Ericsson is partnering with Amazon Web Services to help telecom providers speed up their use of cloud-based services, the Sweden-based tech provider said in a Monday news release. Ericsson said its work with AWS will help telecoms better improve productivity and efficiency, reduce complexity and risk and better capitalize on opportunities like the IoT and big data analytics. "Ericsson will contribute expertise from its 25,000 R&D engineers and 66,000-person service workforce -- more than 17,000 of whom are consultants and systems integrators, delivering 1,500 projects per year around the world," the company said. Ericsson said AWS, which is providing resources such as professional services and training, is also helping to develop new capabilities like end-to-end security and data traffic management, workload management, and services related to local regulation and compliance requirements.

Four cybersecurity software products from Malaysia's e-Lock Corp. are considered of U.S. origin for government procurement purposes, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a final determination published in Monday's Federal Register. The “source code” is written in Malaysia while the “object code” is compiled in the U.S. "CBP has consistently held that conducting a ‘software build’ -- i.e., compiling source code into object code -- results in a substantial transformation," the agency said. The finished software products are determined to be of U.S. origin, CBP said.

A Pakistani citizen admitted to laundering more than $19.6 million in proceeds from an international telecom fraud scheme in which foreign-based hackers hijacked private branch exchange systems that ran the internal phone networks of businesses and other organizations in the U.S. Muhammad Sohail Qasmani, 47, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, said the FBI in a Thursday news release. It said hackers placed calls on an organization's phone system to identify unused extensions and then illegally reprogrammed the system to make unlimited long distance calls that were charged back to the victimized organization. Qasmani, who was arrested in December 2014 at Los Angeles International Airport, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The agency identified the scheme's mastermind as Noor Aziz, 53, who's on the FBI's list of most wanted cybercriminals.

The FCC proposed an action to remove its nondiscrimination rules on the U.S.-Cuba route, which currently require all facilities-based U.S. carriers providing services on the U.S.-Cuba route to operate under "identical rate terms and conditions," the commission said in a news release Friday. Cuba is the only country still under the nondiscrimination requirements. "If the proposal is adopted, U.S. carriers would have more flexibility to negotiate rates with the state-owned telecommunications operator ... and to respond to market forces," said the release. The FCC said its action is a result of the State Department's recommendation to remove the requirements based on the recent change in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba. The action seeks comment on removing particular nondiscrimination requirements and "asks whether removal would lead to more direct agreements between U.S. carriers and the state-owned telecommunications operator, and encourage competition on the U.S.-Cuba route."

Trademark holders said some countries don't protect U.S. copyright, and the International Intellectual Property Alliance, which includes MPAA and RIAA, said the U.S. Trade Representative's office should resume classifying Ukraine as a priority country for not protecting U.S. IP. In the filings we were able to get in the runup to last Friday's deadline for comments to USTR, the Trademark Working Group, while not recommending the office add countries to the priority countries list, said Argentina, Brazil, India, the Philippines and Malaysia -- which TWG called the “slows” -- regularly fail to adjudicate oppositions and cancelations in a “reasonable period of time.” IIPA, in comments it released Friday said Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam should be added to USTR's priority watch list. Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Mexico, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates should go on the regular watch list. IIPA members also include the Association of American Publishers, Entertainment Software Association and Independent Television & Film Alliance. Last week's Trans-Pacific Partnership signing was "a timely reminder of the valuable role our government plays in promoting U.S. economic interests abroad, and of the need to seek enforceable commitments from key trading partners to remove impediments to legitimate marketplaces," said IIPA Counsel Steven Metalitz in a news release. "TPP holds the potential to make a critical contribution, along with other trade agreements and Congressionally mandated reviews like the Special 301 Report, to this market-opening drive.” Monday, USTR posted about 30 public comments. The next issue of this publication will report on what tech groups like the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Internet Association and others said.

The new EU-U.S. Privacy Shield that replaces the annulled safe harbor agreement with stronger privacy protections of Europeans' personal data (see 1602020040) "will be a mere political solution to a legal problem" without key surveillance law reforms on both sides of the Atlantic, said Access Now's Estelle Massé, Amie Stepanovich and Drew Mitnick in a long blog post Thursday. They said "robust substantive changes" to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act's Section 702, which permits surveillance of non-U.S. persons, and executive order 12333, which governs spying outside the U.S., haven't been implemented. Instead, EU negotiators relied on "written assurances" from the U.S. that "indiscriminate surveillance" of EU citizens would not take place, which the three described as "word games." Even "overbroad" surveillance programs in some EU member states like France and the U.K. need to be changed, they said (see 1512240011). The activists also said more needs to be done to strengthen transparency, oversight and data protection, which can be achieved through enacting baseline privacy legislation such as the proposed consumer privacy bill of rights in the U.S., plus strong data breach notification laws and vulnerability disclosure frameworks on both sides of the Atlantic. If concerns of the European Court of Justice, which invalidated the old safe harbor framework in October, aren't addressed, the new one will likely be nullified, creating more uncertainty (see 1602030001) for companies, they concluded.

