Stories from Abroad

There is a growing divide in Internet quality of service (QoS) between developed and developing countries. With a panel data of 160 countries for the years 2008-2016, we examined whether the adoption of more pro-competition regulation can narrow this quality divide. Internet quality of service, measured as average connection speed, increased by three times greater in developed compared to developing countries during the period studied. We found that a unit increase in the pro-competition score increased the average connection speed in developed but not in developing countries.

Europe is host to a fiercely competitive environment of stakeholders all wanting to prove they can deploy 5G first. Obstacles such as spectrum auctions in some countries remain, but the region's networks have shown that when necessary, they can accelerate their own plans to catch up and keep pace with industry leaders around the world. One trend so far among European networks is the bundling of unlimited data with extra products or services, such as home broadband, or unlimited data reserved specifically for gaming or video streaming.

The purported details in the account of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, seemed improbable on their face: that Seth Rich, a data director in the Democratic National Committee’s voter protection division, was on his way to alert the FBI to corrupt dealings by Hillary Clinton when he was slain in the early hours of a Sunday morning by the former secretary of state’s hit squad.

As Facebook prepares for increased competition scrutiny in the US and Europe, its top brass is repeatedly warning lawmakers and regulators that antitrust action could be a distraction from a much bigger threat: China.

Tracking broadband speed measurements in 207 countries and territories across multiple 12-month periods has allowed us to generate an overall average speed for the globe and to see how this number changes over time. The good news is that the global average speed is rising fast.

A senior US official told the Commerce Department’s enforcement staff that Huawei should still be treated as blacklisted, days after President Donald Trump sowed confusion with a vow to ease a ban on sales to the firm. President Trump's surprise announcement to promise Chinese President Xi Jinping that he would allow US companies to sell products to Huawei spawned confusion among industry players and government officials struggling to understand what Huawei policy he had unveiled.

Two themes I’d like to emphasize in my remarks: one, the importance of harnessing technology to solve our common challenges, and, two, the importance of regional collaboration to unlock those solutions. 

President Donald Trump’s decision to allow US companies to continue selling to Huawei followed an extensive lobbying campaign by the US semiconductor industry that argued the ban could hurt America’s economic and national security. In multiple high-level meetings and a letter to the Commerce Department, the companies argued for targeted action against Huawei instead of the blanket ban the Trump administration imposed in May.

As the US gets set to ban certain Chinese manufacturers from selling telecommunications equipment to US service providers, CoBank is warning that rural Americans’ access to communications services could be damaged if insufficient funding is available for rural service providers to replace prohibited equipment already installed in their networks.

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a cease-fire on trade that will remove some curbs on Huawei buying high-tech equipment from the US, for the moment lifting one cloud over the global economy. Under the cease-fire, the US agreed to put off additional tariffs on Chinese goods indefinitely. In response, China will start buying large amounts of American farm products, President Trump said.