Monthly Archives: March 2021

A survey of 1,500 tech employees found that 77% of them think that Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have too much power. Only 8% disagreed.

Tech workers were also asked about a wide range of other tech issues, including working with law enforcement, China, and legislating AI

The survey was carried out by Protocol, from the publisher of Politico.

To take a pulse of where tech employees across the country stand on key issues facing the industry, Protocol is introducing its first Tech Employee Survey, a survey of 1,504 employees nationwide, from C-suite level executives to associates. They hail mostly from large tech companies almost 40% of respondents work at companies with annual revenue over $500 million and most of the companies have more than 1,000 employees.

The first topic was whether tech giants are too powerful.

A whopping 78% of the tech employees we surveyed agreed that the tech industry is too powerful, with just 11% disagreeing. The same goes for Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple. Over 77% of respondents said those companies have too much power, and just over 8% disagreed.

Not only did the majority say that the industry is too powerful, but around 40% also said that tech does more harm than good. Only about 45% of tech employees disagreed, signaling that even within the industry, tech workers worry about the negative impact technology is having on the world.

And yet, remedies are in short supply. More than 68% want their companies to partner with or be acquired by a Big Tech player, and three quarters said Big Tech companies should be allowed to acquire other firms. Just over 40% think that Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple should be broken up. Despite their concerns about techs power and negative influence, tech employees dont see antitrust enforcement as the solution.

On China, a majority think the US government has been too aggressive, worrying that an equally robust response from China could cripple US tech companies.

The Trump administration adopted a hawkish stance toward Chinas tech industry, placing dozens of companies on the countrys trade blacklist and signing multiple executive orders aimed at barring Chinese social media apps most notably TikTok from the US. Tech employees by and large said they think the standoff should end, expressing an openness toward working more closely with Chinese tech firms.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said they agree that US restrictions on Chinese technology companies have gone too far, while 28% said theyre neutral on it. And 60% agreed that U.S. tech companies should work more closely with Chinese tech companies. Ultimately, a majority of respondents said they believe the future of the tech industry is at stake, with 58% agreeing that a cold war with China could cripple U.S. tech companies.

There are limits to their openness to Chinese tech, however 46% said they agree Chinese telecom company Huawei should be banned from the US.

Theres concern about AI, especially when it comes to demonstrated issues of AI systems picking up, and amplifying, biases present in society.

AI can supercharge real-world biases and disproportionately harm people of color. Seventy-three percent of respondents said they agree that the government should regulate AI. Only 9% disagreed, and 18% said they are neutral.

You can check out the other findings over at Protocol. (If you came to the comments to claim the sample size is meaningless, you can get a quick grounding in sample theory here, and a more detailed one here.)

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77% of tech employees think Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have too much power - 9to5Mac

(Bloomberg) -- Ugandas shutdown of social-media sites in January, right before a disputed election handed President Yoweri Museveni a sixth term, dealt a devastating blow to rice trader Elizabeth Nagunda: Her sales slowed to a near-halt.

Before I would advertise, market my products on Facebook, WhatsApp, and even get customer orders via those platforms, she said in an interview in Kampala, the capital. I cant run any more adverts online. Even if I do, there are no people to view them.

Facebook Inc. and Google are spending billions trying to get more people online in Africa, but the internet giants are now facing a backlash from governments worried about social-media platforms being used to remove them from power.

These platforms, including Twitter, gave opposition politicians access to previously unreachable audiences and have been used to organize protestsmost notably during the Arab Spring that toppled leaders from Tunisia to Egypt.

Now governments in sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly ordering internet service providers to shut their gateways or throttle data traffic when confronted with dissent or the threat of electoral defeat.

Facebook, Twitter and other companies have pushed back, condemning the disruptions and blocking accounts they allege are being used to undermine democracyactions that further raised the authorities ire and led to several outright bans on their services. Access Now and the #KeepItOn Coalition, which campaign for an end to internet shutdowns, documented 20 intentional disruptions in a dozen African nations last year.

