Stories from Abroad

Aiming to fight what they see as vague and overly burdensome regulation by the European Union, U.S. tech giants are playing one of the strongest cards they have: withholding their products. Until now, the U.S. tech giants have dominated the global digital economy by serving (almost) everyone, accepting divergent regional laws as the cost of doing business.

Linda Hardesty asked, “What if, in ten years, young people don’t subscribe to fixed broadband at all?” Her story is based on a U.K. research group that predicts that within ten years there will be a lot of young people who will never have subscribed to a landline broadband product. Hardesty asks if the same might be true for the U.S. It’s not an obvious answer.

A team of researchers in Japan and the United Kingdom have smashed the world record for fiber optic communications through commercial-grade fiber. By broadening fiber’s communication bandwidth, the team has produced data rates four times as fast as existing commercial systems—and 33 percent better than the previous world record. The researchers’ success derives in part from their innovative use of optical amplifiers to boost signals across communications bands that conventional fiber optics technology today less-frequently uses.

On the occasion of the FTTH Conference 2024, the Market Intelligence Committee of the FTTH Council Europe launched the 2024 edition of the FTTH/B Market Panorama, presenting the latest insights in terms of FTTH/B coverage and adoption in Europe as of September 2023.

The prosecco corks were no doubt popping at Telecom Italia’s (TIM) headquarters in Rome after the operator’s relieved CEO was able to announce the completion of a long-gestated plan to sell off its fixed-line grid to the Optics BidCo consortium controlled by investment firm KKR. The sale of NetCo for up to €22 billion (U.S. $23.6 billion) also allows TIM to reduce its net financial debt by about $13.8 billion, from an adjusted net financial debt of €26.6 billion at March 31, 2024.

Israel and the United Nations are negotiating the deployment of Elon Musk's SpaceX Starlink communications system in 

The digital divide is a global problem. NCTA – the Internet & Television Association released last week a documentary called “Every Last Mile,” which aims to illustrate the challenges ISPs face in building broadband in rural America, but we went a step further. We looked at which broadband and telecommunications startups are tackling connectivity on a global scale.

The European Commission has informed Meta of its preliminary findings that its “pay or consent” advertising model fails to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). In the Commission's preliminary view, this binary choice forces users to consent to the combination of their personal data and fails to provide them a less personalised but equivalent version of Meta's social networks. The Commission takes the preliminary view that Meta's “pay or consent” advertising model is not compliant with the DMA as it does not meet the necessary requirements set out under Article 5(2).

The importance of the multistakeholder system of Internet governance was on full display in June in Kigali, Rwanda during the ICANN80 High Level Government Meeting (HLGM) and Policy Forum. I was delighted to lead the U.S. Delegation to the HLGM, participate in ICANN’s forum, and meet with leaders from around the world in support of that multistakeholder system. The multistakeholder system of Internet governance is the consensus-based decision making that takes place in those technical entities which, together, constitute the decentralized infrastructure of the Internet.

Elon Musk’s satellite internet service, Starlink, is facing stiff resistance from Indonesian internet service providers (ISPs). The Indonesia Internet Service Provider Association is asking the government to ban Starlink’s license to sell services to consumers because ISPs see satellite provider as a threat to their market share. The ISPs have invested heavily in setting up a terrestrial network.