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Australia's anti-competitive beef with Google expands to target the Play Store
The government's report stops short of calling for new legislation, but says that's an option if Google doesn't improve
Google's struggling with an image problem right now. Ever since Epic decided to pull something of a stunt with the in-app purchase systems in Fortnite, the status of both Google and Apple as the gatekeepers of the mobile app world has been called into question. Google is facing regulatory scrutiny in the US, and now it looks like Australia wants to get in on the party.
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- Members of the European parliament officially voted in favor of establishing a universal charging connection standard for all smartphones and small electronics sold in the EU. The next step for moving this vote forward would be to pass it into law, which TechCrunch reports is planned for Q3 2020. Once finalized, mobile device manufacturers will be forced to adopt universal solutions like USB-C.
The European Union will soon hold a vote to decide if it will enforce a mandatory, universal charging connector for all smartphones and other similar, small electronic devices. Arguments in favor of the new legislation include a reduction of e-waste and easy, interoperable charging for end-users. The introduction of USB Type-C has energized standardization talks as it incorporates many of the advantages (reversibility of connection, data transmission rates, and charging speeds) used to justify the existence of proprietary charging connectors.
U.S. senator Josh Hawley has announced the outline for a bill that could apply new consumer protections to video games played by minors. Specifically, it targets games played by those younger than eighteen years of age and aims to prohibit several forms of abusive monetization practices, such as loot boxes and pay-to-win elements. The goal is to have the Federal Trade Commission enforce the bill's proposed rules by treating the distribution of any offending games as unfair trade practices.
In what is likely a smokescreen intended to distract from the FCC planning a vote to destroy net neutrality, the FCC has issued additional rules which permit telecoms to block robocalls, specifically those which use Caller ID spoofing to impersonate phone numbers that do not exist, are not allocated by telecoms to subscribers, or are inbound-only phone numbers— in other words, allocated to systems which are unable to make outgoing calls.
Net Neutrality is the idea that Internet service providers (Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and so on) should treat all data the same. It has been a hot topic in the United States for years, especially after the FCC voted in 2015 to reclassify ISPs as Title II utilities, essentially making Net Neutrality law.
We've covered the FCC's dance with Net Neutrality and Title II regulation for ISPs in the past, and it looks like chairman Pai has come out with a few more statements about the return to a future of deregulated internet regional monopolies. The FCC is in full propaganda mode today, churning out piles of information (or misinformation) on the subject after Pai announced his plans to stop ISPs from following Title II regulations. Companies like Verizon are more than excited to jump on the bandwagon for deregulation, too. After all, captive markets are profitable markets, and now the FCC is happy to support them.
All's fair in love and war and high-stakes international B2B sales. Wait, that's not true: there's actually quite a lot of regulation on that last bit. Just ask the Korean Fair Trade Commission, which presented American chipmaking giant Qualcomm with a gigantic fine for unfair business practices on Wednesday. According to the KFTC, Qualcomm abused its dominant business position to force its manufacturing partners to pay exorbitant patent licensing fees when selling its widely-used mobile modem chips.
Net neutrality is a tricky beast. The informal principle is usually applied to the idea of data providers charging more for specific services, but it can also extend to telecoms giving away specific services (and, by extension, charging more for everything else). That's the attitude of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, known locally as "Trai," expressed in a statement today. The regulator says that it will not allow any service provider to "offer or charge discriminatory tariffs for data services on basis of content," more or less aligning India's wireless and landline data industry with the principles of net neutrality.
is often called "the Google of Russia," for pretty obvious reasons: it owns and operates the largest search engine (by market share) in the country, and it has expanded into familiar markets like webmail, online video, mapping services, and even an app store. Still, Yandex has found that Google's hold on Android is basically unshakeable at this point, so the company has resolved to take advantage of Android's open source nature and provide superior alternatives to its customers. Ha, just kidding. They're sicking the Russian regulators on Google instead.
If you're an American wireless provider founded in 1978, here's your horoscope for today: avoid US regulatory agencies, customers whom you've charged for text messages without asking, and burly-looking men with open burlap sacks and insistent expressions. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Communications Commission intends to fine Sprint 5 million in punishment for sending unwanted text messages to its customers, then sticking them with the bill.
The US mobile market is weird in that almost all the phones floating around here are locked to one carrier or another. You can usually request an unlock code from the carrier if you are not under contract or still paying off the device, but Sprint is different. It claims it doesn't have any mechanism to unlock phones for use on other US carriers right now, but that's going to change next year.
The President still hasn't weighed in on what he plans to do about the cell phone unlocking ban (he's been a little busy with that sequester business that's gonna cost some people their jobs), but FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is a little closer to the situation. Speaking to TechCrunch, the communications head said the organization plans to "look into" the issue and decide whether action should be taken and, if so, what action there is to take.
When we last heard about Google's deal to buy Motorola, the EU and the US had approved the deal. The one major market we were left waiting on is China and now, according to the Associated Press (known around here as "the other AP"), the country's regulators have given Google the green light. The deal is now expected to close next week.
Meizu, the Chinese electronics manufacturer best known for making a splash this year by announcing its own quad-core device built in-house, took down its site for unknown reasons earlier today. We reached out to the company to find out what's going on with its site. The company responded to let us know that the site will be back soon, once it's been cleaned up to "comply with local regulations."
Google just got one step closer to finalizing its acquisition of Motorola Mobility with approval from the 27-member European Union. Google still needs approval from the U.S. and China, as well as a few other key jurisdictions, before it can bring Motorola into the fold, but at the moment things are looking rosy for the Big G.
It seems there's been some renewed interest in the subject of Block C LTE "no locking" provisions after news that the Motorola RAZR will come equipped with a locked bootloader per Verizon's request. About four months ago, I published an article on this very topic. To summarize: Verizon can basically do almost anything it wants with handsets on its network in the name of reasonable network management - subject to a few limitations and caveats.