FuboTV closed its buy of French live TV streaming company Molotov, it said Wednesday. Molotov will continue to be based in Paris and be led by founder JeanDavid Blanc, who was named president, reporting to fuboTV CEO David Gandler. Molotov brings to fuboTV’s international business a freemium model that it hopes will help drive upsell opportunities for premium add-on channel packages, said the virtual MVPD. Molotov operates in France, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Cameroon and expects to launch soon in the Congo; it operates in Morocco through a partnership with Maroc Telecom. The deal was originally expected to close in Q1 (see 2111100003).

European and U.S. competition agencies will share information to maximize efforts to enforce antitrust laws and regulate digital markets, officials from both regions said Tuesday. FTC Chair Lina Khan, DOJ Antitrust Division Chief Jonathan Kanter and European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager issued the statement at the EU-U.S. Joint Technology Competition Policy Dialogue. The collaborative effort will include “sharing insights and experience with an aim towards coordinating as much as possible on policy and enforcement,” they said: Agencies will “explore new ways to facilitate coordination and knowledge and information exchanges to ensure that enforcement authorities are sufficiently equipped to address new challenges together.”

ICANN continues to struggle with its Whois policy for domain name registrations, nearly four years after the EU general data protection regulation took effect in May 2018. At that time, it adopted a "temporary specification" to allow domain name registries and registrars to continue to comply with existing ICANN contract requirements for handling personal data while also complying with the GDPR. It also launched an expedited policy development process (EPDP) to decide (Phase 1) whether to confirm the specification and then (Phase 2) to discuss whether to create a standardized access model to nonpublic registration data (SSAD). The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council approved a final report for Phase 2 in September 2020, but in response to a request by some EPDP members it also launched a Phase 2A to look into two additional subjects: (1) Differentiation of legal vs. natural persons' registration data. (2) The feasibility of unique contacts to have a uniform anonymized email address. ICANN now is seeking comments on the Phase 2 draft final report. The lengthy process resulted in some recommendations for ICANN board consideration -- but not in any kind of consensus, leading one ICANN-watcher to complain that the internet body's Whois policy "continues to fail." ICANN is supposed to ensure the continued availability of Whois data to the widest extent possible while maintaining the stability and security of the domain name system, blogged Perkins Coie intellectual property attorney Fabricio Vayra. Instead, the latest recommendations on Whois "contain no changes to the ineffectual status quo, and do not require registries and registrars to do anything" to distinguish between legal and natural persons. Nearly every ICANN constituency filed "minority statements" in the Phase 2 draft report objecting to the outcome of the policy process. Now ICANN is also trying to develop a system to help board members assess SSAD proposals. This is the beginning of a longer conversation for if and when ICANN decides to implement an SSAD, said Yuko Yokoyama, ICANN strategy initiative team project director, at a Nov. 18 webinar. The SSAD "is a brand-new, never-before-built system that affects people globally," an ICANN spokesperson emailed. The assessment that is needed to design an effective, efficient system to help the board's deliberations on the recommendations "is time-consuming and critical." The goal is to "get it done right and to take the time needed to do that." The ODP will result in an operational design assessment, expected to go to for board consideration by the end of February, she said. Asked whether there are concerns that it's taking so long to resolve Whois issues, the Belgian Data Protection Authority, which has lead jurisdiction over ICANN, emailed Friday that it and the European Data Protection Board "have dedicated significant time and resources to support ICANN's compliance efforts with meetings and guidance." The last meetings occurred in 2020, and the Belgian DPA "stands readily available and remain[s] committed to pursue those efforts."

The U.S. didn't cite any "truly urgent reason" why revocation of China Telecom Americas' common-carrier authorizations must happen before judicial review, China Telecom told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a reply Monday (docket 21-1233). An emergency motion by CTA seeking a stay of the order revoking its domestic and international authorities (see 2111150025) is pending. CTA said the FCC has never previously refused a hearing before a neutral adjudicator for a contested common-carrier revocation, and that alone "presents a substantial issue warranting review." DOJ and the commission, in opposition to the motion last week, said the termination of the Section 214 authorizations is backed by the record and that how the FCC went about the revocation complied with the Constitution, agency rules and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The Near Field Communication Forum added Huawei as a sponsor member and gave the Chinese telecom maker a seat on its board, said the standards body Tuesday. Others joining the NFC Forum: (1) EM Microelectronic, as principal member; (2) Tokai Rika, associate member; (3) CEC Huada Electronic Design and Metaboards and Sichuan Kiloway Technologies, as implementer members; and (4) Chinese University of Hong Kong, as nonprofit member. NFC is a standard feature on the world's nearly 3 billion smartphones, said the organization.

