Russia export controls and sanctions

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., may bring back congressional reauthorization of the FCC, he said Wednesday at the American Enterprise Institute headquarters in Washington. “When I talk about reauthorizing the FCC, that hasn’t been done since 1990,” Thune said, expressing a desire to “see if we can get Congress back in the habit of regularly reauthorizing the commission.”

Development for Apple Watch “is right on schedule” and shipments are expected to begin in April, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Tuesday on an earnings call. Developers are hard at work on apps “all designed specifically” for the Apple Watch's user interface, he said. Cook has “very high” expectations for the Apple Watch, he said. “I'm using it every day and love it and I can’t live without it. So I see that we’re making great progress on the development of it. The number of developers that are writing apps for it" is "impressive and we’re seeing some incredible innovation coming out there.” The iPhone was the star of Apple’s Q1 ended Dec. 31, Cook said. That Apple sold on average 34,000 iPhones every hour that quarter is a volume that’s “hard to comprehend,” Cook said. Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones in the quarter, an increase of 23.4 million over last year, representing 46 percent unit growth, said Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri. Sales of iPhones grew strongly in both developed and emerging markets, Maestri said, including a 44 percent increase in the U.S. and a 97 percent increase in Brazil, Russia, India and China, he said. The company's stock closed up 5.6 percent at $115.31 Wednesday. The introduction of the large-screen iPhone 6 Plus helped push iPhone average selling prices $50 higher than a year earlier, to $687, Maestri said. The downside of iPhone’s popularity was that iPhone “channel inventory” fell by 200,000 units in the quarter, “and we were not able to reach supply-demand balance until this month,” Maestri said. “This left us below our target range of five to seven weeks of channel inventory on a look-forward basis.” Apple works with "about 375 carriers, representing 72 percent of the world’s mobile phone subscriber base, and we have over 210,000 points of sale for iPhone across the globe,” said the CFO. Apple thinks its iPhone strength will be sustainable throughout calendar 2015, Cook said. “We are incredibly bullish about iPhone going forward,” he said. “We believe that it’s the best smartphone in the world. Our customers are telling us that. The market is telling us that. We’re doing well in virtually every corner of the world." Only a “small fraction” of the iPhone installed base has upgraded to iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, he said, suggesting sales momentum will continue. “We had the highest number of customers new to iPhone last quarter than in any prior launch,” including the “highest Android switcher rate in any of the last three launches in the three previous years,” he said. Asked to quantify that “small fraction” of iPhone users who have upgraded to an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, it’s “a number that's in the mid-teens or barely in the teens,” Cook said. “There is an enormous amount left. And given there are fair amount of Android units out there, there is also an enormous amount of Android customers that could switch. And I’d also remind you that there is a lot of people that have not yet bought a smartphone. And I know it doesn’t feel like that when you’re sitting in the United States.”

Despite “saturation” in many well-developed Western European markets, unit smartphone shipments in Europe overall climbed nearly 14 percent last year to 200 million handsets, Futuresource Consulting said Monday in a report. The European tablet market also continues to grow, “but major markets have reached saturation point earlier than the industry expected,” Futuresource said. Although percentage growth in tablets equaled that of smartphones in 2014, growth in Western Europe “will slow further in 2015, with consumer shipments moving into decline by 2017,” it said. "We're seeing a smartphone growth bubble in Eastern Europe, perpetuated by the low level of ownership in many of its countries," the company said. "It's not all good news, as we expect growth to slow in 2015 as Russia -- the largest market in the region by some distance -- faces increasing economic uncertainty.” Across Europe, the Samsung and Apple “duopoly remains solid,” albeit with some market share being lost to Microsoft following its acquisition of Nokia’s devices business, the firm said. “This decline in smartphone prices was somewhat offset by a persistent shift towards higher-priced smartphones,” resulting in an overall increase in mobile handset average selling prices, it said. As for tablets, Apple and Samsung represented more than half of total units shipped in Europe last year, it said.

There's an “overwhelming record” in favor of “bright line” net neutrality rules reclassifying broadband as a Title II service, particularly based on filings from startup Web companies, Marvin Ammori, fellow at the New America Foundation, told FCC General Counsel Jon Sallet in a recent meeting, said an ex parte filing posted by the FCC Monday in docket 14-28. The FCC should forbear from most parts of Title II but retain Sections 201, 202 and 208, he said. But Free State Foundation President Randolph May said in a blog post in The Hill that reclassification would encourage other nations to impose more restrictions on the Internet. “Despite any protestations to the contrary that may be uttered by U.S. officials, the FCC's action regulating Internet providers will speak louder than any justifications the agency may offer,” he wrote. “Other countries, like China, Iran, Cuba and Russia, with unmistakable designs on exerting more control over Internet communications, will seize upon the FCC's new claim of regulatory authority as a justification for their own actions.” Public Knowledge also called for Title II reclassification in a filing at the commission. “In the wake of President [Barack] Obama’s full-throated endorsement of robust Open Internet rules based in Title II authority, Public Knowledge hopes the Commission is moving quickly to protect the future of the Open Internet,” the group said.

The fault lines of ongoing Internet governance debates were exposed Tuesday with Congress’ release of a bicameral funding measure that would temporarily prohibit NTIA from using its funds for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition. The omnibus bill would deny NTIA funds for the transition through Sept. 30, the same date NTIA expected its IANA contract with ICANN to expire. Milton Mueller, a professor of information studies at Syracuse University, slammed what he perceived as the hypocritical approach some Republicans bring to Internet governance issues. Other ICANN stakeholders applauded the measure, saying more time is necessary to achieve viable IANA transition and ICANN accountability proposals.

U.S. industry representatives spelled out a laundry list of tariff and nontariff barriers for U.S. telecom exports, ranging from redundant Chinese conformity assessments to Indian duties and Hungarian Internet traffic taxes, in comments filed to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. USTR asked in November for U.S. industry comments on telecom sections in trade agreements. The submission deadline was Friday, and replies are due Dec. 19. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, Telecommunications Industry Association, U.S. Council of International Business and two others filed comments to USTR.

A previously unidentified form of malware highlighted in a Symantec report Monday raised questions about the balance between a nation’s civil liberties and security concerns, said privacy and security experts in interviews. The cutting-edge malware, known as Regin, has the hallmarks of government-sponsored intelligence gathering software, they said. Regin’s use raises the specter of governments implementing the program against their citizens, said Cooper Quintin, Electronic Frontier Foundation staff technologist.

Copyrightholders asked that countries from nearly every continent be included in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s notorious markets list for piracy and trademark counterfeiting, in comments filed Friday. The copyright holders, including the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said cyberlockers, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and BitTorrent portals in Asia, Europe and North America are serious challenges to their industries.

SES agreed to deliver content from Ireland’s Setanta Sports in high definition to 13 countries. The channels, Setanta Sports and Setanta Sports Plus, will be delivered on the Astra 5B satellite at 31.5 degrees east, SES said Wednesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1uCtHaj). The channels are available on all key cable, direct-to-home and IPTV platforms within the countries, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Latvia, it said. The satellite strengthens the SES video neighborhood in Europe by extending geographic reach over Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, SES said.

NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling maintained the need for ICANN to complete its accountability process before the transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), at a Media Institute event Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1vq15Ry). Some ICANN stakeholders said the scope of the accountability process shouldn’t be limited to IANA issues, in comments due Saturday (http://bit.ly/1ncHROw).