Ethiopia was among the worst violators of online freedom in 2020, imposing at least four outages in a bid to contain ethnic unrest and restrict the flow of information during a conflict in its northern Tigray region.

More curbs have been introduced in 2021. The latest was in Senegal, where the government imposed an outage earlier this month after the arrest of an opposition leader triggered the most violent demonstrations in years.

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Not only do internet shutdowns interfere with the rights to access information, freedom of expression, and other fundamental freedoms, they are used in attempts to hide egregious human-rights violations, Access Now said in a report published March 3.

Tech executives have long preached about offering their services to the estimated 3 billion people who remain offline, about 700 million of them in Africa. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has argued that connectivity is a basic human right.

Early endeavors to get more people online seemed more fanciful than serious. Facebook tried to build a gigantic drone to provide high-altitude connectivity but grounded the Aquila project in 2018 after only two test flights, the first of which ended in what was described as a structural failure. Googleusing a project called Loonattempted something similar with helium-filled balloons sailing into the stratosphere, scrapping it in 2021 after the unit failed to develop a viable business model.

Now the tech companies are taking the opposite approach, driven in part by a desire to win over a vast swathe of new users. Facebook and some of the worlds largest telecom carriers are spending almost $1 billion building a sub-sea internet cable that will connect Europe to the Middle East and 16 African countries. Google has announced its own sub-sea cable connecting Europe to Africa, using a route down the west coast.

For now, companies have limited scope to counter internet shutdowns. Social media platforms are also trapped between attempting to be seen to counter misinformation and working with local governments to provide internet access.

Tougher Stance

Telecommunications companies say theyll lose their operating licenses if they ignore government orders to halt or restrict internet access. Even so, theyve faced accusations that they are overly accommodating toward repressive regimes and complicit in denying people access to an essential public good.

Companies should definitely be taking a tougher stance, said Nic Cheeseman, a professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham. If a company wants to depict itself as being about freedom of informationas most telecommunication companies dothen they must defend media freedom, even in cases where it might hurt their business interests to do so.

MTN Group Ltd., Africas largest wireless carrier by sales, responded to queries by referring to a statement published on its website that states: Our response to digital human rights is underpinned by a sound policy and due-diligence framework. Our approach is consistent with internationally recognized principles, while ensuring that MTN remains compliant with the terms of our various jurisdictional legal obligations and license conditions.

Rival Vodacom Group Ltd. said it seeks to balance its responsibility to respect its customers right to privacy and freedom of expression against its legal obligation to respond to the authorities lawful demands, while safeguarding its employees. Airtel Africa Ltd. and Orange SA, which also have wireless operations on the continent, declined to comment.

Shutdowns are hugely harmful, and undermine the public conversation and the rights of people to make their voices heard, Twitter said in an emailed response. The long-term result of this could be an internet that is less open, less free and less empowering for all.

Even temporary disruptions of internet services have tremendous, negative human rights, economic and social consequences, Facebook said in a written response to questions.

Its questionable whether governments derive any benefit from trying to stop their citizens from communicating: Research published in 2019 by Jan Rydzak, an associate director at Stanford Universitys Global Digital Policy Incubator, showed social media curbs tended to fuel rather than reduce violence; and internet shutdowns in Algeria and Sudan did nothing to quell protestsand may in fact have stoked outrage and accelerated their leaders downfalls.

Besides stifling democracy and free speech in the worlds poorest continent, the disruptions have had far-reaching economic consequences, hindering business activity, curbing tax revenue and deterring foreign investment. Top10VPN, a U.K.-based digital privacy and security research group, estimates that shutdowns cost the sub-Saharan African region an estimated $237.4 million last year.

In Ethiopia, the communications blackout prevented accurate reporting on the conflict in Tigray and fettered aid agencies trying to help tens of thousands of displaced people. Phone connections have been restored to major towns and cities, but data services remain suspended.

The absence of a vibrant, independent mainstream media in many African nations makes a lack of access to online content all the more problematic.

