February 2013

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings sees the company's first foray into original series, House of Cards as more of a long-term investment than a short-term payoff.

Speaking during a Morgan Stanley media and technology investor conference, Hastings cautioned that he doesn't want investors to read too much into House of Cards' performance, noting that it just one small part of Netflix's offerings. "It will be a big part of our press, and it is already, but that doesn't mean it's a big part of the total viewing or why a subscriber joins." He argued the real value of Cards won't be determined until it returns for its second season. "In the beginning, you're really establishing a franchise," he said. "Most of us, there's so many new shows developed, that we wait and see." He did say however, that he was very pleased with the show's early returns, though didn't give any concrete data. "House of Cards has been a great success for us, as we'd hoped." With the critical acclaim that House of Cards has received, Hastings isn't putting additional pressure on some of the other original series that Netflix has on tap for the rest of the year. "We really have a very broad set of demographics within the Netflix service," he said.

Governments spying on each other is nothing new. Nor is corporate spying: The U.S. textile industry began after American industrial spies stole factory plans from 18th century Britain. But Dan McWhorter, managing director of cyber security firm Mandiant, says the scale of China’s state-sponsored theft of data from U.S. companies is unprecedented and difficult for a democratic society to grasp. "There’s such a firm divide between government and corporation, that it’s hard to wrap your head around," says McWhorter. "In a communist government, the government and industry are tied together and they’re hard to distinguish at times."

Europe’s top telecoms regulator has pledged to use European Union treaty powers to force through plans to create a single market for mobile services across the region as part of attempts to drag the industry from “near collapse.”

In a speech to a closed meeting with ministers and telecoms industry chief executives at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Neelie Kroes, Europe’s digital commissioner, will outline an “action plan” to put the region “at the heart of the mobile industry it established and once dominated.” She has identified €27 billion of investment needed to create a modern mobile telecoms market. he plan includes improving operators’ access to the spectrum they need for mobile services, as well as €50 million of funding for research to deliver “5G” mobile technology by 2020. In a strongly worded statement, Kroes will say that Europe’s mobile networks need to be dragged from “today’s near collapse to sustainability”, with plans to push through the creation of a single telecoms market across the region.

South Koreans enjoy some of the world's fastest and cheapest data networks, with three companies providing ultra high-speed connections even to the most remote mountain villages. One reason is the 2002 transformation of government-owned monopoly, Korea Telecom, now known as KT Corp., into a private company whose survival is staked on driving future services, ranging from consumer entertainment to industrial factory management. For the past four years, the company has been led by Lee Suk-chae, a 67-year-old former communications minister whose aggressive embrace of market competition belies the nearly three decades he spent in government. Lee Suk-chae talked to the Journal about the difficulties related to the company's transformation and why global telecom operators should drop lucrative practices—such as charging roaming fees to international travelers.