Qualcomm received “courtesy copies” of two statements of objections from the European Commission “relating to separate matters involving Qualcomm’s chipset business,” the company said. They give Qualcomm up to four months to respond to the preliminary allegations. Qualcomm has been cooperating with the EC “since the outset of these matters,” it said Tuesday. “We look forward to demonstrating that competition in the sale of wireless chips has been and remains strong and dynamic, and that Qualcomm’s sales practices have always complied with European competition law.” The EC informed Qualcomm “of its preliminary conclusions that the company may have illegally paid a major customer for exclusively using its chipsets and sold chipsets below cost with the aim of forcing a competitor,” Icera, “out of the market" in “potential breach” of antitrust rules, the commission said in a news release. Under the rules, “dominant companies have a responsibility not to abuse their powerful market position by restricting competition,” it said.

The FCC hit PTT Phone Cards with a $493,327 penalty for violating international telecom provider duties for more than three years. Among the violations, PTT "failed to register as a provider, file required reports, and make required contributions to public service programs," said the commission order released Monday and included in Tuesday's Daily Digest. It said PTT had argued that the penalty the agency proposed in a notice of apparent liability should be reduced or canceled because of the company's size, ability to pay, and what it said were "good faith efforts to comply with or aid the investigation." But the FCC found no basis to cancel, withdraw or reduce the proposed penalty. The agency order was approved 5-0, though Commissioner Mike O'Rielly questioned the commission's "perfunctory application of gross revenues as the basis for the forfeiture."

There's an imbalance of power between companies such as Facebook and Google that are amassing vast amounts of information about online users, and individuals who have few opportunities to "exercise their fundamental right to privacy," said the English-language version of a report released Friday by Datatilsynet, Norway's data protection authority. "The information asymmetry that characterises the market is a form of market failure," it said. "When consumers have no knowledge about what is going on, they cannot demand services that offer better privacy. The uneven distribution of information results in a competitive situation, which encourages the market players to use methods increasingly invasive of privacy." The DPA said individuals don't just deal with a company that owns a website they visit, but also "ad exchanges, demand side and supply side platforms, ad networks, data brokers and data management platforms." Datatilsynet said it's working to increase transparency in the ad market and recommended website publishers provide information about third parties that collect user data such as type and usage, giving individuals the option to provide "active consent" to companies collecting their data, and improving privacy policies so they are easy to understand.

AT&T supported removing Cuba from the FCC's exclusion list for international Section 214 authorizations and urged the additional removal of the agency's nondiscrimination requirements that apply to the route between the U.S. and Cuba. The declaration came in a comment filed with the commission and posted in docket 15-289 Monday. Section 214 governs provision of telecommunications between countries. The filing, submitted by AT&T Services, is in response to an FCC notice seeking comment on removing Cuba from the exclusion list, which reflects a request from the State Department to look into the matter (see 1511240066). AT&T is one of two companies to submit by the Dec. 4 deadline comments in response to the public notice posted by the FCC. "AT&T supports this [commission] proposal, and encourages a rapid implementation," it said in its filing. Removing Cuba from the exclusion list would "help foster competition for bilateral communications between the United States and Cuba, and thus increase the flow of information to and from the Cuban people," AT&T said. The company also said it hopes the FCC will "soon take the additional step to modify the licensing of telecommunications services between the United States and Cuba" to remove nondiscrimination requirements on the U.S.-Cuba route. This additional modification to licensing rules would extend the same regulatory treatment that currently applies to all other international routes, AT&T said. Connected healthcare device developer Medtronic also supported the public notice, in a comment to the FCC. Many medical devices rely on communications capabilities and allow physicians to download data from implanted devices to monitor aspects of a patient's health, the group said. "By making it easier for U.S. carriers to provide facilities-based telecommunications services from the [U.S.] to Cuba, the [FCC] will be taking yet another step to global implementation of medical technology that relies on communications to leverage the capabilities of physicians and to enhance the lives of patients," Medtronic said. Reply comments are due Dec. 9.

The EU needs to consolidate and manage spectrum through a single entity with the aim of "harmonizing band allocations, service rules, and regulations as much as possible" if it hopes to create a seamless mobile market in its transition to a digital single market (see 1505060038), said an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation report Monday. “Despite being a world leader in mobile communications in the 3G era, Europe has since lagged the United States in deploying high-speed, data-intensive LTE technology," said ITIF President Robert Atkinson in a news release. "To recapture lost economic ground, Europe needs a bold new approach that vests significantly more control over spectrum policy in the European Commission." The EU's "28 different sets of regulations and 28 separate spectrum markets is fragmentation in the extreme," said ITIF telecom policy analyst Doug Brake, the report's author, in the release. He said the EU should look to the U.S., where states are precluded from developing wireless policy, because a single mobile market will be a "boon" to consumers and businesses in the 5G era. Other ITIF report recommendations include: permitting more consolidation in the mobile industry, or competition among four to six major firms to gain economies of scale; reallocating spectrum for mobile broadband use; encouraging the use of tradeable technology-neutral and flexible licenses "to allow room for change"; and adopting a neutral spectrum policy rather than "market shaping" to drive more innovation, capital investment and cost benefits.