News about us and news about the values that we stand for does not feature on local radio or local TV, Bobi Wine, a Ugandan pop star-turned-politician who alleges that the vote he lost to Museveni was rigged, said in an interview with Johannesburg-based 702 Talk Radio. Social media is our only platform to express ourselves and communicate the raw reality of what is happening in Uganda.

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Tech Giants' Dreams of Free Internet Wither in African Backlash - Yahoo Finance

Do tech giants like Google, Apple or Facebook have too much power? How big a threat to democracy is their growing influence? These topics are highlighted in the latest Nordic Talks podcast, featuring three specialists, among them EU commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

The tech giants gather enormous amounts of information about us, which is often sold and distributed for commercial purposes. And their platforms are used by hate campaigns and for sharing disinformation in a way that many people believe is putting severe pressure on democracy as we know it.

The Nordic countries know all too well about the power struggle of our digital age. This region is the most digitalised in the world and has some of the longest-running traditions of democracy.

In this episode of the Nordic talk series we meet Margrethe Vestager, the Danish EU commissioner for competition policy, Hanne Aho, president of the Union of Journalists in Finland, and Shoshana Zuboff, author and Charles Edward Wilson professor emeritus at Harvard Business School.

In the podcast they talk about three major questions: What does the power held by big tech mean for a democratic society, what should be the responsibilities for digital gate keepers and do common people have any power to influence these giants?

"Right now, in particular because of big tech, we are being more and more polarised", says Vestager - internationally known for fighting with the big tech giants in her role as EU commissioner.

Shoshana Zuboff, author of the bestselling book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, says: "What we are witnessing is what I'm calling an epistemic coup, that means a revolution in the ownership and concentration of knowledge".

You can listen to the newest Nordic Talk podcast, Big Tech's Threat to Democracy here or your preferred podcast service here.

The podcast is part of the Nordic Council of Ministers' concept Nordic Talks, a podcast series in which some of the brightest Nordic minds discuss global challenges with people from around the world. The Nordic Talks project is part of the strategy for international branding of the Nordic Region.

The Nordic Council of Ministers and the Nordic Council are the main forums for official Nordic cooperation, which involves Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and land.

Read about the Nordic Council of Ministers Vision 2030 here and here.

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Podcast: 'Big Tech' and the threat to democracy - EUobserver

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Syntropy, a trailblazing Internet infrastructure company, announced that Shawn Hakl, former SVP at Verizon, and Roman Pacewicz, former Chief Product Officer at AT&T, have joined the webtech pioneers advisory board to help it scale the next generation of the Internet. The pairing shows that truly innovative solutions can make seasoned veterans excited about the future.

Syntropy has built a secure, programmable, and user-centric new internet layer on top of existing networks -- an overlay where encryption, fault tolerance, and optimized performance are automatically enabled for anything and everything connected to it with a few clicks. Its tech is completely compatible with the current public internet, and includes tools for developers to start building highly secure connections immediately -- tools which, in the first month of release, have already been used to do everything from improving performance of Minecraft servers to quickly establishing secure and optimized blockchain infrastructure.

While the public release of its product was announced in January 2021, Syntropy has already attracted heavy-duty star power. Started by a co-founder of Equinix and alums of companies such as JP Morgan, it has been privately backed by angel investors spanning current and former executives at Fortune 500 companies, financial innovators, and early stage blockchain investors. Syntropy has already formalized relationships with tech giants like Cisco and is in pilot projects with many others.

With their extensive experience at Microsoft, AT&T, and Verizon, advisory board members Hakl and Pacewicz will help drive strategy and build relationships for the growing company. Their collaboration with Syntropy has already generated buzz with customers, partners, and advisors.

Stacy Shulman, Vice President at Intel, lauded the move saying, Syntropy shouldnt just be a private secret for savvy developers, but a big part of how programmable network as a service is deployed at hyperscale by all the big players -- and Shawn and Roman are just the people to help drive that scale.

