Regulation

FCC chairman Julius Genachowski used his opening keynote address this morning to focus on the looming ‘spectrum crunch’ in the US, claiming that the consumer market benefit from a fair mobile broadband spectrum policy in the country equates to a value worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

UK regulator Ofcom has announced plans to auction-off new 4G spectrum suitable for LTE early next year. Ofcom said that the 250MHz of new spectrum on offer – in the 800MHz (digital dividend) and 2.6GHz frequency bands – is equivalent to three quarters of the mobile spectrum in use in the UK today.

UK regulator Ofcom today announced that mobile termination rates (MTRs) are to be cut by over 80 percent from next month.

The European Commission referred France and Spain to the European Court of Justice, stating that they “continue to impose specific charges on the turnover of telecoms operators in breach of EU law,” while also issuing a request for information from the Hungarian authorities relating to a similar matter.

Further progress was made this week on development of LTE-Advanced technology

The US Federal Trade Commission is planning a review of the marketing and delivery of products with in-app purchase capabilities through Apple’s App Store, according to the Washington Post.