The New York Stock Exchange has started proceedings to delist shares of China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom. The three are no longer suitable for listing because of an order by President Donald Trump, which prohibits any transactions in securities "designed to provide investment exposure to such securities, of any Communist Chinese military company, by any United States person,” said an NYSE statement The delisting will have limited effect, said a China Securities Regulatory Commission spokesperson Sunday: “The size of their [American depositary receipt] listings remains small, less than 2.2% in their respective total equity shares.”

The FCC opposed China Telecom's motion for a stay before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit on sharing redacted material with executive branch agencies for review in case 20-2365. China Telecom filed the material in opposition to a recommendation to revoke its authorizations, citing irreparable harm (see 2012100054). The FCC in a response filed Monday accused China Telecom of misrepresenting its cybersecurity practices and failing to take practical actions to prevent unauthorized access to U.S. records.

The U.S. Court of International Trade granted DOJ’s second motion requesting leave to file an updated “schedule of cases” related to the first-filed HMTX Industries-Jasco Products Section 301 complaint, said Chief Judge Timothy Stanceu's order (in Pacer) Tuesday in docket 1:20-cv-00177. The motion “concerns overall case management of an unusually large volume of cases, none of which have yet been assigned to an individual Judge,” said DOJ's Tuesday motion. Roughly 3,700 cases have inundated the court, all seeking to vacate the Lists 3 and 4A tariff rulemakings on Chinese imports and refund the duties. The plaintiffs who responded to DOJ’s Sept. 23 motion (in Pacer) for case management procedures have “generally agreed” the cases other than the HMTX-Jasco action “should be stayed while a test-case procedure is implemented,” said DOJ. The revised schedule of pending cases (in Pacer) attached to the motion spans 194 pages and includes actions filed through Monday. Cases have continued trickling, at least one a day. All assert timeliness under the court’s two-year statute of limitations, dating to first payment of the List 3 tariffs upon the entry of goods in 2018.

Kyocera is expanding its R&D campus in Kirishima City, Kagoshima, Japan, with a 75,000-square-foot center slated to begin construction next month, it said Friday. The $9.6 billion R&D center will focus on information and communications, environmental preservation and smart energy. The Kokubu campus currently houses R&D operations for 5G smartphone technologies; semiconductors and components used in IoT devices; and cell stacks for smart energy. The new facility is to open in September 2022.

That U.S.-based semiconductor fabs cost 40%-70% more than foreign counterparts due to low federal incentives helps explain why American companies account for 48% of the world’s chip sales, but U.S.-based fabs do 12% of such manufacturing, blogged Jeff Rittener, Intel chief government affairs officer. Intel backs the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (Chips) for America Act, passed by Congress last Friday with bipartisan support as part of the FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), said Rittener Thursday. It establishes a Commerce Department program to provide up to $3 billion “to companies to invest in facilities and equipment in the U.S. for semiconductor fabrication, assembly, testing, advanced packaging” or R&D, he said. This positions the U.S. “to regain our leadership in the semiconductor manufacturing industry and significantly contribute to the nation’s economic and technological success,” he said. “We need federal investment to do so.” Intel urges President Donald Trump to sign the NDAA and the act into law. Trump is threatening an NDAA veto. The White House didn’t respond to questions.

Major "gatekeepers" such as social media services would face tighter supervision under proposed legislation unveiled by the European Commission Tuesday. The Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Market Act (DMA) aim to give users better, more reliable services, allow smaller companies to scale up across the EU and prevent unfair conditions imposed by online platforms that are or are expected to become gatekeepers to the single market, the EC said. They are "milestones in the journey to making Europe fit for the digital age," said EC Vice President Margrethe Vestager. The goal is to ensure internet users have access to a wide range of digital services, all companies can compete online as they do offline, and users can trust what they see online, she said. The DSA contains measures to counter illegal content and has transparency rules for platforms and requirements for very large platforms to prevent abuse of their systems. The DSA builds on existing intermediary liability rules in the EU e-commerce directive. Very large platforms that fail to comply would face fines of up to 6% of global revenue. The DMA applies specifically to gatekeepers, to be defined by their role in the market according to factors such as size, whether they operate as gatekeepers between businesses and users, and whether they have an entrenched position. Gatekeeper obligations, the EC said, would include giving companies that advertise on its platform access to the performance measuring tools it uses. Gatekeepers would need to allow business users to promote their own offers and give such users access to the data generated by those activities. Large platforms would be barred from blocking users from uninstalling and preinstalling software or apps, using data obtained from their business users to compete with those companies, and restricting users from accessing services they found elsewhere. Companies would self-verify as gatekeepers if they meet DMA quantitative thresholds. The EC would then designate them as gatekeepers, and within six months, they would need to comply with DMA rules. Platforms that ignore the rules are subject to fines of up to 10% of revenue, and, if there are systemic infringements, the EC can impose additional remedies such as forcing a unit's sale. The proposed legislation needs approval by the European Parliament and the Council.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, 5G subscriptions are growing four times faster than those of 4G LTE, said 5G Americas Monday. The world added 225 million 5G subs from Q3 2019 to Q3 2020, which “required 4G LTE four years to attain,” said the trade group, citing Omdia data. It estimates that 5G customers surpassed 229 million this quarter, a 66% increase from Q2. Subs are expected to reach 236 million globally by Dec. 31, it said. GSMA estimates 519 5G devices have been announced, “of which 303 were commercially available by the end of November."