Syntropys partner and advisor who helped facilitate the relationships, Tony Greenberg of boutique consultancy RampRate, joined in saying, during our 20 years of work helping Fortune 1000 CTOs build flexible deals with trusted suppliers, we've navigated highly unique competing visions that these market leaders have for the future of the Internet. It takes not only groundbreaking technology, but a powerful social impact message to get them excited. And Syntropy has come up with just that - allowing future networks to be optimized for anything, whether its speed, reliability, or, say, carbon emissions of various networks, while also addressing pressing security needs and overcoming traffic manipulation schemes.

Shawn Hakl is a well-established figure with deep experience in the technology and telecom industries that are central to Syntropys business goals. Independent from his role at Syntropy, he currently serves as a partner at Microsoft, overseeing the development of Microsoft's Azure for Operators strategy. Prior to joining Microsoft, Hakl worked at Verizon for nearly 20 years, concluding his tenure as a Senior Vice President, Business Products. Hakl was instrumental in developing Verizon's networking, security, IoT/MEC, and unified communications portfolio. He also helped launch new products in areas such as SD WAN, whitebox deployment, and closed loop automation.

Syntropy has developed a transformative technology with the potential to fundamentally change the way data moves across public networks, and few teams have the skill and imagination to think this big, said Hakl. They have made remarkable advancements in addressing the critical challenges of security and latency that weigh upon developers, with tremendous potential to revolutionize our infrastructure and turbocharge innovation across an breadth of applications, from enterprise networking and 5G deployment to totally new use cases in IoT and edge computing.

Roman Pacewicz is a senior executive with broad knowledge and experience across the industry. He was formerly the Chief Product Officer at AT&T, where he was responsible for AT&Ts business product portfolios. Over the years, he launched and scaled various products across mobility, IoT, Security, Edge Networking and Cloud.

Syntropy is leading the creation of an intelligent, scalable and secure internet, which enables developers to interconnect devices, applications and distributed cloud environments via standard set of web based tools. said Pacewicz. The company evolves networking through the use of next generation technologies. Syntropys programmable internet solves the security and performance challenges that businesses face every day. The company is executing on a vision where almost everything is interconnected with a secure, programmable, performance optimized internet.

Syntropy CEO Domas Povilauskas expressed his excitement over Hakl and Roman joining the team and described their wisdom as essential as we launch our product ecosystem to the verticals they know so well.

He emphasized that the Syntropy vision extends far beyond any individual application, and with talent like Shawn and Roman, were establishing a critical mass of human capital needed to overcome the greatest challenges in internet infrastructure today.

For more information visit: http://www.syntropystack.com.

###

About Syntropy

Syntropy, based in San Francisco, transforms the public internet into a secure and user-centric internet, where encryption and optimized performance are built-in and automatically enabled for anything and everything connected to it.

Its technology is compatible with the current internet yet allows for the complete utilization of resources. It removes bottlenecks and limitations, ensures security and optimization by default, and unlocks greater scalability potential for future technologies and applications.

Syntropy Stack is a collection of tech and tools that allows anyone to build and deploy applications on Syntropy, with all connections optimized-for-performance and encrypted-by-default. It is compatible across millions of devices and services, including cloud, on-premise, and edge infrastructure. Syntropy Stack gives every developer the power and control to build on Syntropys unifying layer.

For more information, visit syntropynet.com.

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Executives from Tech Giants Join Board of Internet Infrastructure Pioneer Syntropy - Business Wire

On Wednesday, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) along with Reps. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Ken Buck (R-N.Y.) announced that they introduced legislation, entitled Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2021 to allow news publishers and the newspaper industry to collectively negotiate with digital platforms.

Specifically, the issue addressed by the bill is whether the playing field for delivering news content is uneven, according to a press release, which noted that the majority of Americans now get their news from Google or Facebook, which control most digital advertising revenue. Moreover, the press release states that these companies ultimately decide what their users read whether the content is clickbait, political commentary or quality news stories.

In particular, the legislation will afford news publishers temporary immunity from federal and state antitrust laws for 48 months while they are collectively negotiating with dominant digital platforms regarding the terms that their content may be distributed on said platforms in an effort to bring subscription and advertising dollars back to news publishers in order to protect and preserve journalism and the news industry.

