Wall Street Journal

The US government plans within weeks to end much of its oversight of the California nonprofit that helps run the internet, a move with broad international support. But recent business deals by the nonprofit are threatening to roil those plans.

Under the deals, the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as Icann, is set to give significant new business to its largest contractor, Verisign, under circumstances that some say show favoritism. One of the deals would give Verisign a no-bid extension on its current contract to run the huge dot-com domain. In the other deal, Verisign emerged as a surprise potential winner of the contract to operate the new dot-web domain by quietly putting $130 million behind another firm’s bid in an Icann auction. Icann denies that it has given special treatment to Verisign, saying its focus has been promoting the internet’s stability and security.

Apple’s tax bill is just the beginning. The European Union’s decision represents a new high-water mark in the bloc’s efforts to rein in alleged excesses of American tech giants. But it is also just the first shot in what is expected to be a busy autumn for European officials, who are pushing forward a raft of regulations and investigations aimed at altering the behavior of a cadre of US-based internet superpowers.

The moves are being taken by a host of players—from EU regulators in Brussels to a bevy of national authorities across the continent. They are targeting areas ranging from personal privacy to anti-competition issues. In coming weeks, EU bodies plan to debate new telecom rules that could expand to cover services like WhatsApp, proposed legislation to push news aggregators to pay newspapers for showing snippets of content, and potential audiovisual rules that would force companies like Netflix Inc. to finance European movies. At the same time, authorities in capitals like Brussels, Paris and Berlin are pursuing investigations involving big companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook, related to alleged tax avoidance, anticompetitive behavior and privacy concerns.

Sprint and T-Mobile US recently said they would scrap data caps and give customers a simpler option: unlimited everything at a single price. But the plans had restrictions. Days later, both carriers unveiled “premium” unlimited plans that cost $20 to $25 more a month. And even those had limitations.

“The truly unlimited plan doesn’t yet exist,” said Fredrik Jungermann, managing director of Tefficient, a telecom analytics firm. If the carriers sold unlimited plans without restrictions, “they might get users that would use hundreds of gigabytes a month or even thousands, and they wouldn’t get even a single dollar more for them.” The latest round of unlimited offerings highlights the tactics carriers use to win customers in the competitive wireless market, and the maze of fine print that can catch consumers off guard. The new plans don’t have a hard ceiling on usage, but put restrictions on everyday behaviors.

On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton sketches a vision where every home in the US is connected to broadband. In just four years, children in inner cities and rural areas alike will be able to access the internet to do their homework, Clinton tells voters. And entrepreneurs everywhere in this country will be able to get online to sell their products or start new businesses. The cost? She doesn’t say, but the former secretary of state urges a bold push to quickly close the digital divide. “I happen to think we should be ambitious,” Clinton said. “Let’s connect every household in America to broadband by the year 2020.”

Beyond the price tag, it is unclear which part of the federal government would execute this plan and whether Republicans in Congress would back the legislation that is needed to deliver on this campaign promise—a challenge Clinton couldn’t overcome when she was pushing similar initiatives while serving as a New York senator. Clinton’s high-speed-internet initiative would be part of broader infrastructure legislation she has said she would push Congress to act on within the first 100 days of her administration. A study would be needed to determine the cost of the broadband plan, where coverage gaps remain and which federal agency should take the lead, a senior Clinton campaign aide said. If the former secretary of state is elected, one of the first steps she would take would be to examine federal broadband programs that were implemented under President Barack Obama and then build on efforts that have proved successful, said the senior campaign aide. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump hasn't laid out a plan for expanding broadband access in this country.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) will release a new proposal in coming days that attempts to resolve the long-running dispute among retailers, state governments and online retailers over how to tax purchases made across state lines.

His discussion draft would introduce a new legal framework for cross-border sales, largely replacing the current system that relies on whether a seller has a physical presence in a state. Instead, sales would be taxed according to the tax base of the retailer and a single tax rate chosen by the consumer’s state. That is an enormous change from the way sales taxes have traditionally worked, and it could create complications, including how to handle the five states—Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon—that don’t levy sales taxes.

Alphabet is rethinking its high-speed internet business after initial rollouts proved more expensive and time consuming than anticipated, a stark contrast to the fanfare that greeted its launch six years ago.

Google Fiber has spent hundreds of millions dollars digging up streets and laying fiber-optic cables in a handful of cities to offer web connections roughly 30 times faster than the US average. Now the company is hoping to use wireless technology to connect homes, rather than cables, in about a dozen new metro areas. Meanwhile, the company is trying to cut costs and accelerate its expansion elsewhere by leasing existing fiber or asking cities or power companies to build the networks instead of building its own.

Local officials in several states have filed dozens of lawsuits saying phone companies, such as AT&T and Verizon, are doling out discounts to businesses at the expense of 911 emergency services.

Telecom operators are required by local laws to charge a 911 fee, typically about $1 for each phone line to support local 911 dispatch centers, including salaries, training and equipment for call takers. But with heated competition for business customers, phone companies have been undercutting one another by lowering those 911 fees for big businesses, resulting in less money for local authorities, the lawsuits allege. Officials in many of the affected counties arrived at the conclusion with help from Roger Schneider, an entrepreneur from Huntsville (AL), who stumbled across the issue 12 years ago. At that time, a representative from BellSouth, now part of AT&T, offered his small business such a discount without realizing that he was a member of the local 911 oversight board. Nationwide, local governments spent more than $3.1 billion on 911 services in 2014, while collecting $2.5 billion in 911 fees, leaving a $600 million funding shortfall, according to the most recent data from the Federal Communications Commission. Only a dozen states reported to the FCC that they collected enough fees to cover their 911 spending for the year, though not all states reported complete data.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has never been known for aiming low, and he started 2016 with an ambitious agenda to reshape the rules on everything from cable TV to internet privacy.

Chairman Wheeler has yet to bring up any of his major proposals for a final FCC vote, amid industry opposition and fraying support on the commission and in Congress. And time could be running out on some of Wheeler’s big plans. Even some fellow Democrats question whether it is feasible for Chairman Wheeler—who in 2015 succeeded in pushing through a landmark network neutrality rule—to accomplish all his goals in 2016. Wheeler’s plans are complicated by election-year politics, including his reluctance to commit to departing when President Barack Obama’s tenure ends. These complexities could hamper his three big goals for the year.

The wireless price war may have reached detente. After years of slashing prices, offering stunning promotions and undercutting each other to grab new subscribers in a market that has reached near saturation, the four largest U.S. wireless carriers have reported second-quarter results that suggest prices have stabilized. Some operators are even talking about how price rises could be in the future. For all carriers, the average revenue per user, a metric used to calculate how much the carriers earn from their subscribers, has plateaued after dropping steadily since late 2013, according to data from UBS Group AG. In the second quarter, the metric fell to $50.20, down from $60.70 in the third quarter of 2013, but only down slightly from $50.40 in the first quarter, according to UBS data. The stabilization of pricing comes at a time when carriers are facing big investments and slowing revenue growth.

For most people, a cabana on the beach is the ultimate refuge from their office. For others, it is the office. Beach clubs are expanding Wi-Fi and members are paying to install internet routers and phone lines in their cabanas to telecommute from the beach.