December 2013

The line could get very crackly soon in Europe’s telecoms sector. An €8.5 billionn deal between Telefónica and KPN to merge their German mobile units could head for the regulatory thicket if European Union antitrust officials open an in-depth probe. Such a move would not be surprising.

The merger would cut the number of big players in the region’s largest mobile market from four to three and create a business to rival that of current leaders Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone. It took a year to secure approval for similar four-to-three consolidation in the smaller Austrian market in 2012 – and that came with conditions attached. This time, remedies will be key, not least for other operators assessing the regulatory concessions to be paid for consolidation. Given the need for this revenue-challenged sector to squeeze out efficiency gains, more clarity on those concessions is badly needed.

[Commentary] As long as your mobile phone is on, your wireless carrier keeps track of your location. It’s relatively easy, technologically and legally, for law enforcement to obtain and sort through phone companies’ so-called geolocation records. State and local police -- not just federal officials -- are collecting these records in investigations that have nothing to do with national security, the domain in which debates on surveillance have occurred lately.

Lawmakers -- state and federal -- should draw new lines. Some have already proposed requiring a warrant for geolocation data. It’s worth debating under which circumstances that might make sense; for example, long-term tracking, whether of individual suspects or lots of people using the same cell tower, would be a good candidate for a higher legal standard. Other proposals include requiring that geolocation requests be as narrowly tailored as possible, with clear explanations for their requested scope. Requirements should not be too burdensome in emergency situations -- following a kidnapping, say. But law enforcement officers could be required to produce a reviewable, after-the-fact document explaining why they invoked emergency powers. Most important is to prevent the misuse of innocent Americans’ location records caught up in any dragnet search. There should be strict procedures on handling and retaining tower-dump information; anything irrelevant to a bona-fide investigation should be ignored and then discarded. Once police find the needle, they shouldn’t go searching through the rest of the haystack.

[Commentary] It's been two years since AT&T's attempted purchase of T-Mobile fell apart. Now, T-Mobile is reportedly in Sprint's crosshairs.

Whether Sprint succeeds in buying T-Mobile will depend a lot on the Federal Communications Commission. While the regulatory approval process could sink the proposed deal over antitrust concerns, the FCC may also conclude that a merger would preserve wireless competition. Either way, the report suggests that T-Mobile is still a big, tasty morsel -- and that's a sad thing, because with the least to lose of the four major carriers, T-Mobile has been the most willing to challenge the rest of the industry's modus operandi. The business needs a T-Mobile. Its "uncarrier" attitude offers an important foil to the likes of Verizon and AT&T. The company's tactics, which include divorcing handset prices from contract payments, free international data roaming and a habit of openly needling AT&T, have won it hundreds of thousands of new subscribers recently, with more growth likely on the way. T-Mobile expects to finish the year having added 1.8 million post-paid customers.

Merging with Sprint wouldn't necessarily be the end of all that. But the deal potentially puts a relatively young and important experiment at risk.

A participant in a White House-sponsored review of surveillance activities described as “shameful” an apparent decision to leave most of the National Security Agency’s controversial bulk spying intact.

Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Institute, said that the review panel he advised is at risk of missing an opportunity to restore confidence in US surveillance practices. “The review group was searching for ways to make the most modest pivot necessary to continue business as usual,” Meinrath said. Headed by the CIA’s former deputy director, Michael Morrell, the review is expected to deliver its report to President Barack Obama, although it is less clear when and how substantially its report will be available to the public. National security council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said she would have no further comment “on a report that is not yet final and hasn’t yet been submitted to the White House”. Leaks about the review group’s expected recommendations to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal strengthened Meinrath and other participants’ long-standing suspicions that much of the NSA’s sweeping spy powers would survive. The Times quoted an anonymous official familiar with the group saying its report “says we can’t dismantle these programs, but we need to change the way almost all of them operate”. Civil libertarians in both parties and both houses of Congress are backing a bill, the USA Freedom Act, that would prevent the NSA's bulk collection of Americans’ data without individualized, court-approved suspicion of wrongdoing. The Obama administration has yet to take a formal position on the bill, which supporters claim has 120 congressional co-sponsors but has yet to pass. The Open Technology Institute’s Meinrath said he told White House chief of staff Denis McDonough that the bulk surveillance revelations represented a “reputational crisis” for the US. “I think the Obama administration is going to be shocked in their own special way by just how little impact this has in turning around public perception of what they’re doing,” he said.