The Act states that the negotiations: are not limited to price; are nondiscriminatory as to similarly situated news content creators; directly relate to the quality, accuracy, attribution or branding and interoperability of news; and pertain to terms that would be available to all news content creators. In addition to the aforementioned, the law notes that coordinated negotiations can also only occur if the coordination between the news content creators is directly related to and reasonably necessary for negotiations with an online content distributor that are otherwise consistent with this Act, and the negotiations do not involve any person that is not a news content creator or an online content distributor.

Newspapers are locked in a life-or-death struggle with tech giants like Google and Facebook, and its not a fair fight, Sen. Kennedy said in the press release. Local papers have continued to deliver news despite declines in circulation, but readers are losing out as their options for news coverage evaporate. This bill will support the independence of local papers by giving news publishers the power to collectively negotiate with digital platforms like Google and Facebook. Google and Facebook arent just companies theyre countries, and we cant tolerate tech giants strangling their print news competitors.

We must enable news organizations to negotiate on a level playing field with the big tech companies if we want to preserve a strong and independent press, Sen. Klobuchar said in the press release. This bipartisan legislation will improve the quality of reporting and ensure that journalists are able to continue their critical work. Our media outlets need a fighting chance when negotiating for fair treatment by the digital platforms where so many Americans consume their news.

The legislation comes after a West Virginia newspaper publisher sued Google and Facebook for alleged antitrust violations in the digital advertising market, which has purportedly threatened the existence of the newspaper industry because newspapers cannot fairly compete for online advertising revenue.

Additionally, on Friday, House Judiciarys antitrust, commercial, and administrative law subcommittee hearing focused on the way that Google and Facebook distribute news, and the newly introduced Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2021, which has bipartisan support. The bill is a large legislative threat to tech, particularly as it relates to the antitrust debate following other government action against the tech giants, including federal lawsuits against Google and Facebook, respectively.

The bill comes after other countries like Australia engaged in legislative efforts regarding news publishers content and tech giants. For example, in January Google and Facebook pushed back against an Australian law that would force them to pay news publishers for their content. The Australian law was approved in February, causing Google to strike a deal with various news publishers. Meanwhile, Microsoft issued support for the Australian effort to protect news publishers.

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Bill Introduced to Protect Newspapers from Tech Giants - Law Street Media

The comparison is obviously unfair. Netflix was launched in a world of slower internet connections and before app stores, smart TVs and tablets. But regardless, Disneys success is a lesson for any incumbent company on how to manage the looming and constant threat of technological change.

In 2019, Disney appeared laughably late to streaming. Netflix had moved from a DVD-by-post company to a streaming one 12 years earlier and Amazon was in a strong second-place. Disney had dipped its toes, holding a stake in US service Hulu and running a limited offering called DisneyLife in the UK. But given that streaming was so obviously the future, its failure to give the medium full support meant it seemed to be losing ground by the day.

In reality, it is often simply impossible for established companies to successfully ditch one market and enter a new one so late. As pointed out by the late Harvard academic Clayton Christensen, who popularised the idea of disruptive innovation, cultural and financial factors make it almost impossible for successful companies to kill the golden goose in order to better raise its children.

Disney had large profits from its cable and cinema divisions to protect, and shareholders to keep happy. Few public companies, even those led by characters as strong as Iger, have the freedom to repeatedly sacrifice profit for the possibility of future growth, as Jeff Bezos Amazon did for two decades. What Iger instead did was spend several years laying the groundwork for an eventual entry into streaming when the time was right. It bought minority stakes in Hulu and BAMTech, a technology supplier, that gave it options for when it did want to jump into streaming.

Meanwhile, it invested heavily in content - a reliably important element, whatever the technology - buying 21st Century Fox as well as the Star Wars and Marvel franchises. So by late 2019, by which time it was almost too late, Disney had all the elements it needed to be successful.

