European Commission regulators in March 2012 began a probe of whether five large telecom operators (Deutsche Telecom, France Telecom, Telefonica, Vodafone and Telecom Italia) were using standards processes to inhibit competition in the mobile business.
But the EC now has concluded that since such standards work now is conducted by the GSMA and other standards bodies, there is no immediate problem.
To be sure, all standards ultimately benefit some contestants and market participants more than others, especially when a standard plays to one specific technology approach that becomes an "industry" standard.
That sort of "bias" cannot be completely eliminated. But the investigation points out how careful dominant service providers have to be when trying to develop new services and apps that require scale. Mobile payments and mobile wallets provide one other example.
Friday, March 8, 2013
EC Mobile Antitrust Probe Ends
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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