The Trans-Pacific Partnership would lead to new markets for e-commerce and improved customs processing, said Brian Huseman, Amazon vice president-public policy, in a blog post. "That's why we support the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement and encourage Congress to approve it," he said. "The agreement makes important progress on areas such as business localization, cross-border data flows, intermediary liability and customs simplification." As Amazon grows, "we want reasonable policies that allow for the movement of goods across borders and that enable anyone in the world to have access to a unique and vast selection," he said. "We also want policies that do not unduly limit the growth of cloud computing by erecting digital trade barriers." But TPP is imperfect and the administration and Congress should work to improve provisions on cross-border data flows and copyright, Huseman said Thursday.

Qualcomm said it’s supporting the European Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System across its product portfolios. The company began implementing hardware support for Galileo several years ago in select chipsets, and now offers what it called the industry's first “pervasive,” end-to-end location-services platform for smartphone, computing, infotainment, telematics and IoT applications. The Qualcomm IZat location services platform uses up to six satellite constellations concurrently without incremental device hardware or cost, and users benefit from more than 80 different satellites when calculating global position for navigation or location-based applications, Qualcomm said Tuesday.

Ericsson confirmed it received a voluntary request from U.S. authorities to answer questions about its operations. "While we strive to at all times conduct our business in compliance with applicable laws, matters do arise from time to time as a result of the global nature of our business," said a company statement Friday. "We will not provide any detailed comments on the request as such, but can say that it relates to Ericsson's anti-corruption program and questions related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Ericsson cooperates with US Authorities and works diligently to answer the questions."

Mistaken IT changes to about 200 codes led to import transactions involving FCC data to be incorrectly rejected Tuesday, said Customs and Border Protection in an alert. CBP said Wednesday it corrected the problem and such filings should now be accepted upon submission.

Google thinks the Trans-Pacific Partnership promotes the free flow of information in “unprecedented” ways for a binding international trade agreement, balances the interests of copyright holders and public’s interest of creative works, and bans discrimination against foreign internet services, General Counsel Kent Walker wrote in a blog post. Small businesses will especially benefit from these elements of the agreement, but future agreements should include “more balancing provisions,” and “all stakeholders” should be allowed to provide input in future trade negotiations, Walker said Friday. U.S. Congress members and some transparency and other advocates have said TPP wasn't transparently negotiated, and Wikileaks had a campaign to release the text before governments did. "The TPP is not perfect, and the trade negotiation process could certainly benefit from greater transparency," Walker wrote. "We will continue to advocate for process reforms, including the opportunity for all stakeholders to have a meaningful opportunity for input into trade negotiations."

The EU-U.S. "umbrella agreement" will set a high bar for protecting trans-Atlantic personal data transferred by law enforcement agencies, will strengthen legal certainty and will boost the rights of people, DOJ said in a news release. The new agreement (see 1606020018), which awaits approval by the European Parliament, is aimed at improving EU-U.S. cooperation to fight crime, including terrorism. DOJ called it a "major step forward" in relations. Thursday's signing was in Amsterdam during a EU-U.S. Ministerial Meeting on Justice and Home Affairs and was attended by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and European Justice Commissioner Věra Jourová, DOJ said.

The Broadband Forum embraced open source and standards development at a three-day meeting in Atlanta this week, it said in a news release Thursday. The forum includes major telecom companies from around the world including AT&T, Orange and Vodafone. At the meeting, the association said its board agreed the forum should “instigate new methods for rapid delivery of innovative software and standards for key use cases to the community of manufacturers, service providers and open-source organizations that replace traditional Standards Development Organization (SDO) approaches.” The forum plans to increase collaboration with industry groups developing open initiatives, including members and nonmembers, it said. “Perhaps the most important message is that while we have made significant strides towards 'agile, programmable and ultra-fast networks' in the last year, we need to dramatically extend and accelerate delivery of standards and software to enable the innovation the broadband industry needs,” forum CEO Robin Mersh said.

The ULE Alliance, which promotes ULE technology as a standard for home wireless networks, said Wednesday that a Huawei-built ULE gateway, branded as Qivicon powered by Deutsche Telekom, received ULE certification. The tests were done at AT4 wireless, the official ULE testing and certification partner. Alliance members are eligible to certify ULE devices, and the application for certification is at www.ulealliance.org, it said.

By December, the European Commission will have laid out all the legislative and nonlegislative proposals -- including a second copyright package, a public-private cybersecurity partnership, a telecom review, and free flow of nonpersonal data within the European Union, among other issues -- that it committed to when the digital single market (DSM) strategy was released a year ago, said Andrea Glorioso, counselor for the digital economy with the EU delegation to the U.S. He gave a public overview about the progress in developing the DSM, including what has been proposed over the past six months (see 1605240018, 1602020036 and 1509240053). On the free flow of nonpersonal data, he said EU officials are assessing how they should deal with the huge amount of data generated by the IoT and sensors that aren't personal in nature and should be able to flow freely within the internal market. He said there's "anecdotal and more than anecdotal evidence" regarding national obstacles to that free data flow. For example, he said weather data is a potential source of innovation but some member states are applying a "bizarre interpretation" that makes it more difficult to facilitate such data flows. Glorioso reviewed a host of proposals that have been laid out already, including allocating the 700 MHz band for mobile internet use, providing more trust and security for personal data, creating research hubs similar to Silicon Valley and boosting e-commerce. All the proposals, he said, will be negotiated between the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. The DSM strategy seeks to establish one set of rules for the online world across its 28 member countries. European officials have said that, as a result, consumers and businesses would have better access to digital goods and services across the continent and a larger economy with strong data protection standards.

The European Commission along with Facebook, Google's YouTube, Microsoft and Twitter unveiled a code of conduct to fight online hate speech Tuesday. Companies that sign up agree to review -- and possibly remove or “disable access to” -- illegal hate speech within 24 hours of being notified, the EC said in a news release. The companies will try to better work with civil society groups, which can help alert companies to content that could incite violence and hateful conduct, it said. The EC and tech companies share, "together with other platforms and social media companies, a collective responsibility and pride in promoting and facilitating freedom of expression throughout the online world," the release said: They understand "that the spread of illegal hate speech online not only negatively affects the groups or individuals that it targets, it also negatively impacts those who speak out for freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination in our open societies and has a chilling effect on the democratic discourse on online platforms." The EC and tech companies also will regularly assess the public commitments to the code of conduct, including its impact. Regular meetings will take place on how to promote transparency and spur counter and alternative narratives, the release said. But Access Now said in a news release the process to create the code was done "outside an accountable democratic framework" and "exploits unclear liability rules for online companies." It also risks freedom of expression since legal, but controversial content could be deleted, the civil society group said. "The ‘code of conduct’ downgrades the law to a second-class status, behind the ‘leading role’ of private companies that are being asked to arbitrarily implement their terms of service.”