Financial Times

The proliferation of on-demand workers is creating difficult questions for policymakers about how to respond to the changing nature of labour and the safety and welfare issues that it raises.

Most “gig economy” workers, are classified as independent contractors rather than employees, according to rules introduced before the second world war. The rules, however, look increasingly outdated. According to company estimates, some 1m Americans work in the gig economy — also known as the on-demand or sharing economy — among them footloose millennials, professionals who lost their jobs mid-career and cash-strapped baby boomers forced to postpone retirement. A growing number want to see an overhaul of existing regulatory structures, which often prevent them from receiving two sought-after forms of support: safety net benefits, such as pensions, and training.

[Commentary] Donald Trump has created fissures through the once solid US conservative media in the same way that he has shaken the foundations of the Republican party, and torn up the rule book for a presidential candidate.

It is a measure of how extraordinary the 2016 White House race has been that Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, traditional bastions for US Republicans, have clashed with the party’s nominee. Publications such as the National Review have long been part of the establishment GOP while drawing on outsider status as the Democrats held control of the White House. But with the arrival of Trump, “establishment conservative media all of a sudden wakes up and says: what have we created here?” said Gabriel Kahn, a professor at the University of Southern California and former Wall Street Journal reporter. In a digital age the media industry has fragmented, with the internet opening up a new echo chamber for sites such as Breitbart to cater to more granular audiences. “Only in today’s media landscape can a candidate like Trump thrive,” said Mr Kahn. “20 years ago it was mainstream media and not much else.”

Netflix? Hulu? ESPN? HBO? YouTube? Entertainment companies are waging a brutal war for consumer eyeballs and dollars. The companies that operate the pipes, meanwhile, can sit back. Whatever content is most popular, they will get paid to deliver it.

A market once obsessed with the threat of cord-cutting by pay-TV subscribers now looks at the likes of Charter Communications and Comcast and sees big gains in high-speed internet users. This year those two and a smaller provider, Cable One, have seen their shares jump. Now, private equity gave its mark of approval. TPG Capital acquired two small, regional cable and broadband providers RCN Telecom and Grande Communications for $2.25 billion, collectively. The regional monopolies that rule US TV and internet delivery are not quite as dominant as they seem. RCN and Grande are “overbuilders” that put service over wires that incumbents have already built. Customers can pick a fringe provider if they do not want 500 channels, preferring fast internet and streaming video from Netflix and its growing list of rivals.

Gavin Patterson, chief executive of BT, has written to his counterparts at rival broadband providers Sky, Vodafone and TalkTalk to complain that their ‘Fix Britain’s Internet’ campaign is misleading consumers and “talking down” Britain. Patterson’s personal intervention comes amid a fractious debate about the state of Britain’s broadband that has seen BT’s rivals and MPs call for the break-up of BT and its Openreach division.

Patterson has written to Baroness Harding, chief executive of TalkTalk; Jeremy Darroch, chief executive of Sky; and Vittorio Colao, chief executive of Vodafone Group to express his alarm at the tone of the debate. The letter argues that the Fix Britain’s Internet campaign “paints an unfairly diminished view of connectivity across the UK and makes a number of misleading statements”.

Vodafone and Liberty Global have secured approval from Brussels for their plan to combine their Dutch businesses, clearing the way for the companies to create the Netherlands’ second-largest mobile and cable operator.

British telecoms group Vodafone agreed to sell its Dutch consumer fixed line business in exchange for being allowed to go ahead with the joint venture, in a sign of the tough line Brussels has adopted on tie-ups that it fears could harm competition in the telecoms market. The deal marks the first time Vodafone and Liberty will have united a part of their mobile and fixed-line telecoms empires, after on-off discussions over the past two years failed to result in a wider agreement to merge their operations. Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, said that “the commitments offered by Vodafone [would] ensure that Dutch consumers will continue to enjoy competitive prices and good choice.”

The four largest US wireless carriers are signing up new mobile phone customers at their slowest rate in more than 15 years as consumers put off switching networks and upgrading their smartphones.

Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile US and Sprint recruited 7.1 million of the most lucrative “postpaid” mobile phone customers in the second quarter. Analysts are divided on the reason for the phenomenon, with some blaming pent-up demand for the Apple iPhone 7 and a paucity of new smartphone features. Others argue that efforts by the networks to stop customers leaving have started to bear fruit, resulting in a smaller pool of switchers for their rivals to pick off.

Openreach should become a “legally separate” company within the BT Group, the UK telecommunications regulator said in a long-awaited verdict on the future of the telecoms group’s profitable infrastructure arm.

Ofcom said that Openreach, which owns the fibres and wires that allow homes and businesses in Britain to get broadband connections, should have an independent board and chairman, as well as control over its own budget.

The regulator stopped short of recommending a full-blown break-up — an option favoured by rivals TalkTalk, Sky and Vodafone. But it said that complete structural separation, with Openreach and BT under distinct ownership, remained an option if the infrastructure division does not act “more independently” and “take decisions for the good of the wider telecoms industry and its customers”.

Europe’s largest wireless carriers have pledged to launch superfast 5G networks in at least one city in every European Union country by 2020, as part of a manifesto signed by the heads of BT, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia and Vodafone among others. But as a quid pro quo for more investment, controversial new EU rules on net neutrality should be watered down, according to the document signed by 17 different companies. In the document, the telecoms groups threaten to postpone investment unless regulators offer more light-touch arrangements.

After a record summer in 2013, box-office receipts for the 2014 peak moviegoing season have fallen by more than 15 percent. If it were any time other than summer, this would not be cause for alarm.

But the period defined in Hollywood as the 18 weeks between the first Friday in May and Labor Day (the first Monday in September) is when the studios typically make 40 percent of their annual revenues.

British people spend more time glued to screens than they do sleeping, according to the annual report on the nation’s communications habits by Ofcom.

The regulator found that average television viewing has dropped below four hours a day for the first time since 2009. Ofcom found that people using several devices at the same time -- for example, making calls while surfing the Internet on a tablet -- meant that total use of media and communications averaged more than 11 hours a day so far in 2014.

This was an increase of more than two hours since the regulator conducted equivalent research in 2010 and reflects a sharp increase in Internet use on the move as mobile data networks have improved.