Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm told analysts Thursday 5G is rolling out faster than expected, driven by the U.S. and northeast Asia. Ericsson and Nokia are the two top 5G equipment suppliers to the U.S. 5G is “happening even faster than we expected just a few months ago,” he said. The biggest market for 5G infrastructure will be China, “where deployments are expected to start near term,” Ekholm said: “We have invested to increase our market share, however it is still too early to assess possible volumes and price levels.” The IoT will be a strong point, Ericsson business growing “twice as fast as the estimated market growth of 20-25 percent per year,” he said.

Customs and Border Protection wants comment by Dec. 16 on CBP plans to update U.S. border handling of imports with suspected copyright violations, said Wednesday's Federal Register. The proposal is a result of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, which added pre-seizure disclosure requirements for possible Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations. TFTEA lets CBP make new disclosures to intellectual property rights holders.

Fitbit will shift production to "outside China" starting in January for “effectively all of its trackers and smartwatches” to escape exposure to the tariffs on Chinese goods, said the company Wednesday. "Those products will no longer be of Chinese origin and therefore not subject to Section 301 tariffs,” said Fitbit, without disclosing where it's moving its sourcing. Smartwatches and fitness trackers, comprising the entire Fitbit product line, were hit with 15 percent List 4A tariffs Sept. 1 as part of the broad category of 8517.62.00.90 goods that also includes smart speakers and Bluetooth headphones (see 1908130028). The company began exploring potential alternatives to China last year, said Chief Financial Officer Ron Kisling. It altered its supply chain and manufacturing operations with “additional changes underway,” the company said. Fitbit said it will give additional details, including the financial implications, on its Q3 call within the month. Fitbit devices are assembled in China from parts and components sourced from Taiwan and Singapore, but shifting final assembly outside China “has been a very big challenge for us,” testified Executive Vice President-General Counsel Andy Missan at a Section 301 hearing in June. The devices require “high-precision assembly and high volume,” he said then. "We have not been able to find those characteristics in other locations,” despite looking throughout Southeast Asia, he said.

China said it “deplores and firmly opposes” Monday's action of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security adding 28 Chinese entities to its trade blacklist for alleged involvement in human rights violations of China’s Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang province. The human-rights allegations are “merely made-up pretexts” for U.S. interference in China’s “internal affairs,” said a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Tuesday. The U.S. criticism “is nothing more than fact-distorting gibberish,” he said. The 28 entities include eight China-based technology and science companies, among them Hikvision, a major supplier of video surveillance products. Hikvision opposes the BIS decision as one that "will hamper efforts by global companies to improve human rights" worldwide, emailed a company spokesperson Tuesday. Hikvision "respects human rights," she said. It has been "engaging" with Trump administration officials over the past year "to clarify misunderstandings about the company and address their concerns," she said. The action is effective Wednesday when it's to be published in the Federal Register, and it involves license requirements.

Prices for wireless service emerged as a major issue in Canada’s Oct. 21 federal election, a “cautionary tale” for the U.S., blogged Bronwyn Howell, American Enterprise Institute adjunct scholar, Monday. “The Liberal Party of Canada will, if successful at the ballot-box, intervene directly (via a method not yet disclosed) to set mobile telephony prices and mandate the sale of wholesale elements enabling mobile virtual network operators to resell services provided by existing network operators,” Howell said: The New Democratic Party pledged to impose price caps on wireless and require all carriers offer basic and unlimited data plans. “The politicization of mobile connection price flies in the face of conventional wisdom (if not even an article of faith) holding from at least the early 1990s that the long-term interests of telecommunications consumers are best served by political interests staying as far away as possible from day-to-day industry activities,” Howell said.

The U.S. government lacks technical knowledge and a single, leading voice in its approach to technology competition with China, the Brookings Institution was told. U.S. industries are concerned technology policies, such as export controls, are being made without full understanding of impact, said Adam Segal, Council on Foreign Relations emerging technologies chair. “We have to have a much better sense of the technologies involved and how they're actually deployed across a range of sectors," he told a Friday panel. Artificial intelligence isn't "going to look the same as quantum, which is not going to look the same as semiconductors, even though we’re all clumping them together as emerging technologies,” he added. The Commerce Department is working on tech export control regulations (see 1907110044). U.S. industries say there doesn’t seem to be a single voice for the U.S. on technology involving China, Segal said. “There are many voices, often competing, and not explicitly being driven from executive [branch] agencies." Abraham Newman, director of Georgetown University's Mortara Center for International Studies, doesn't believe the U.S. “has a clear strategy of what it’s pursuing vis-a-vis China in the technology sphere.” He wants the U.S. approach coordinated with trading partners: “I don’t have the sense that the current government is pursuing that.” The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy didn't comment.

Facebook should expand end-to-end encryption across its messaging services, despite pushback from Attorney General William Barr and colleagues in Australia and the UK (see 1910030058), more than 50 tech and privacy groups wrote the platform Thursday. Access Now, the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy & Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Engine, Free Press, Internet Society, New America’s Open Technology Institute and TechFreedom signed. “Each day that platforms do not support strong end-to-end security is another day that this data can be breached, mishandled, or otherwise obtained by powerful entities or rogue actors to exploit it,” they wrote. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation separately asked DOJ not to undermine encryption. The department “is clearly attempting to reboot its failed arguments on encryption by reframing the debate as one needed to protect children,” Vice President Daniel Castro wrote, citing better alternatives like “tracking meta-data about user behavior, infiltrating networks of bad actors, and screening images before they are uploaded.” The department didn’t comment Friday.

Facebook should forgo plans to deploy end-to-end encryption across its messaging services unless it can ensure user safety isn’t compromised and includes lawful police access to content, Attorney General William Barr reportedly plans to write the company with officials from the U.K. and Australia. Barr prepared the draft letter to Facebook with U.K. Secretary of State for the Home Department Priti Patel, Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton and acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan. The draft cites Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s March 6 post acknowledging “real safety concerns to address before we can implement end-to-end encryption across all our messaging services.” The government officials noted Zuckerberg said the company has a “responsibility to work with law enforcement and to help prevent” child sexual exploitation, terrorism and extortion. The company and department didn’t comment.

Of 15 categories of Chinese-sourced Mac Pro components Apple sought exclusions from 25 percent Section 301 List 3 tariffs in July (see 1907260027), the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative granted 10, agency records show. Of the five denials, USTR rejected all because Apple “failed to show that the imposition of additional duties on the particular product would cause severe economic harm to you or other U.S. interests,” said Sept. 23 notices posted Monday and searchable in the public docket. The denials were for Mac Pro CPU heat sinks, BIOS printed circuit boards, AC power cables, caster wheel assemblies and data cables, said the docket. Waivers were granted on the 10 other requests in mid-September. Apple didn’t comment.

Liberty Global's Virgin Media launched 1 Gbps in the U.K., after its Telenet launched similar speeds earlier this month in parts of Belgium, and UPC Switzerland doing likewise across its footprint, it said Monday. Liberty Global did 15 "GigaCity" deployments in Slovakia and Poland earlier this year, it said. It said it will do more GigaCity launches now through 2020.