"The path is now clear" for the U.S. to "help bring Cuban telecommunications into the [21st century]," said Jamie Barnett, a Venable cybersecurity and telecom lawyer, in an online memo, referring to a recent policy change of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). The bureau's policy change regarding Cuba -- from a "case-by-case" review of telecommunications license applications to a "general policy of approval" -- became effective in late January, and coincides with recently announced amendments to the Cuban Asset Control Regulations (CACR) made by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Barnett said. OFAC's amendments to the CACR "further relax[ed] the restrictions on the economic activities in, and financing exports to, Cuba," he said. Barnett said OFAC took multiple, incremental steps in 2015 to open up U.S. telecom-based services in Cuba, and its most recent action in January continues that trend. "As both OFAC and BIS have made clear, the purpose of the new rules involving trade with Cuba is to engage the private sector in that country to the largest extent possible while supporting the Cuban government as little as practicable in keeping with this purpose," he said. "In the telecom field, the U.S. government appears to appreciate that major infrastructure projects will be required and that these can be accomplished only by working with the Cuban government." Although providers will need BIS licenses to "bring Cuba telecom into par with the U.S.," and U.S. companies will need to carefully negotiate the remaining OFAC sanctions, "U.S. policy is clearly to promote the modernization of Cuba's telecommunications sector."

Univision Mobile and Ultra Mobile partnered to "bring unlimited international calling and global text to the Univision Mobile base of customers," Univision said in a news release. The partnership began Monday, and during February current Univision Mobile customers "will have their accounts migrated to Ultra management ... at which time all customers will immediately benefit from unlimited talk and text" to up to 40 global areas at no extra charge, Univision said. Univision Mobile will offer three "new" consumer plans starting Feb. 11, including a $20 monthly "entry-level" plan with unlimited domestic talk, global text and international calling, and both $30 and $50 monthly plans "featuring more robust data options" and extended unlimited international calling destinations, it said.

A Department of Commerce rule to facilitate telecom and other exports to Cuba was published in the Federal Register Wednesday. Under the rule, various exports and reexports will be subject to a general policy of license approval by the Bureau of Industry and Security, including: “(i) Telecommunications items that would improve communications to, from, and among the Cuban people; (ii) Commodities and software to human rights organizations or to individuals and non-governmental organizations that promote independent activity intended to strengthen civil society in Cuba; (iii) Commodities and software to U.S. news bureaus in Cuba whose primary purpose is the gathering and dissemination of news to the general public.” The rule was announced Tuesday (see 1601270018).

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is wrongheaded in his campaign vow to force Apple to shift its manufacturing from China to the U.S., CTA President Gary Shapiro said Wednesday in a blog post at Medium.com. Trump “gets a pass from some people for saying foolish things,” said Shapiro, who has endorsed Marco Rubio for the presidency (see 1512230039). But “I fear for our nation that a candidate for president would lead in the polls after making so many idiotic statements.” If “we did what Trump wants,” Apple “would then face huge additional costs making iPhones and iPads and would have to raise its prices to the American consumers several-fold,” he said. “We would destroy the two-way nature of international trade and leave our biggest and best exporters, such as Boeing, GM, Ford and IBM vulnerable to Chinese retaliation.” There's no doubt Americans “should be manufacturers, especially in highly skilled manufacturing,” Shapiro said. “But I have been in scores of Chinese factories, and the assembly work consists of redundant, simple, repetitive tasks that many with an education would be unsatisfied doing.” Brazil has “tried what Trump advocates,” he said. Duties there “vary according to the value of a given product, but can reach as high as 55 percent,” he said. “The result is high domestic prices for consumer electronics, often making them inaccessible to average citizens. The result is that upscale Brazilians visit the U.S. with empty suitcases and leave with luggage full of electronics.” Said Shapiro: “So, no, Mr. Trump. The last time the U.S. tried anything as dumb as your China proposal, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff law of 1930 raised U.S. tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods to record levels. That led to the Great Depression. Your ideas may smartly play to a certain type of voter, but they’re economic suicide for America, its people and our world-leading companies.”