Stories from Abroad

The European Union's highest court has given its support to the bloc's rules that stop internet providers from charging customers for preferential access to their networks. The European Court of Justice issued its first interpretation of the EU's net neutrality rules since they were adopted in 2015. The court backed the principle of an open internet after Hungarian wireless carrier Telenor Magyarorszag had sought an interpretation of the rules.

To lead the world's fifth-generation mobile communication networks (5G) market, China introduced several policies to support 5G industry development that will impact telecommunication operators, the main implementers in this industry. Thus, this study examines the impact of the government's 5G policy announcements on telecommunication operators' firm value in China, where the state exerts a strong influence on industry development.

Apparently, a European Union privacy regulator has sent Facebook a preliminary order to suspend data transfers to the US about its EU users, an operational and legal challenge for the company that could set a precedent for other tech giants. The preliminary order was sent by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission to Facebook late in Aug, asking for the company’s response. It is the first significant step EU regulators have taken to enforce a July ruling about data transfers from the bloc’s top court.

The United Kingdom has plummeted down the global broadband speed rankings to rate as one of the slowest countries in Europe, with a typical household taking more than twice as long to download a movie than the average home in western Europe. Britain has dropped 13 places in an annual study ranking the average broadband speeds of 221 countries and territories, placing it 47th fastest in the world. In 2019, the UK ranked 34th for average broadband speed.

A group of veteran journalists for the Voice of America delivered a letter of protest Aug 31 denouncing their parent agency's new CEO, Michael Pack, and alleging Pack's remarks in a recent interview prove he has a damaging agenda for the international broadcasters he oversees. Pack's comments and decisions "endanger the personal security of VOA reporters at home and abroad, as well as threatening to harm U.S. national security objectives," the letter to VOA Acting Director Elez Biberaj read.

For the first time, we are now comparing 5G users’ overall experience across 12 of the world’s leading 5G markets. Globally, our 5G users in Saudi Arabia see the fastest overall average download speed with a Download Speed Experience of 144.5 Mbps ahead of Canada’s 5G users in second place with 90.4 Mbps. Strikingly, 5G Users in the country with the highest adoption of 5G to date, South Korea, rank just third.

This paper finds that policy mixes for mobile broadband diffusion need to be differentiated depending on where a country is situated in three stages of mobile broadband diffusion because as a mobile broadband market grows, demand constraints hindering subscription of mobile broadband will also change. A total of 115 countries are clustered into three groups (Take-off, Fast-Diffusion, and Saturated), categorized by their diffusion rates and diffusion speeds over four years from 2013 to 2016.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in the Department of Commerce further restricted access by Huawei Technologies and its non-US affiliates on the Entity List to items produced domestically and abroad from US technology and software. In addition, BIS added another 38 Huawei affiliates to the Entity List, which imposes a license requirement for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and modified four existing Huawei Entity List entries.

Considering the lack of digital infrastructure and digital literacy for large parts of the world’s population, it seems inevitable that the pandemic will reinforce the digital divide.

The village hall in Bowerchalke is an unlikely setting for a mobile technology revolution. Yet local residents, surrounded by crocheted goods and local jams, have spent three years forging a mobile phone network to bridge their own digital divide. The experimental Ch4lke Mobile, which runs over just five masts, can connect homes to a network capable of delivering broadband-like speeds, in an area that had been left behind by the digital revolution.