Tag: regulator

Liberia Orange, MTN fight regulator on mobile price hikes

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Liberia, one of Africa’s smallest economies, has seen a rapid growth in mobile users over the last decade, but its regulators are stuck in an ongoing pricing battle with two of the region’s largest telecoms companies in the world.

French giant Orange and Lonestar Cell MTN, a subsidiary of South Africa’s MTN Group have told consumers they are increasing prices because of a new order which imposes additional surcharges of $0.008 for each minute of voice calls and $0.0065 on each megabyte of data.

Under the new plan, a $1 recharge card is worth 15 minutes of voice calls, down from 45 mins. And $2 will buy 600 megabytes on internet data down from 1.2 gigabytes.

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In response, the state regulator, Liberia Telecommunication Authority, said on Oct. 8 the mobile companies were engaging in illegal price-fixing and collusion . It gave the network companies

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London transport regulator strips Ola’s operating licence over public safety failings

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By Rebekah Mathew

(Reuters) – London’s public transport authority stripped Indian ride-hailing company Ola of its London operating licence, saying that the taxi app was not “fit and proper” to hold one, having put passenger safety at risk.

Bengaluru-based Ola entered the London taxi market in February this year. The market is dominated by rivals including Uber <UBER.N>, Freenow and Bolt, and traditional black cab drivers who previously blocked streets in protest at what they see as a threat to their livelihoods.

Transport for London (TfL) said in a statement that it refused to grant Ola, a Softbank-backed <9984.T> operator, a new London private hire vehicle (PHV) operator’s licence as it “cannot find it fit and proper to hold one after discovering a number of failures that could have risked public safety.”

TfL’s decision came days after Uber won a legal bid to restore its London operating licence, which was

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Google drops Australia from News Showcase launch amid regulator rancour

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By Byron Kaye

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Google has postponed the Australian roll-out of News Showcase citing regulatory complications, just three months after announcing the product, as the U.S. internet giant grapples with one of the most audacious attempts to police its activities.

After naming Australia, Germany and Brazil as markets where it would start paying publishers to feature their news, the Alphabet Inc <GOOGL.O> unit dropped Australia from the product’s launch this week because its antitrust body has since pushed for laws forcing Google to pay royalties for content industry-wide.

Google said it has therefore “paused” contracts with five local publishers whose news was due to feature on News Showcase, which presents content on swipeable cards it dubs story panels.

“As we work to understand the impacts of the news media bargaining code on partnerships and products, we have put this project on pause for now,” Google’s managing director for

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Ireland’s data regulator under pressure over ability to police Google

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  • Ireland’s data watchdog is the lead regulator for Google in Europe, because the ad giant’s European HQ is in Dublin.
  • The watchdog faces questions about whether it is up to the job, after dragging out an investigation into Google’s ad practices for more than a year.
  • The probe centers on allegations that Google processes and shares intimate data with third-party brokers in a way that breaches EU privacy rules.
  • Regulators across the EU have come under fire for having insufficient resources to uphold privacy regulation.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

 

The regulator tasked with policing Google in Europe is under pressure to prove it’s up to the job.

The non-profit Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has written to Ireland’s Minister for Justice Helen McEntee to ask if the Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is capable of acting on claims that Google violates EU citizens’ data privacy. 

The letter

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