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Disney beating Netflix is a lesson for companies threatened by tech giants - Telegraph.co.uk

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(Bloomberg) -- Six months after the Trump administration dealt a crushing blow to Huawei Technologies Co.s smartphone business, the Chinese telecommunications giant is turning to less glamorous alternatives that may eventually offset the decline of its biggest revenue contributor.Among its newest customers is a fish farm in eastern China thats twice the size of New Yorks Central Park. The farm is covered with tens of thousands of solar panels outfitted with Huaweis inverters to shield its fish from excessive sunlight while generating power. About 370 miles to the west in coal-rich Shanxi province, wireless sensors and cameras deep beneath the earth monitor oxygen levels and potential machine malfunctions in mine pit -- all supplied by the tech titan. And next month, a shiny new electric car featuring its lidar sensor will debut at Chinas largest auto show.Once the worlds largest smartphone maker, the Chinese corporation has seen a series of U.S. sanctions almost obliterate its lucrative consumer business. With the Biden administration keeping up the pressure on Huawei, billionaire founder Ren Zhengfei has directed the company to grow its roster of enterprise clients in transportation, manufacturing, agriculture and other industries. Huawei is the worlds leading supplier of inverters and its now banking on growing those sales alongside its cloud services and data analytics solutions to help the 190,000-employee business survive.Its very unlikely that the U.S. will remove us from the Entity List, Ren said last month at the opening of a mining innovation laboratory partly sponsored by Huawei. Right now, we just want to work harder and keep looking for new opportunities to survive.Ren said the new initiatives may offset the drop in its handset business more or less within this year, though the company declined to provide specific figures. Its consumer unit generated revenue of 256 billion yuan ($39 billion) in the first six months of 2020, more than half of the companys total. It managed marginal growth in sales and profit last year, thanks to record 5G base station orders and strong smartphone sales in the first half.Huawei has been exploring business opportunities beyond telecom gear and smartphones for years but the efforts took on new urgency after phone shipments tumbled 42% in the final three months of 2020, largely due to a Trump-era order that cut off its ability to obtain the most advanced semiconductors.The Biden administration has informed some suppliers of tighter conditions on previously approved export licenses, prohibiting items for use in or with 5G devices, according to people familiar with the move. On Friday, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission also included Huawei in a list of companies whose telecommunications and video equipment pose an unacceptable risk to national security. Read more: How Huawei Landed at the Center of Global Tech Tussle: QuickTakeThe U.S. ban has had limited impact on Huaweis emerging businesses, as most of the components required are available from Chinese suppliers, according to a person directly involved in the initiative. To meet the increasing demand from contractors including Huawei, local suppliers are squeezing better performance from mature technologies that Washington hasnt banned, the person said, declining to be identified discussing internal matters.The most advanced chips in Huaweis inverters, used to convert the electrical output from solar panels, rely on 28-nanometer technology, which Chinese companies are capable of manufacturing. Other components, such as power modules, can be made by 90nm technology or older. Yangzhou Yangjie Electronic Technology Co. and China Resources Microelectronics Ltd. are among the top power diode producers in China.Each inverter -- slightly bigger than an outdoor unit of a central air conditioner -- can sell for over 20,000 yuan, more than Huaweis latest high-end Mate X2 foldable phone. The company is planning to roll out more of its photovoltaic inverters, as Beijings push to have carbon emissions in the worlds second-largest economy peak by 2030 drive investments in renewable energy.Like its solar inverter business, the chips required for Huaweis automotive systems are less sophisticated than mobile phone processors and can partly be sourced from European suppliers, according to one person familiar with the matter. Thats allowed Huawei to double down on the car industry, moving engineers from other business units to work on sensors for self-driving cars and power units for electric vehicles.While the company has denied it plans to launch EVs under its own brand, Huaweis worked with several manufacturers to test its autonomous driving and driver-car interaction technologies. Its entertainment features can be found in Mercedes-Benz sedans and the firm has teamed up with domestic electric automobile makers such as BAIC BluePark New Energy Technology Co. to develop smart car systems. The first model under its partnership with the Chinese EV maker, the Arcfox S HBT, will be unveiled at Auto Shanghai 2021 in April.Another initiative dubbed 5GtoB involves Huawei deploying 5G technology to areas ranging from health care to airplane manufacturing. The company has helped China build the worlds largest 5G network, supplying more than half of the 720,000 base stations operating across the nation. Now its seeking to use the countrys 5G connectivity to help pandemic-hit businesses automate factory lines -- joining fellow tech behemoths such as Xiaomi Corp. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in trying to modernize manufacturing -- and digitize once labor-intensive industries like mining.Huawei has signed over 1,000 5GtoB deals in more than 20 sectors with help from telecom carriers and partners, according to rotating chairman Ken Hu. Online education, entertainment and transportation are among the sectors it plans to explore, he said. The firm in January gave smartphone czar Richard Yu a new role to shepherd its rapidly-growing cloud and AI businesses.The adoption of 5G in mining, medical services and manufacturing is getting clearer and some of the applications are being used nationwide, Liu Liehong, vice-minister for industry and information technology, said at an industry event in Shanghai last month.Ren is personally leading the expansion into mining, meeting with local officials and inspecting coal pits in Shanxi province. Most information communications technology companies didnt think of mining as a field where they can make market breakthroughs, but we did, the billionaire told reporters last month. China has around 5,300 coal mines and 2,700 ore mines. If we can serve these 8,000-plus mines well, we could expand our services to mines outside China.Read more: Chinas Coal Industry Fights for Survival in a Greener WorldWhile Huaweis betting that inverters, electronic mining solutions and smart car software may compensate for the decline of smartphones, its longer-term future -- and its ability to continue powering Chinas 5G roll-out -- remains clouded. Its HiSilicon subsidiary had been the countrys most capable chipset designer, making the high-end processors that power the companys smartphones and wireless base stations, before Washington cut off access to the latest chip-design software and contract manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.For now, the company has told its wireless customers it has enough communications chips to support base station constructions in 2021. But its unclear how long those stocks can last, and what options Huawei has once those inventories eventually deplete. Wireless operators have been cautious on their 5G build-out and there is plenty of uncertainty whether Huawei will be able to continue providing equipment in the longer term, Jefferies analyst Edison Lee wrote in a note earlier this month. The ongoing political frictions have cast shadows on the business operations of Huawei and other Chinese firms in the foreseeable future and strategic investment in emerging technologies is key to Huaweis sustainable business growth, said Charlie Dai, principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc.(Updates with FCC designation in seventh paragraph, analysts comment in second-last paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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Carve-out deals by tech firms 'just tip of the iceberg' - Carlyle Japan chief - Yahoo Finance