Huawei asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear its case seeking to overturn the FCC ban on rural eligible telecom carriers using USF programs to buy equipment from the Chinese firm. Huawei filed the case a year ago (see 1912050050). The FCC’s order approved Thursday (see 2012100054) “leaves no doubt that Huawei’s petition is ripe,” said a filing (in Pacer) posted Friday in docket 19-60896: The order “confirms that only judicial review can relieve Huawei from enforcement of the USF rule.” Protecting national security is a “lame excuse” to oppress certain Chinese enterprises, said a Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Friday, responding to the FCC’s order approval. “Huawei has built more than 1,500 networks in more than 170 countries and regions,” with no “network security incidents,” she said. “No country has been able to come up with evidence to prove Huawei products have back doors, including the United States, whom we've challenged many times to present evidence.” China urges the U.S. to “stop its arbitrary use” of national security as a pretense for its “unjustified crackdown on certain Chinese enterprises,” she said.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr urged India to “embrace” ATSC 3.0 as a way to promote 5G, in a speech to the India Mobile Congress Wednesday. India’s mobile networks need capacity, which could be provided from the country’s “powerful but underutilized broadcast spectrum -- enhanced by ATSC 3.0,” Carr said. Indian companies “are playing a leading role in developing the mobile technology that will seamlessly merge broadcast spectrum into the next-gen wireless ecosystem,” he said. He listed recent steps the FCC took to assist the 3.0 transition and said it's “critical to identify and remove the overhang of unnecessary government regulations that would otherwise hold back the introduction and growth of new competitive offerings.”

The debate on trans-Atlantic data flows is starting to shift as the U.S. and EU increasingly recognize their shared values, officials said Tuesday at a webcast data protection and privacy conference in Brussels. The regions are negotiating a targeted enhancement to Privacy Shield that will comply with the European Court of Justice ruling in Schrems II, withstand further legal challenge and ensure U.S. sovereignty over its national security, said James Sullivan, International Trade Administration deputy assistant secretary for services. The ECJ decision overturned PS (see 2007240031). Any revised accord will have to relieve companies of the need to carry out separate reviews of the national security regimes of countries to which they want to transfer personal data, Sullivan said. Since the U.S. revised its surveillance laws in 2015, it has become the gold standard for protection against data access for national security purposes, he said. One complicating factor in the discussion is that Schrems II caused skepticism from some in the U.S. about making further commitments to Europe that could force changes in U.S. law, doubts reinforced by the EU not scrutinizing at the same level surveillance practices of some of its own members, he said. The European Commission is convinced the intersection of privacy and national security is the avenue to pursue to address the court ruling, said Bruno Gencarelli, head of international data flows and protection unit. He warned there's no quick fix because a solution must be legally and politically defensible. Gencarelli sees much more common ground now between the EU and U.S. and more convergence as more companies adopt data protection practices around privacy laws; nations at the G7, G20 and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development level now realize that like-minded countries should be the ones to define common standards. Talks with the U.S. on an enhanced PS involve a negotiation on complex issues that won't be resolved overnight, Gencarelli said. It's a priority for the EC, and "we expect to move quickly" to agree on several provisions. This isn't a beauty contest about which privacy system is better; it's about finding solutions, he said. Sullivan said both sides have been "very creative" in coming up with solutions to bridge their differences, and challenges aren't insurmountable.