Government ministers plan to move forward on the proposed telecom single market (or connected continent) package, an EU diplomatic source told us Monday. The debate over whether the legislation, which includes controversial net neutrality provisions, will stall out in the Council of Europe heated up when European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was reported by The Wall Street Journal Friday to have asked his commissioners to "examine all pending proposals in your area and to signal those which we should review together, for example because they have no realistic chance of being adopted in the near future, or because the degree of ambition achievable does not match the objectives sought." That potential review will have "no effect" on the connected continent measure, said the diplomatic source. Some in the telecom community agree that legislation will eventually emerge, while others think it will die.
Growing innovation in payment mechanisms is raising privacy and security issues that must be addressed, said the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the U.K. Office of Communications (Ofcom). In response to the innovation, W3C launched a Web payment interest group that seeks to identify the conditions needed for more uptake and wider use of online payments via standards that will make systems more interoperable among different stakeholders and payment methods, its charter said. Ofcom said it's working with other relevant regulators to ensure that new payment systems respect privacy and are secure.
President Barack Obama's net neutrality statement Monday prompted reaction from some European stakeholders closely following the parallel debate in Europe. Obama's call for rules prohibiting blocking, throttling and paid prioritization, and for increased transparency among ISPs, their customers and the rest of the Internet, led to industry calls for a light-touch approach, while one consumer group demanded tougher net neutrality safeguards. The Council of the European Union working party on telecom and information society is scheduled to discuss net neutrality at its Nov. 14 meeting, its provisional agenda said. Telecom ministers are expected to debate the topic Nov. 27 as part of their wider discussion on the European Commission-proposed telecom single market (or connected continent) package, said an EU diplomatic official.
Europe's latest cybersecurity exercise appears to have been successful, said European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) Head of Operations Steve Purser in an interview Friday. Thursday's Cyber Europe 2014 test was the second part of a three-phase project to gauge cyber-readiness, ENISA said. It looked at the operational side of dealing with cyberincidents, including standard operating procedures, contact points, tools and best practices for managing multinational cyber-crises, it said. The third part of the exercise will take place in early 2015 and will focus on strategic objectives, it said.
Large tech-sector U.S. and other companies are increasingly joining the EU lobby register as they build a stronger lobbying presence in Brussels and spend more on EU issues, according to interviews with experts and public disclosures. Getting a full picture of what businesses, associations, public interest groups, law firms and others spend on trying to influence EU institutions is difficult, said Olivier Hoedeman of research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO). Because the register is voluntary, the definition of what constitutes "lobbying" isn't uniformly interpreted, and there are no reporting deadlines, he said.
The European Parliament Wednesday approved the new European Commission, prompting hope and optimism from telecom, tech, consumer and civil society groups. The 423-209 vote followed an intense debate that highlighted a major rift between the three main political parties and others, such as the Eurosceptics and Greens. Parliament members (MEPs) split over several candidates and issues, but EC President-elect Jean-Claude Juncker's choices of former Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip for digital single market vice president and current Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger as digital economy and society commissioner sailed through without comment. The strong opposition by some political groups showed that MEPs "are taking the prime opportunity at the outset to make sure the Commission knows it has a handbrake," emailed a European Consumers' Organisation spokesman. The new panel must now be formally appointed by the Council of Ministers, and will begin work Nov. 1, Parliament said.
The U.S. appears to be falling behind Asia and Europe in the development of next-generation mobile technologies, said those active in 5G research, in interviews. Governments in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region "have been very aggressive" in funding 5G initiatives, said 4G Americas President Chris Pearson. The U.S. doesn't consider that "the term 5G is worth discussing" because the very definition of the technology is still uncertain, said Thibaut Kleiner, European Commission DG CONNECT head of unit, network technologies. Both men, nevertheless, expect the U.S. to move forward rapidly. To help American industry, the National Institute for Standards and Technology is establishing research projects to develop the next wave of communications technologies,said Kent Rochford, director of NIST's new Communications Technology Laboratory.
The European net neutrality debate, which died down this summer as the European Parliament and Commission prepared for new terms, has re-started before a Nov. 27 meeting by EU telecom ministers on the EC telecom reform package. The fate of EU efforts to deal with the issue is unclear, said industry lawyers in interviews. With the FCC also embroiled in the issue of whether and how to regulate net neutrality, questions of whether the different approaches can ever mesh, and whether ISP interconnection arrangements may also affect net neutrality, remain open, they said.
European Commission President-elect Jean-Claude Juncker named his team Wednesday, saying he wanted to “shake things up a bit.” If approved by the European Parliament, the new commission will have seven vice presidents, each leading a project team and steering and coordinating the work of several commissioners in groupings that could change over time as new situations develop, the EC said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1Ay165x).
Broadcasters and satellite operators are lobbying together against reallocation by the Nov. 2-27, 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15) of the 3.7-4.2 GHz C-band to wireless services. The World Broadcasting Unions (WBU) has said it backs satellite operators’ opposition to any change to the current spectrum allocation in the C-band or extended C-band in the fixed satellite service (FSS) because they're “essential” to broadcasting operations around the world. Mobile operators are pushing for shared use of the band.