World Trade Organization members extended a moratorium on customs duties on data transfers. Renewed at every opportunity since 1998, it remains at least until the WTO’s conference in June. Members also agreed Tuesday “to continue work under the existing 1998 work programme on e-commerce in the beginning part of 2020,” the body said. The International Chamber of Commerce said the actions underscore the continued importance of the body, despite no functioning dispute settlement mechanism due to appellate vacancies. "The shutdown of the Appellate Body is, without doubt, a blow -- but we shouldn’t slip into exaggerated claims about the imminent death of the WTO. ... WTO committees will continue the essential daily work of resolving trade frictions, while new rule making -- in areas such as services, investment and e-commerce -- is advancing at a rate not seen for over a decade,” said ICC Secretary General John Denton.

Proposed Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security rules on emerging technologies may not be published until early next year, another sign of delay that has plagued the rules since their November 2018 announcement. Commerce has three emerging technology rule proposals in “various stages of clearance,” Hillary Hess, BIS Regulatory Policy Division director, told Tuesday's Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee meeting. The agency hopes to publish one proposal before the end of the year, Hess said, urging committee members take any prediction with “at least a handful of salt.” The process has been “very fraught,” she said. “There’s not a lot of year left, but it’s still theoretically possible.” Also at the meeting, restrictions on Huawei were discussed (see 1912110039).

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and his Canadian counterpart, Ian Scott, chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, completed their first official cross-border call using new authentication technology for combating illegal caller ID spoofing, said the FCC Monday. “Spoofed, scam robocalls are an international problem,” said Pai and Scott. Americans and Canadians “are being bombarded by these calls, which are too often used to defraud consumers and target some of our most vulnerable communities.” The FCC and CRTC “are committed to combating robocalls by aggressively attacking the use of caller ID spoofing.”

Huawei petitioned the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the FCC banning rural eligible telecom carriers from using USF programs to buy equipment that could come from the Chinese firm, the company said Thursday. Last month, the FCC voted, for national security, to ban Huawei and ZTE equipment on networks bought with USF dollars (see 1911220033). The FCC declined comment now.

Global semiconductor sales were $36.6 billion in October, a 2.9 percent increase sequentially from September but down 13.1 percent from October 2018, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association Tuesday. It’s projecting 2019 sales will decrease 12.8 percent before rising 5.9 percent in 2020 and 6.3 percent in 2021. Though the market “slumped somewhat” in 2019, “the recent trend is more positive, with month-to-month sales increasing in October for the fourth consecutive month,” said SIA.

The FTC announced settlements Tuesday with four companies that “allegedly misrepresented” participation in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework. Click Labs, Incentive Services, Global Data Vault and TDARX falsely claimed participation, the agency alleged. Click Labs and Incentive Services also “claimed to participate in the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield framework,” the agency said. The companies face civil penalties of up to $42,530 per violation for future infractions and are barred from further misrepresentation. They didn’t comment.

The EU shouldn't ignore U.S. urgings that it create national standards on potential network-based threats to privacy, security and intellectual property when it discusses 5G safeguards this week in Brussels, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote Monday for Politico. China's Huawei has a troubling business track record of ties to the Chinese People's Liberation Army, bribery and IP theft, but securing 5G goes further than blocking any one company from building those networks, he wrote. Huawei didn't comment. Pompeo said such suppliers as Nokia, Samsung and Ericsson don't pose the same dangers as Chinese companies.

A U.S. foundation representing organizations in the semiconductor technology sector will move to Switzerland due to concerns over U.S. trade restrictions, according to a Nov. 25 Reuters report. RISC-V Foundation, a nonprofit, said it has not yet faced restrictions but is “concerned about possible geopolitical disruption,” according to Reuters. The move comes as the Commerce Department restricts sales to certain Chinese technology companies and prepares to release proposed restrictions on emerging and foundational technologies. A spokesperson for RISC-V declined to answer questions but referred to a message on the foundation’s website that says the move “has the effect of calming concerns of political disruption to the open collaboration model.” The company stressed that it does not have any commercial interest in the goods that may be restricted and there have “not been any export restrictions on the Foundation in the U.S.” A Commerce Department spokesperson said its export controls are designed to “ensure bad actors cannot acquire technology that harms U.S. citizens or interests, while promoting innovation to fuel continued American technological leadership.” Commerce “meets regularly” with industry members for input, the spokesperson said, including on “technological developments, market conditions and the effects of its regulations.”

The migration to 5G “isn't just about wireless,” said Analog Devices CEO Vincent Roche on a fiscal Q4 call Tuesday. It will also require “a complete re-architecting of the core and wireline network to meet the 5G vision of gigabit speeds, low latency and high reliability demanded by mission-critical applications,” he said. “This network expansion will require a significant upgrade of the backhaul system, opening a new revenue opportunity,” he said. The chipmaker's ambitions include supplying optical and "point-to-point microwave solutions" to 5G networks, he said. Its 5G infrastructure design wins “are moving to low-volume production in 2020, ahead of a more meaningful ramp in 2021,” he said. Analog Devices expects 5G demand to “remain modest” for the rest of calendar 2019, “with a positive inflection in demand to occur in the fiscal second quarter as the global 5G rollout ramps,” said Chief Financial Officer Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah.

DOJ “presently has no intention” to mount an antitrust challenge to the GSM Association’s newly “promulgated” Remote SIM Provisioning (RSP) specification for embedded SIMs (eSIMs), as long as they're based on revised and improved standard-setting procedures, it told GSMA in a business review letter Wednesday. GSMA requested the letter in July. GSMA's new standards practices, called AA.35, are "meant to allay competition concerns by yielding standards that limit the design of RSP and eSIMs only to the extent it would be beneficial to the diverse group of interested parties in the mobile wireless industry,” said DOJ. The department over a two-year investigation "developed significant concerns" that GSMA’s process for fashioning the previous RSP spec was “deeply flawed and enabled competitors to coordinate anticompetitively,” it said. GSMA practices gave its mobile network operator members “certain privileges not available to other members and participants, “allowing that single interest group to exercise undue influence in the standard-setting process,” said DOJ. Those practices amounted to “an agreement among competitors to limit options available in the market in such a way as to benefit the incumbent operator members by reducing their competitive pressures,” it said. The department believes AA.35 has “sufficient protections to minimize the chances of anticompetitive self-dealing inside the GSMA, it said. DOJ will “closely observe” how the new procedures are “applied,” and whether they succeed “in promoting interoperability without marginalizing non-operators’ ability to represent their interests in preserving the maximum freedom to respond to consumer demand for innovation,” it said. DOJ's letter "agreed" that AA.35 industry standards "benefit consumers by helping technologies work together at lower costs," said the association Wednesday. "GSMA standards are always voluntary and reflect an industry consensus." DOJ's investigation "reviewed millions of documents covering a multi-year and complex process to establish common standards for eSIM technologies," it said. Wednesday's letter is "conclusive that the agency found no violation of antitrust laws,” it said. GSMA will release the new eSIM standards "within months, it said.