EU governments are keen to support GAIA-X, an initiative to develop European cloud and data services, they said at a Thursday hybrid conference. Policymakers, scientists and businesses worldwide are working to create a federated and secure data infrastructure that will enable data-sharing by enterprises and citizens in a way that allows them to keep control over it, GAIA-X's website says. Government officials from Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands said they want Europe to have digital sovereignty that aligns with EU rules. France wants GAIA-X to provide visibility and transparency to users on sovereignty and protection against extraterritorial regulation, said Mathieu Weill, French Ministry of Economy digital economy department head. The project's other pillar is creating data spaces, and Germany wants an "active and engaged community" to bring shared data spaces to life, said Stefan Schnorr, Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy digital and innovation policy department head. The Netherlands is active in data-sharing covering thousands of businesses and wants to stimulate public sector participation, said Jos de Groot, Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs telecom market department director. GAIA-X needs a human-centric perspective and a clear process for sharing data, said Carme Artigas, Spanish secretary of state-digitization and artificial intelligence. Other countries outside European are also developing cloud infrastructure, so solutions are needed to allow data to be transferable among systems, Schnorr said; the key is for data to be able to be moved transparently, securely and in a trusted manner. GAIA-X faces criticism because its members include U.S. and Chinese companies. The project is private sector-driven, said Weill: Governments are here to support it and ensure it upholds European values but have no say in membership. The European project needs a global infrastructure, Schnorr added.

About 90% of 5G cellsites in emerging markets will operate using sub-6 GHz bands by 2026, ABI Research projected Thursday. Mid-band will dominate deployments, ABI said. “Sub-6 GHz bands will provide the best-in-class coverage while catering for sufficient capacity in emerging markets,” the firm said: “While millimeter-wave, with its larger amount of bandwidth, can meet very high-capacity demand use cases, its poor propagation characteristics and cost of deployment puts it in a disadvantage compared to sub-6 GHz bands for 5G.” Low-band will be allocated for 5G in 50% of countries, compared with mid-band in 87%, ABI said.

China Telecom Americas told the FCC it has a “tentative arrangement” to sell its MVNO customer base to another company, and asked for an extra 30 days before it must discontinue its resold mobile services operations. The buyer's name was redacted from the filing, posted Wednesday in docket 20-109. A Nov. 2 order gave the company 60 days to end any domestic or international services that it provides pursuant to its Communications Act Section 214 authority.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission warned of a continuing security threat from Huawei but said U.S. sanctions are having an effect. In Q2, “Huawei reported a 38 percent year-on-year fall in revenue, the third straight quarter of decline,” said the annual report to Congress released Wednesday: “Huawei executives have attributed their troubles to U.S. sanctions, which restricted the company’s access to chips used in many of its phones.” Huawei and ZTE are gaining ground in Latin America, with China offering subsidies and government support for using technology from the two vendors, the commission said. “Huawei has already become a leader in the region’s mobile device market and is a top competitor to build out 5G infrastructure in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico,” it said: “By integrating Chinese technologies into the region’s digital infrastructure, China is setting the stage for building long-term commercial dependencies as the region’s market develops.” China can also shape 5G and other standards in the region. The panel said China is poised to make cloud computing gains in developing countries. “Chinese cloud computing companies have thrived in a protected home market and with few exceptions can operate freely in the United States while U.S. companies face barriers in China.”

Sanctions imposed on Afghanistan will hurt its internet, an Urban Media Institute webinar was told Tuesday. Afghanistan lags neighbors Iran and Pakistan, where the internet emerged in the 1990s, said Mujibullah Shams, a member of the National Information Technology Professional Association of Afghanistan (NITPAA). Afghanistan was engaged in civil war then and, before 2002, the Taliban banned Western technologies such as broadcasting and the internet. When the new government took over in 2003, the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) .af was delegated to a government ministry. Around 327,0000 IP addresses are allocated to the country, which has about 12 million users. Afghanistan faces "enormous challenges," said NITPAA President Mohibullah Utmankhil, a professor at Kabul Polytechnic University. About 25 provinces have long been connected to fiber networks, but foreign aid supported these: There are some 63 registered ISPs, but since aid organizations pulled out, they're suffering financially. If this continues, Afghanistan could lose internet connections with its neighbors; and even maintaining its current IT infrastructure is in doubt, he said. Others such as Microsoft and Amazon are limiting their cloud services to the country, he said. It's reported that less than 10% of .af domain names are hosted in-country, and if anywhere they're hosted imposes sanctions, that may affect those domains, he said. The ccTLD itself is outside Taliban control, but the government has apparently locked all gov.af domains, he noted. The Afghan internet community is committed to bringing the technology to the country, said Digital Medusa Director Farzaneh Badii. But the ccTLD .af could become dormant if registrars can't register af. domain names, or if the Taliban or some other regime takes control of the ccTLD, she said. Even registries that manage generic TLDs such as .com have become "sensitive" about providing services to residents of sanctioned nations, she said. Another worry is that IP addresses could be pulled back from Afghanistan, severing its connection to the world, she noted. ICANN doesn't play a day-to-day role in ccTLD management because that's a local responsibility, emailed a spokesperson. The decision to remove responsibility for a domain to a different entity must be arrived at locally, including by the government in charge, and would be submitted to ICANN for recognition, she wrote. The .af domain is managed by the Ministry of Communications IT, she added. "Any ICANN assessment relating to a requested change is limited to ensuring ongoing stability of the domain is preserved and the request is in accordance with local decision-making."