Public Knowledge said Wednesday it welcomes a State Department diplomatic initiative aimed at spreading broadband adoption worldwide, discussed last week by Phil Verveer, senior counsel to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (see 1509180042). “The initiative’s goals are based on the core understanding that the Internet should be Open and protected as a public interest infrastructure, and that’s a sentiment we share,” Carolina Rossini, PK vice president-international policy, said in a news release. “By working closely with other nations through the U.N., the World Bank and other stakeholders, the U.S. could jump-start critical investments and policy initiatives to make the Internet available and affordable to people all over the world.”
One month in, the Samsung Pay digital wallet platform is off to "a successful start” in South Korea, having amassed more than $30 million in “accumulated transaction volume” through Sept. 20, the company said in a Wednesday announcement. Samsung Pay accounted for more than 1.5 million “total transactions,” 60 percent of them completed through the Galaxy Note5 smartphone, it said. The company estimates that 10 percent of Samsung Pay’s “active users” performed transactions on the service daily in the first month. Samsung Pay launches Monday in the U.S., with plans soon to bring the service to the U.K., Spain and China, Samsung said.
More than 80 percent of households in developed countries have Internet access, while nearly 35 percent of households in developing countries are connected, a United Nations Broadband Commission global broadband report found. It said that 57 percent of the world's population can't access the Internet, although the total number of connected individuals rose from 2.9 billion in 2014 to 3.2 billion this year. Countries in the Asia-Pacific region account for half of all active mobile broadband subscriptions, the Broadband Commission said, and Iceland leads all countries with the highest percentage of individuals using the Internet. The growth of mobile broadband usage in the Asia-Pacific region is "squeezing" other world regions in terms of global mobile broadband market share, the commission said. It said that from the end of 2014 until now, Europe and the Americas "saw declining proportional shares of mobile broadband subscriptions." The commission referred to 2014 as the likely tipping point at which growth in 3G slowed and 4G services accelerated. While Internet penetration is approaching saturation in the developed world, the report said, the U.N. commission's target of 60 percent of the global population online is unlikely to be achieved before 2021.
Video relay service users will be able to communicate directly with each other starting in May because of accessible communications for everyone (ACE) software, said an ITU blog post Thursday by Peter Hayes, CEO of VTCSecure, a tech company focused on serving those with disabilities. Hayes said the open-source software addresses the lack of robust interoperability that the FCC identified as a major problem for deaf and hard-of-hearing users of VRS and other telecom relay services. "Reaching VRS and [TRS] services using their existing mobile phones (Android and iOS) and computers (Windows and Mac OSX), users will be able to engage in simultaneous real-time video, text and voice communications," he said, noting ACE uses ITU and Internet Engineering Task Force standards. "The FCC has committed to updating code to operate with newly released operating systems, meaning that developers around the world will be able to design reliable communications applications based on ACE that will work with widely available consumer devices, now and in the future. This solution could mean global relay services for all, and is already linked with Sweden, France and other European countries." Because ACE is open source, it can be modified for those with other disabilities, Hayes said: "The possibilities are endless. One modification already in the works is Video Remote Assistance (VRA) which is designed to assist blind individuals. It sends real-time video to the next available visual interpreter in a call center who then tells the blind user what the phone’s camera is seeing. This allows a blind user to get help reading documents or navigating inside a new building."
Customs and Border Protection changed procedures for sharing information with importers and rightsholders when it suspects trademark infringement. The CBP final rule takes effect Oct. 19, the agency said in Friday's Federal Register. Regulations in 19 CFR 133.21 enlist importers and rightsholders to help CBP determine whether merchandise infringes on trademarks and trade names and should be seized or excluded, without violating Trade Secrets Act restrictions on government agency release of protected business information. Importers have seven days' notice of detention issuance to convince CBP its mark is legitimate before unredacted images or information or samples are provided to the rightsholder for verification. Partly to address importer concerns, CBP added language clarifying that information provided to rightsholders is only for the purposes of assisting the agency in making infringement determinations. CBP must give the importer unredacted information, pictures or a sample of the suspect merchandise, it said. “Releasing this information to importers will assist them in providing CBP with a meaningful response before or within the seven business day response period." In other changes, the agency removed provisions for a 30-day extension of the limit for detaining merchandise before it's deemed excluded.
Intelsat will provide broadband connectivity and cellular backhaul services to Mozambique through an agreement with Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicações de Moçambique, the company said Tuesday. The multiyear agreement has Intelsat providing some of its C-band capacity on Intelsat 902 for dual band connectivity for its own transport network and for use with local cellular providers.
“To retain the value of human dignity and prevent individuals [from] being reduced to mere data subjects,” European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Giovanni Buttarelli urged the EU and other international organizations to promote an “ethical dimension in future technologies” and announced the creation of a new EU data protection ethics board to help define new digital ethics, an EDPS news release said Friday. “The future technological environment will be made up of an interdependent ecosystem of legislators, corporations, IT developers and individuals” who are equally responsible for “shaping it,” Buttarelli said. “Any imbalance of power risks its sustainability,” he said. “The continued, massive and indiscriminate collection of personal information by governments and businesses risks killing the golden goose,” Buttarelli said. Buttarelli also urged passage of future-oriented laws that redress power imbalances and modernize data protection frameworks and said organizations should be accountable and have a new ethical approach to handling personal data they collect, which includes creating codes and policies that safeguard human dignity. He also asked the IT industry to design privacy-conscious technology.
Comcast and Liberty Global will use Metrological-developed open-source browser enhancements for set-top boxes, Metrological said in a Thursday news release. The Metrological enhancements will be part of the Reference Design Kit (RDK) software stack used by pay TV. The browser software will allow better rendering of HTML5 apps and next-generation user interfaces across set-tops, Metrological said. Liberty Global plans to use the Metrological software for its RDK-based Horizon TV platform, while Comcast plans to test the set-top box browser software on its RDK-based X1 platform, Metrological said.
Netflix will launch in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan early next year, after starting service in Japan earlier this month, it said Tuesday. The video service said it plans to finish a global rollout by the end of 2016.
The Department of Justice and FTC signed an antitrust memorandum of understanding with the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) Tuesday, an FTC news release said. The MOU was signed by FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez, Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer and KFTC Chairman Jeong Jae-Chan in Washington, and took effect immediately. The MOU with the Korea is the third antitrust cooperation agreement U.S. antitrust agencies have in East Asia, following an agreement with Japan signed in 1999 and one with China in 2011, the release said. It said the commission voted unanimously in favor of authorizing Ramirez to sign the Korea agreement.