Wall Street Journal

AT&T will be the exclusive carrier for Amazon.com 's new smartphone, which is expected to be unveiled soon, according to people familiar with the plans.

The arrangement extends Amazon's relationship with AT&T, which also provides wireless service to Kindle tablets and e-readers. The move could help AT&T attract new subscribers at a time of intense competition among wireless carriers. Apple and Samsung Electronics have a tight grip on the smartphone market in the US with a combined 60% share in the first quarter, according to comScore.

Rival devices from makers like BlackBerry and Nokia have seen their market share shrivel as they failed to keep up with technology. Amazon hopes to distinguish its phone in a crowded market with a screen capable of displaying seemingly three-dimensional images without special glasses, according to a Wall Street Journal article citing people briefed on the plans.

The phone would employ retina-tracking technology embedded in four front-facing cameras, or sensors, to make some images appear to be 3-D, similar to a hologram, according to the story. Amazon is expected to introduce the device at an event in hometown Seattle and has demonstrated versions of the handset to developers in San Francisco and Seattle.

In the race to get the world's fastest mobile Internet service, South Korea and the European Union announced a major new pact to join forces on so-called 5G networks.

The deal sets up a joint group to develop systems, set standards and get radio frequencies ready to accommodate the new technology. The aim is to have a global consensus and vision on 5G by the end of 2015, according to a statement released by the Korean government.

The agreement could be crucial for the EU, which is lagging behind in the global telecommunications race after late and patchy implementation of the current 4G standard. While users can download a one-hour high-definition film in six minutes on 4G mobile Internet, 5G would slash the time to six seconds, according to EU data. Under the plan, the government is aiming for total revenue of 331 trillion won from sales of mobile devices and network equipment that support 5G communications technology, during the 2020-26 period.

From the EU side, in December 2013 the European Commission said that it would allot €700 million ($948 million) and industry partners more than €3 billion to conduct exploratory research into 5G "without delay." The commission, the EU's executive arm, intends to select the first set of projects to fund at the end of 2014, with €125 million to allocate.

The partnership will be led by two groups: Europe's 5G PPP, which is based in Belgium and includes European technology and telecom companies such as Telefónica SA and Nokia Oyj; and its South Korean equivalent, the 5G Forum.

France plans to redouble its push to tighten regulation of big US tech companies at the national and European level, part of Europe's backlash against the growing influence -- and profit -- of a handful of large Internet firms.

The French government will begin public consultations on a new "digital" law for France, and start working on a common strategy with Germany to develop new digital regulations in Europe for companies such as Google and Facebook said Axelle Lemaire, France's junior minister for digital affairs.

"The risk is that the Internet of tomorrow will be paralyzed by monopolies," Lemaire said. "They have the power of life or death over a large number of players in the digital ecosystem."

The country hopes to build on broader pressure facing American Web companies in Europe. A coalition of French and German politicians and companies have been pressuring the European Union to scrap its tentative antitrust agreement with Google to settle concerns that the company abuses its dominant Internet-search engine. At the same time, European officials are digging into tax structures that companies -- often tech firms -- use to reduce the amount of tax they pay on revenue generated in Europe.

Rentrak is making headway in its battle for a bigger piece of the audience measurement business.

The firm’s announcement that it struck a long-term deal to provide local market TV ratings to Fox Television Stations follows similar deals with other TV companies recently. Sony Pictures TV enlisted Rentrak to measure syndicated TV shows and CBS began making use of the service in early 2014.

Nielsen, which has long been the industry leader for TV research, still provides the ratings currency upon which national TV advertising is bought and sold. Nielsen collects that data through surveys of a sample of US homes. But broadcasters, which have complained that Nielsen’s numbers understate their true ratings, can use the deals with Rentrak to put pressure on Nielsen.

Typically when broadcasters hire Rentrak they also keep using Nielsen. In the case of Fox Television Stations, an insider says it struck its deal with Rentrak as it negotiates a new contract with Nielsen, but say one has nothing to do with the other. But Fox’s statement about the Rentrak deal highlights its desire for a more refined audience measure.

“We expect this will accelerate the long overdue progress toward an accurate digital measuring system in local TV, one based on a census, not estimates, and one that measures all screens,” Fox Television Stations chief executive Jack Abernethy said.

Rentrak is appealing because it offers the ability to tie viewership to consumer buying habits, which can be a great advantage to marketers planning out local ads. Rentrak has struck agreements with cable and satellite providers to collect data from millions of set-top boxes in different markets. It matches that data with other data sets about consumer purchases.

The owners of Univision Communications, in their search for an exit, have held preliminary discussions in recent weeks with several media companies, including CBS and Time Warner, according to people familiar with the matter.

Univision is controlled by a consortium of investors including billionaire Haim Saban. The owners are seeking north of $20 billion for the company, according to people familiar with the matter. The group bought Univision for $13.7 billion, including debt, in early 2007.

Univision has long been the dominant Spanish-language broadcaster in the US. The broadcaster's owners had been expected to take the company public in a stock offering in 2015, paving the way for them to exit, though those plans aren't set yet.