Ofcoms proposals would allow customers to instruct their broadband and pay-TV providers to offer their data to any accredited third party in return for personalised recommendations, raising concerns that Google and Facebook could increase their hold on digital advertising. The watchdog also highlighted the potential to pass telecoms data to technology that can anticipate peoples behaviour and needs.

The Open Data Institute, a research organisation co-founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and funded by the taxpayer, which counts Google as a member, told Ofcomthat communications data was a strong indicator of peoples behaviour.

It added: Combining communications data with other information, such as social-media activity, browsing history, health data, energy use etc will establish a deep insight and will develop a picture of that person and their relationships with others.

Ofcoms plans aim to build on Open Banking regulations that allows bank account holders to share their data with third parties in exchange for access to services such as tools for managing their outgoings.

BT has told Ofcom it strongly supports more data sharing. Philip Jansen, its chief executive, has said he sees the companys future growth as dependent on embracing artificial intelligence and other data tools.

BT warned, however, that the regime could cost up to 100m, the equivalent to rolling out full-fibre broadband to 154,000 homes and businesses. It has also urged Ofcom to overhaul laws that prevent it from charging streaming service such as Googles YouTube for the heavy load they place on its network.

A study commissioned by Ofcom found that 39pc of people probably would share data about their broadband performance, while 12pc definitely would offer information about their data usage.

An Ofcom spokesperson said: Open communications could potentially support innovative new services that help customers find better deals more easily.

We have consulted on our initial thinking on this, but have not yet set out formal proposals or made any decisions. Were planning to publish an update on our work in this area this summer.

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Data grab will give Big Tech even more power, say broadband firms - Telegraph.co.uk