August 2014

SoftBank’s Son has his work cut out after rare defeat with Sprint

When Masayoshi Son clashes with regulators, as the Japanese telecommunications billionaire often does, it is usually his opponents who limp away in defeat. So his decision to give up trying to buy T-Mobile US and merge it with Sprint is more surprising than it ought to be -- even with the Federal Communications Commission and seemingly most of Washington lined up against the deal. Son now faces two choices as he seeks to remake Sprint into a top-tier player in the US mobile market: He can take another run at an acquisition -- of T-Mobile or someone else -- or try to expand Sprint organically using the aggressive pricing tactics that turned SoftBank into a mobile power in Japan.

Deutsche Telekom Shunning US Offers Tests T-Mobile’s Viability

Deutsche Telekom AG’s refusal to agree on bids for T-Mobile US means it risks going alone to take on AT&T and Verizon Communications, a strategy likely to weigh on earnings. The German carrier’s stock fell.

Deutsche Telekom, Europe’s largest phone carrier, has sought to leave the US, where it was unable to establish a competitor capable of matching the clout of larger peers after a decade of effort. The failure to come to terms with Sprint after months of talks puts pressure on Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Officer Timotheus Hoettges to prove that the US business won’t become a burden on shareholders.

Privacy groups call for ‘strong and resonant’ data law

Privacy and civil liberties advocates are calling for a tough federal law to protect people’s personal data.

“Americans now face a formidable commercial surveillance infrastructure over which they have little control,” organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Digital Democracy and Consumer Federation of America said. “Data collection and sharing is ubiquitous, invisible, intrusive and largely unregulated.”

The organizations told the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) that he country needs to enact a baseline privacy law “that implements a strong and resonant” privacy bill of rights, which would be “the single most effective way to answer the public’s call for basic online privacy rights, ensure trust in the online marketplace and create a level playing field for online businesses.”

How to Keep Data Out of Hackers’ Hands

The numbers sound abstract: Hundreds of millions of email addresses and other types of personal identification found in the hands of Russian hackers. For people worried that they are caught in the mix, however, the discovery by Hold Security of a huge database of stolen data is very personal. But personal doesn’t mean helpless. There are common sense steps everyone can take to keep the impact of hackers to a minimum.

Apple, Samsung Call Patent Truce Outside US

Samsung and Apple agreed to dismiss all patent disputes between them in courts outside the US, marking an easing of tensions between the bitter rivals of the smartphone wars. The agreement affects disputes in eight countries.

"Apple and Samsung have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States," the companies said in a joint statement. "This agreement does not involve any licensing arrangements, and the companies are continuing to pursue the existing cases in US courts."

Wikipedia’s first transparency report shows it doesn’t give up much to the government

The Wikimedia Foundation said it has received five notices from Google so far saying its content has been scrubbed from European search results. The notices affect more than 50 links and Web pages. That's far more than the one Wikipedia entry that's been reportedly affected by the law to date. Wikipedia doesn't have much say over what content gets de-listed. What's been removed may never even come to light, said Geoff Brigham, the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) general counsel. "Google's reporting to us because it's doing the right thing," said Brigham. "But it's not clear other search companies will be doing the right thing. We may report that we've received 100 notices when in fact, we may have been delinked by other services 10,000, 20,000 times."

WMF is vowing to disclose the number of right-to-be-forgotten notices it receives in a transparency report. Wikipedia has received 56 requests for its users’ data from public and private institutions over the last two and a half years. Wikipedia said it received 10 requests for users’ data in the first six months of the year from both government and nongovernment bodies in six countries, including the United States, France and Germany.

Facebook’s Gateway Drug

[Commentary] Silicon Valley was once content to dominate the tech world. But recently, its leading companies have ventured deep into areas well outside its traditional bailiwick, most notably international development -- promising to transform a field once dominated by national governments and international institutions into a permanent playground of hackathons and app-fueled disruption. The goal of providing universal, affordable Internet access is a laudatory one. But there’s more to the nonprofit-tinged “dot.org” agenda than meets the eye, and its subtext is indicative of a bigger problem with Silicon Valley “solutionism” -- the belief that the tech industry could and should solve all of life’s problems.

[Morozov is the author of “To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism.”]

T-Mobile US Rejects Iliad's Request For Information

Apparently, T-Mobile US denied Iliad’s request for access to the US telecommunications provider's books after determining that the French company's proposed $15 billion bid wasn't strong enough.

Sprint Abandoning Pursuit of T-Mobile

Apparently, Sprint is ending its pursuit of T-Mobile US. Sprint and its parent, SoftBank, decided it would be too difficult to win approval from regulators.

Sprint is also expected to replace its chief executive, Dan Hesse.

Sprint's decision didn't have anything to do with the surprise bid for T-Mobile by France's Iliad. Rather, the US regulatory hurdles were the key.

Public Knowledge, Privacy Groups Urge Obama Administration To Preserve Existing Telecommunications

Public Knowledge filed comments with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration urging the Obama Administration not to support any privacy legislation that would eliminate important legal protections for telecommunications metadata.

Public Knowledge was joined on the comments by Benton Foundation, Center for Digital Democracy, Common Cause, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, Free Press, New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, US PIRG, and World Privacy Forum.

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