The owners had also looked to Mexican media conglomerate Grupo Televisa, which owns a minority stake of Univision and supplies much of its programming, as a possible buyer. Televisa's ability to acquire Univision rests on changes in regulatory rules capping foreign ownership in broadcasters at 25%.

While the Federal Communications Commission voted to allow exemption to that cap on a case-by-case basis last fall, a person familiar with the situation said the regulatory climate for a Televisa acquisition remains uncertain. It is also unclear whether Televisa is interested in buying the company.

Propelled by the country's rapidly growing Hispanic population, Univision's flagship network was the only one of the top five networks to increase its prime time viewership in the 2012-13 season in the coveted 18-49 demographic.

Microsoft is opposing a US government demand for a user’s emails stored on company computers outside the country, in the latest example of tech companies’ willingness to challenge government information requests in the post-Snowden era.

Microsoft in a court filing dated June 6 said it opposed a search warrant for information on a user’s online emails stored in Microsoft’s Ireland data center.

“Congress has not authorized the issuance of warrants that reach outside US territory,” Microsoft wrote in the filing with US District Court in Manhattan.

Some legal experts said as a US company, Microsoft would have to comply with US court orders for emails or other customer information, whether data was stored in Seattle or Dubai. But Microsoft seems willing to test the patchwork of international laws on control of computerized information.

European Union regulators said they have opened formal investigations into the tax practices of Apple Starbucks and a Luxembourg-based division of Fiat, as part of a broader probe into whether multinational companies have enjoyed sweeter tax deals than are permitted under EU law.

The European Commission, which acts as the region's central antitrust authority, said it would examine whether generous tax arrangements granted to global corporations in three EU countries -- Apple in Ireland, Fiat Finance and Trade in Luxembourg and Starbucks in the Netherlands -- amounted to illegal state aid.

“In the current context of tight public budgets, it is particularly important that large multinationals pay their fair share of taxes," said EU antitrust chief Joaquín Almunia.

The commission has requested information from two other EU countries -- the UK, in relation to Gibraltar, and Belgium -- as part of the same broad investigation, Almunia said. At issue are so-called transfer-pricing arrangements, under which companies can redistribute profit within a group by charging for goods or services sold by one subsidiary to another, typically located in different countries. Experts say transfer pricing can help companies to minimize their tax bills.

Almunia said that such arrangements could violate EU rules on state aid if certain companies are allowed to engage in transfer pricing that doesn't reflect market terms.

[Commentary] Enough with complaining that young people these days are addicted to their phones. The question you should be asking is: What do they know that you don't? Believe it or not, there are advantages to using technology like a teen.

I asked a handful of 11- to 17-year-olds to tell me what apps and gear they couldn't live without. They taught me to question my own habits: Why do I use email to talk with friends? Why do I only share my best photos?

I found five practices that could change how you use technology.

1. Only 6% of teens exchange email daily, according to the Pew Research Center. They reserve email for official communications, or venues like school where alternatives are banned. Instead, teens use a fragmented set of messaging apps based on the people they want to communicate with.
2. There's also value in not having every single message stored on an email server. The idea is to just enable a regular conversation.
3. Today, 91% of teens post a photo of themselves on social media sites, according to Pew. The lesson for adults is that you can express things in images that would be time-consuming to write out, or read.
4. Adults assume that young people don't care about privacy. But look closer: Some 58% of teen social-media users say they cloak their messages, according to Pew, using inscrutable pictures and unexplained jokes to communicate in code. The lesson: You can be "public" without having embarrassing things on the permanent record.
5. And the reason teens are such avid early adopters isn't that they have an innate knowledge of tech -- it's that they aren't afraid to break it.

Al Jazeera America is trying to avoid unsealing a lawsuit it filed in 2013 accusing AT&T of improperly keeping the news channel off AT&T's U-verse cable-television lineup.

Al Jazeera got into the US cable market by acquiring Al Gore's Current TV. But AT&T refused to give space to the US version of the Qatar-based channel on U-verse, although it had carried Current TV. Each side said the other breached the affiliation agreement that governs their relationship, but the details on how aren't known because much of the case is under seal.

After being ordered to unseal the complaint, Al Jazeera said it would drop the case, wiping the public record clean of the lawsuit. Journalists, including a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, objected to the sealing.

The Obama Administration is revamping HealthCare.gov and scrapping significant parts of the federal health-insurance marketplace in an effort to avoid the problems that plagued the site's launch last fall, according to presentations to health insurers and interviews with government officials and contractors.

But the makeover -- and the tight timeline to accomplish it -- are raising concerns that consumers could face another rocky rollout this fall when they return to the site to choose health plans. Some key back-end functions, including a system to automate payments to insurers, are running behind schedule, according to a presentation federal officials made to health insurers. Adding to the pressure, HealthCare.gov is still in the midst of transitioning to new government contractors to manage basic functions.

Among the changes in the new version of HealthCare.gov: a revamp of the site's consumer-facing portion including the application for coverage most people will use, as well as the comparison tool that lets them shop for plans, according to slides from a May 20 meeting for insurers held by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees HealthCare.gov. Federal officials told health plans the new versions of some of these functions will need to be tested with insurers before open enrollment begins Nov 15.