider Videotron launched what its supplier Alticast is calling Canada’s “first availability” of a 4K Ultra HD set-top “on a commercial basis throughout a cable system operator's entire service footprint.” Alticast is supplying the set-top box’s middleware and user-interface “enablement,” it said in a Wednesday announcement. The “tremendous promise” that Ultra HD “holds for our customers can only be realized by true commitment on the part of the entire industry," said Pierre Roy, Videotron vice president-engineering R&D. Rogers Cable, Canada’s largest cable provider, has claimed several 4K firsts, such as its beaming in January of the first-ever live NBA and NHL games in 4K to customers with a NextBox 4K set-top (see 1601140002). For Rogers, those broadcasts began "a big year of content for our customers who will be able to access over 500 hours of live sports, movies and shows in 4K, including all 81 Toronto Blue Jays home games on Sportsnet," spokesman Andrew Garas emailed us Wednesday. As for the implication in the Alticast-Videotron announcement that not all cable customers in the Rogers Canadian “service footprint” have access to the 4K NextBox set-top, Garas said: "Currently, Rogers 4K TV is available to our entire Ontario cable footprint."