EuroWire March 2018

Transatlantic Cable

Citing data from New York-based Skopos Labs, which builds artificial intelligence (AI) software, Mr Conway estimates that it has only a four per cent chance of being enacted. (“New Bill to Ban US Government Agencies from Communicating Over Huawei and ZTE Devices Appears,” 13 th January)

Telecom

Yet again, members of Congress make plain their grim determination that Huawei not gain any traction in the USA

† Still, he commented: “Huawei hasn’t had it easy in the US.”

Throughout 2017 – in which Shenzhen-based Huawei surpassed Apple as the world’s second-largest smartphone brand – the Chinese company had been in talks with AT&T about carrying its phones. The partnership was to have shored up Huawei in the USA, where none of the top four wireless providers carries its smartphones. This was set to change when the company took the stage at CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas to announce its new partnership with AT&T. But, on opening day, 9 th January, a glitch developed. Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees – who in December had sent the Federal Communications Commission a letter expressing concerns about national security – had prevailed with the FCC. The deal was dead. As noted by Rhett Jones of the technology website Gizmodo , Congress isn’t stopping there. In January the lawmakers were moving ahead with a bill that proposes barring all US government agencies from contracting any carrier which uses the products of Huawei or ZTE, another Chinese telecommunications equipment and systems company. (“The American Dreams of China’s Biggest Smartphone Brand Are Basically Dead,” 12 th January) The broader initiative stems from a 2011 congressional investigation into Huawei and ZTE, both of which sell network switches, radios and antennas to carriers around the world. That probe concluded that both Huawei and ZTE were “directly subject to direction by the Chinese Communist Party.” There is a direct line between those allegations and the new movement against purchase by US government agencies, and their contractors, of telecom equipment from the Chinese companies. † “Now, keep in mind that the bill is far from becoming law,” wrote Adam Conway of XDA Developers , a site “for people who want to make the most of their mobile devices.” Assuming it makes it past the committee stage, the bill barring government agencies from doing business with Huawei has to be passed by the House and Senate and signed off by President Donald Trump.

Bucking the federal government, California and New York hope to create an alternate nationwide net-neutrality standard “Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai spent 2017 dismantling Obama-era rules on net neutrality. A handful of lawmakers in liberal-leaning US states plan to spend 2018 building them back up.” Joshua Brustein of Bloomberg News also noted that the FCC anticipated the backlash against its new net-neutrality rules, expressly including language forbidding states from striking out on their own. The US government agency, created to regulate interstate communications, said it took that step to head off an unwieldy patchwork of regulations. But, as Mr Brustein put it, lawmakers in New York and California are not aiming to be exceptions to the national rules: “They’re looking to, in effect, create their own.” (“What Happens When States Have Their Own Net Neutrality Rules?,” 5 th January) In New York, Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy introduced a bill that would make it a requirement for Internet providers to adhere to the principles of net neutrality as a requirement for landing state contracts. This would preclude practices newly available to them under the FCC revisions: blocking or slowing down certain web traffic, and offering faster speeds to companies willing to pay them for it. Ms Fahy said that the New York restrictions on contractors would apply even if the behaviours in question took place out of state. She told Bloomberg : “The reason we want to do this legislatively is because we know we can move faster than a court case.” California State Senator Scott Wiener introduced a bill that would only apply to behaviour within the state, reasoning that any other approach would be too vulnerable to legal challenge. Even so, he said, “We’re expecting that there will be litigation.”

Image: www.bigstockphoto.com Photographer Adrian Grosu

60

www.read-eurowire.com

March 2018