5G, strengthening "our shared positions on global connectivity,” and ways to close the digital divide were on the agenda this week as FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr visited Kenya, meeting regulators from there, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sierra Leone, he tweeted. Carr met engineers from a startup that’s “now the largest provider of free, public wi-fi in Sub-Saharan Africa,” he said. The trip included visits to schools and to a refugee center where IoT devices “monitor water lines, including chlorine levels, which is key to preventing cholera & other waterborne pathogens,” he wrote. Carr was to have left Kenya Thursday night.

Government agencies beyond Customs and Border Protection are starting to take a closer look at blockchain, said Vincent Annunziato, director of CBP’s Business Transformation and Innovation Division, in an interview. The Food and Drug Administration is “starting to move, especially, I think, because of the food safety” aspect, he said. The Health and Human Services Department “got an authority to operate” and have “a system that they’re standing up,” he said. The regulatory and legal aspects of CBP’s blockchain efforts will likely "ramp up" if the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee recommends moving forward based on results of proof of concept testing (see 1903120038), said Annunziato. At that point, the Office of Regulations and Rulings (OR&R) would have to get involved by reviewing requirements that weren’t necessary during the test, which simulated the North American Free Trade Agreement and Central America Free Trade Agreement certificates of origin process, he said. OR&R will be more connected during the coming blockchain test involving intellectual property rights, Annunziato said. It will need to play an active part in the IPR piece because of its role in approving applicants that ask CBP for protection, he said. The specific application of blockchain to the NAFTA/CAFTA processes is less important to the test itself, he said. Activities such as sending documents, storing documents and re-keying information would no longer be necessary, he said.

Ericsson said it won a contract from KT, formerly Korea Telecom, to launch nationwide commercial 5G services in South Korea starting in early April. “Korean consumers are known as early adopters of technology such as advances in mobility, gaming, streaming, infotainment, and interactive functionality,” Ericsson said Thursday. Ericsson also announced a 5G memorandum of understanding with Korea’s SK Telecom. The companies are “teaming up to drive the evolution of next-generation 5G stand-alone core networks technology, architecture, implementation and operations,” Ericsson said Friday.

China’s mobile ecosystem added $750 billion in value to the country’s economy in 2018, or 5.5 percent of GDP, GSMA reported. It's the top mobile market, with almost 1.2 billion unique mobile subscribers on Dec. 31, the group said Wednesday: Some 69 percent of mobile connections there are smartphones.

Plastic iPad 2 “Smart Cover” cases are classifiable in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule as articles of plastic dutiable at 5.4 percent, not as duty-free accessories for automatic data processing machines, said the Court of International Trade in a decision made public Tuesday. Apple argued for the case’s duty-free classification as an accessory because it also functions as a stand. But the court agreed with a Customs and Border Protection ruling that the cases are explicitly excluded from that classification. Apple didn’t comment.

The American information and communications technology sector is bearing an especially heavy burden from “bilateral tariff escalation” between the U.S. and China, Rhodium Group analyst Lauren Gloudeman told reporters on a conference call, based on a its report for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (see 1903140001). Friday's report called costs “unambiguously severe” on the ICT industry, she said. The Trump administration’s tariffs “raised prices for nearly one-third of ICT imports from China, which is equivalent to nearly 20 percent of the ICT imports around the world,” said Gloudeman. “Bilateral tariffs result in lower GDP, employment, investment and trade flows” for the U.S., she said. “We see higher import and export prices, meaning higher costs for consumers and businesses.” Long-term ICT “productivity growth” is at risk through lower U.S. “competitiveness” and production stagnation, Gloudeman said. “U.S. GDP would cumulatively face $1 trillion in losses within 10 years across all tariff-escalation scenarios that we modeled,” she said, $64 billion to $91 billion yearly in the first five years. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative didn't comment Monday.

Recent supply-chain “activity” emanating from tariffs on Chinese goods “ebbed and flowed” among clients of contract electronics manufacturer Jabil, said CEO Mark Mondello on a Q2 call Thursday. “We've been very helpful to a significant amount of our customers in terms of game plans” for shifting supply chains outside China, he said. “Some have been proactive and some are taking a wait and see.” For customers seeking to modify supply chains to escape or reduce duties exposure, “we are very well-positioned to accommodate them,” he said. “It's kind of a wait and see for a lot of us in the next six to eight weeks” as U.S.-China trade talks move toward some unknown conclusion, he said. The U.S. "before too long" will have either "a good result or we’re going to have a bad result,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday (see 1903130036)

Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports would reduce U.S. GDP by up to $1 trillion within a decade if left in place, concluded a Rhodium Group study for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The tariffs are “eroding” U.S. “competitiveness” in information and communication technology and “undermining globalized supply chains,” said the chamber, which plans to release the report Friday. “U.S. tariffs, together with Chinese retaliation, are disrupting global trade and supply chains, further damaging American businesses, workers, farmers, ranchers and investors,” commented the chamber in August, arguing unsuccessfully against imposition of the List 3 tariffs that took effect Sept. 24. The three rounds of tariffs imposed since July are costing the tech industry $1 billion a month in higher fees, estimated CTA in December (see 1812140045). U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, in two recent appearances before Congress, refused to say if a trade deal with China hinges on lifting the tariffs or keeping them in place to enforce Chinese compliance (see 1903130036).

The European Commission's choice of "outdated" Wi-Fi technology (802.11p) for connected vehicles undercuts Europe's 5G action plan for all “major terrestrial transport paths [to] have uninterrupted 5G coverage by 2025,” GSMA Europe said Wednesday. Publication of new cooperative intelligent transport systems rules will be followed by a two-month period during which the European Parliament and Council can oppose enactment, the EC said. As of this year, vehicles, traffic signs and motorways will be equipped with technology to send standardized messages to all nearby traffic participants, it said. The specifications set the minimum legal requirements for interoperability between cooperative systems, allowing all equipped stations to exchange messages with each other securely in an open network. But GSMA said the legislation prioritizes communications in the 5855-5925 MHz band, which fails to account for more recent technological innovation. It urged lawmakers and governments to nix the proposal and encourage deployment of more advanced systems such as cellular to vehicle-to-everything.

Comments are due March 18 on World Radiocommunication Conference Advisory Committee draft recommendations on issues to be considered at the 2019 WRC, the FCC International Bureau said in a public notice in Tuesday's Daily Digest about docket 16-185. The bureau said it generally supports most of the recommendations. It seeks comment on draft proposals that didn't get full consensus by the committee, such as identification of bands for future development of international mobile telecom. The FCC promised to release the notice at Monday’s WAC meeting, warning the comment period would be unusually short (see 1903110044).