BROADBAND BREAKFAST INSIGHT: The Trump administration’s protectionism is already having significant impacts on many American businesses and industries, and may begin to have significant impacts on the fiber broadband world. This post by Doug Dawson outlines some of the moves in Washington against both Huawei and ZTE, two Chinese telecommunications manufacturing giants. Incidentally, I had a chance to visit the headquarters to both of these companies during my visit to Shenzhen, China, at the 2006 International Telecommunications Union conference. (Note: Rep. Liz Cheney is the sole member of the U.S. House of Representative from Wyoming, filling the seat once held by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.)

Fiber Electronics and International Politics, from POTs and PANs by Doug Dawson

In February six us Intelligence agencies warned Americans against using cellphones made by Huawei, a Chinese manufacturer. They warned that the company is “beholden” to the Chinese government and that we shouldn’t trust their electronics.

Recently Sen Liz Cheney introduced a bill into Congress that would prohibit the US Government or any contractors working for it to use electronics from Huawei or from another Chinese company ZTE Corp. Additionally, any US military base would be prohibited from using any telecom provider who has equipment from these two vendors anywhere in their network.

For anybody who doesn’t know these two companies, they manufacture a wide array of telecom gear. ZTE is one of the five largest cellphone makers in the world. They also make electronics for cellular networks, FTTP networks and long-haul fiber electronics. The company sells under it’s own name, but also OEMs equipment for a number of other vendors. That might make it hard for a carrier to know if they have gear originally manufactured by the company.

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Source: Fiber Electronics and International Politics | POTs and PANs

(Photo of Huawei booth by Kārlis Dambrāns used with permission.)

BROADBAND BREAKFAST INSIGHT: Think of all that has transpired over the past century and a half!

Remembering Alexander Graham Bell, from Commscope

On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his revolutionary new device—the telephone. Since then, telephony has evolved in ways even this great thinker could not have imagined. After connecting the world with telephone wires, we moved to wireless for voice services and eventually mobile data, i.e. the internet. The GSM Association (GSMA) says there are now more than 5 billion mobile subscribers globally. Mobile technology dominates the telecom industry.

At GSMA’s recent Mobile World Congress event, CommScope displayed our latest technologies that help enable the next generation of wireless, 5G. From antennas that boost current network speeds to 1 Gigabit per second to new solutions for in-building wireless and fixed wireless access, CommScope continues in the innovative spirit of Bell. Here’s a quick video from the show floor summarizing our latest work. To stay abreast of our news throughout the year, sign up to receive our press releases and blog posts.

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Source: Remembering Alexander Graham Bell

(Photograph of Alexander Graham Bell by Moffett Studio in the public domain.)

LAS VEGAS, January 8, 2013 – One of the biggest public policy challenges facing the information technology industry is the ability for patent holders to sue entrepreneurs, according to a panel on “patent trolls” here at the Consumer Electronics Show.

A panel of entrepreneurs, non-profit groups and attorneys for major technology companies and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said that patent trolls cost more than $29 billion, a number produced last year by two Boston University professors. The professors were attempting to quantify the cost of patent litigation instigated by “non-practicing entities.”

Such non-practicing entities, derisively called “patent trolls,” are seen as purchasing intellectual property rights to patents, and then suing to stop businesses from developing products, applications or services that could be construed as infringing their patent.

Suzanne Michel, senior patent counsel at Google, took care to distinguish the business model of a company like Qualcomm, which owns patents on chipsets, which it then licenses to foundry companies to produce, from entities that she considered as a “troll.”

“Companies that come up with an idea, patent it, and license it is great for innovaiton and consumers.” By contrast, an undesireable situation occurs when “Somoene went out, bought a patent, and asked, how can I broadly construe this patent? It is simply a tax on innovation,” she said.

Morever, said Michel, the opportunity cost of distracting patent litigation imposes costs far greater than the $29 billion.

From the perspective of Rep. DeFazio, getting the attention of Congress is an uphill battle because Congress completed a signficant patent overhaul legislation with the America Invents Act of 2011. As DeFazio is not a member of the House Judiciary Committee, he said he had to struggle even to find a co-sponsor for his legislation addressing the issue of patent lawsuits.

In August 2012, he introduced his bill, Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act.

An attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation urged the technology industry to flex their new-found political muscles against the entertainment industry.

“One year ago [at CES 2012], we were all taking about [the online piracy measures Stop Online Piracy Act, or the PROTECT Intellectual Property Act], and we all thought that SOPA and PIPA was going to become law,” said Julie Samuels, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. A few short weeks later, the tech industry was instrumental in defeating those bills.

“We weilding a lot of power last January, and we are still sitting on this,” Samuels said. “While there are a lot of roadblocks, now is the time; now is a moment” for legislation against patent trolls.

Lee Cheng, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Newegg Inc., urged measures that would limit the damages that non-practicing entities could obtain from patent lawsuits.

Google’s Michel urged the patent office to implement “better procedures for challenging these over-broad patents.”

Even though US Patent and Trademark Office procedures permit challenges of this sort for financial business methods, she said those measures should be extended to all software patents.

Follow Broadband Breakfast’s coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show at http://twitter.com/broadbandcensus. Our goals for #CES2013 are to promote the upcoming series of Broadband Breakfast Club events; to get the latest information on how broadband is driving digital technologies in 2013; and to test ideas for a book on technology, broadband, and digital media that Broadband Breakfast’s Publisher Drew Clark plan to write in 2013. He is on Google+ and Twitter.