CompTIA commended passage of a transportation funding bill that includes provisions extending the charter of the Export-Import Bank through Sept. 30, 2019, said a news release Friday. "U.S. high tech manufacturers face stiff competition from foreign competitors that enjoy much greater support from their nation’s export credit agencies," said Executive Vice President Elizabeth Hyman. "Many companies in the U.S., including a significiant [sic] number of small businesses, leverage Ex-Im to engage in business opportunities all over the world."

“U.S. businesses and workers in the information and communication technology goods sector will be positively impacted by the elimination of many barriers once TPP is enacted,” Stefan Selig, U.S. undersecretary of commerce for international trade, said in a statement as he released a report identifying the potential economic benefits to be gained from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Highlighted in the report are several country-specific cases where U.S. ICT companies could benefit from TPP's institution, such as the complete or partial elimination of import taxes on American ICT exports in Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand and Vietnam.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) unanimously ruled that the “freedom of expression” rights of three Turkish nationals were violated under Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights when a Turkish court blocked access to Google's YouTube (see 1511300016). ECHR said in a Tuesday news release that the three individuals were “prevented from accessing YouTube for a lengthy period of time and … they could legitimately claim that the blocking order in question had affected their right to receive and impart information and ideas.” Seven ECHR judges said YouTube was an “important source” for the three complainants -- law professors Serkan Cengiz, Yaman Akdeniz and Kerem Altıparmak -- and the blocking order from the Ankara Criminal Court of First Instance prevented them from accessing “specific information” that they were unable to obtain through another channel. ECHR also said Turkish law didn't allow the domestic court “to impose a blanket blocking order on access to the Internet,” and such a blocking order could be imposed only on a specific publication suspected of a violation. ECHR said the Turkish court didn't directly target the three individuals. Google and the Turkish Embassy in Washington did not comment.

Documents released Tuesday show that U.K. spy agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is hacking computers without getting individual warrants, said London-based Privacy International in a news release. The group said the documents “contain previously unknown details and defenses” of the agency’s use of “thematic warrants.” They show GCHQ confirmed that the U.K. secretary of state doesn’t sign off on most overseas hacking operations, which also don’t require authorizations to name or describe a piece of equipment or name the equipment’s individual user. Privacy International also said the GCHQ’s intelligence services commissioner began formally reviewing individual targets overseas only in April, and the Intelligence and Security Committee report released in March called the failure of intelligence agencies MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service to keep accurate records of overseas hacking activities “unacceptable.” Privacy International General Counsel Caroline Wilson Palow said "the light touch authorization and oversight regime that GCHQ has been enjoying should never have been permitted. Perhaps it wouldn't have been if parliament had been notified in the first place that GCHQ was hacking.” In an email, GCHQ replied "it would be inappropriate to comment on ongoing legal proceedings," but "all of GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous independent oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. All our operational processes rigorously support this position." Privacy International and seven Internet service and communications providers filed a legal complaint in July 2014 seeking an end to GCHQ’s hacking, which they called illegal and “destructive.”

Judges on the European Court of Human Rights are expected to announce their judgment Tuesday on a complaint by three Turkish nationals who said the Ankara Criminal Court of First Instance violated their rights when it blocked access to YouTube because "some ten videos ... were insulting to the memory of Atatürk," said an ECHR release. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who was prime minister and then president of Turkey from 1920 to 1938, is credited as the founder of a modern and secular Republic of Turkey. The Turkish court blocked access to the website from May 5, 2008, to Oct. 30, 2010, when the blocking order "was lifted by the public prosecutor's office following a request from the company owning copyright of the videos in question," said the ECHR. It said the three nationals -- Serkan Cengiz, Yaman Akdeniz and Kerem Altıparmak, who teach law at their respective universities in Turkey -- said the restriction had infringed on "their right to freedom to receive or impart information and ideas" and they also didn't get a right to a fair hearing. The release said the three invoked articles 6 and 10 the European Convention of Human Rights, which Turkey ratified in 1954. It said the three also want ECHR under Article 46 to "indicate to the Turkish government" actions it can take "to put an end to the situation." The Turkish court had rejected the three's request to lift the measure since it was "imposed in accordance with the law and that the applicants did not have standing to challenge such decisions," the release said. That ruling was upheld by the Ankara Criminal Court.