With a new European Commission having taken the place of the one that proposed the Telecom Package, and with that bundle of laws not having achieved final approval yet, hard-won battles may need to be fought again.
Europe’s last antitrust chief, Joaquin Almunia, couldn’t settle his department’s four-year case against Google, keen though he was to do so. Now the new European Commission is in place, his successor, Margrethe Vestager, has said she wants to meet with “those most directly affected” by Google’s anticompetitive practices. That would include vertical search engines such as Yelp and Foundem, publishers and consumer rights groups. “We are talking about fast moving markets – I have to be sure that we have all the facts up to date to get it right,” Vestager said in a Tuesday statement. “The issues at stake in our investigations have a big potential impact on many players… I will therefore need some time to decide on the next steps.”
Günther Oettinger reckons the best way to get ISPs to invest in their networks is to make it harder for their customers to escape. Spot the problem.
Günther Oettinger told Handelsblatt on Tuesday that he wants to introduce an EU-wide copyright law that would extract money from U.S. firms such as Google, as well as from European users.
Neelie Kroes hasn’t given a public opinion about zero-rated mobile content and apps, but her office has told anti-zero-rating advocates that it’s a competition issue rather than a net neutrality issue. It’s up to her successor, Andrus Ansip, to clear things up.
There may be genuine public interest in knowing how the rights of millions of Europeans are affected by British spy tactics, the ombudsman has noted.
Günther Oettinger, the man who will likely oversee much of Europe’s digital policy from later this year, made a pretty startling slip-up during his confirmation hearing.
The allegations are based on an email from early 2012, in which U.S. commerce officials say EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström was concerned about new European data protection proposals and kept them updated about timing and other details.
The Center for Digital Democracy has accused 30 companies, including Adobe, AOL and Salesforce.com, of breaking a U.S.-Europe data protection agreement — and slammed the FTC itself for not properly policing them.
Telefonica’s takeover of KPN’s German carrier E-Plus has moved closer to finalization after the European Commission gave its blessing on Wednesday. However, the Commission’s approval is highly conditional – because the merger will reduce the number of network-owning German operators to three, Telefonica would need to sell 30 percent of the merged company’s network capacity to small virtual operators. It would also need to sell a new player some of its spectrum and other assets, and offer wholesale 4G services to “all interested players,” in order to preserve competition in the German market.
