Chinese companies Huawei and Lenovo are two of the few global tech companies still doing business in Russia nearly seven weeks into the Ukraine invasion, reported John Strand of Strand Consult Tuesday. “There is a consensus among people and organizations in the free world that the invasion is despicable, and hence there is a desire to end relations with Russia,” he said: “Companies interpret that if they continue to do business in the country, that they will suffer backlash from the public and reputational repercussions in future. Moreover, consumers and shareholders are sophisticated [enough] to understand the power of their money to influence political decisions and behavior.”

EU and Ukrainian operators will cooperate to keep Ukrainian refugees connected, the European Commission announced Friday. The agreement, brokered by the EC and the European Parliament, was signed by 27 operators (and counting) in the EU and Ukraine, including members of associations such as the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association, the GSM Association and MVNO Europe, the EC said. The initiative aims to create a more stable framework to help displaced Ukrainians in Europe stay in touch with friends and family back home. Operators will voluntarily and bilaterally lower wholesale roaming charges as well as wholesale fees for terminating international calls through commercial agreements. In return, Ukrainian telcos said they will gradually reduce international termination rates for calls to Ukraine originating from EU numbers, and calls to Ukraine from Ukrainian numbers roaming in the EU, toward levels that will allow EU operators to offer reduced wholesale roaming charges and affordable international calls to people calling Ukraine. They also agreed to pass along the full benefits of the lower EU wholesale roaming charges to their customers roaming in Europe.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai denied Thursday in a Senate Finance Committee hearing that the need she identified a day earlier before House Ways and Means to “turn the page on the old playbook” (see 2203300051) meant that the Biden administration was walking away from holding China accountable for its commitments under the phase one trade agreement. The U.S. needs to “stick with” phase one and enforce the agreement’s “dispute resolution” provisions, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told Tai. “If we just say we’re going to forget that and make that part of the old playbook, I think it sends a terrible message,” said Portman, the former USTR under President George W. Bush. “When China makes an agreement with us, in order to fulfill their obligations, we have to exercise our legal rights.” The old playbook, responded Tai, “focused exclusively on pressuring China” to curb its bad trade behavior. “We are not giving up on pressing China,” she said. “All tools remain on the table with respect to dispute settlement and enforcement,” said Tai. “In fact, what I’m saying is we’re committing to doing more work, and our strategy needs to expand.”

The FCC denied a request by China Unicom (Americas) for to extend from April 4 to July 2 the time it has to discontinue the Section 214 services it provides enterprise customers. “The motion does not contain sufficient justification or evidence to support a 90-day extension,” the Thursday order said: “If CUA’s existing enterprise customers are experiencing difficulty with transitioning to a different service provider within the timeframe set forth in the Order on Revocation, we would reasonably expect CUA to identify these customers and/or to provide supporting affidavits from these customers.” Commissioners voted 4-0 in January to revoke the Chinese company’s authorizations (see 2201270030). The International, Wireline and Enforcement bureaus issued the order.

The FCC released an order revoking Pacific Networks’ and its subsidiary ComNet’s authority to offer domestic or international services in the U.S., approved by commissioners 4-0 at their March meeting (see 2203160031). The Wednesday order cites “the changed national security environment” for China since the companies were authorized to offer service. “We find that the Companies are U.S. subsidiaries of a Chinese state-owned entity, and therefore they are subject to exploitation, influence, and control by the Chinese government and are highly likely to be forced to comply with Chinese government requests without sufficient legal procedures subject to independent judicial oversight,” the order said. The companies have 60 days to shutter their U.S. operations.

The FCC told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit it rightly revoked China Telecom’s domestic and international authorities (see 2111150025). “The record shows that China Telecom’s control of U.S. communications infrastructure could be used to disrupt, misroute, or intercept U.S. communications at the behest of the Chinese government -- a finding that China Telecom’s brief neither acknowledges nor meaningfully disputes,” said a Thursday brief (docket 21-1233). The company’s “conduct and representations to government agencies and violations of commitments in its Letter of Assurances independently demonstrate a lack of trustworthiness and reliability required of companies operating critical telecommunications infrastructure,” the agency said.

Ukraine's information technology sector is functioning normally despite the war, said panelists Tuesday on a DigitalEurope webinar. It may be the only expert sector in the country that continues to work, said IT Ukraine Association Executive Director Konstantin Vasyuk. Internet coverage is generally good, he said. About 2% of IT workers, those with military experience, have joined in defending against the Russian invasion, and companies respect that choice and are holding their jobs open. Others are staying put, and companies have moved them to safe locations in European countries, Ukraine or the U.S. Women, who make up 26% of the IT workforce, can transfer to Europe, while men must remain in-country. Vasyuk urged clients to support the sector by maintaining their contracts and considering new ones. Asked where the IT industry might be in 10 years, he said if Ukraine survives, its existing IT work in the global market will continue. Ukraine Avenga Managing Director Marta Romaniak said the war didn't catch her company unprepared: It transferred data and infrastructure to safe places such as the U.S. and relocated 300 female staffers and spouses of male IT workers. The firm's human resources department calls employees daily to check on them and ask if they need help. Avenga hasn't lost any clients. Grid Dynamics has moved 95%-97% of its workers to western parts of Ukraine and is shifting women and families to its offices in Poland, Moldova, Serbia, the Netherlands, Germany and elsewhere, said Senior Director Igor Tkach. In addition to continuing business support from clients, the sector needs informational support: He urged everyone to spread the word about what's really happening in Ukraine. Asked how the country's telecom network is holding up, Digital Europe Director-General Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl told us it's still up and running, but infrastructure in battle zones is suffering. DigitalEurope is trying to bring components from Europe needed to keep the networks open, and is also helping with ICT and humanitarian initiatives. In February, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a law establishing the National Commission for State Regulation of Electronic Communications, Radio Frequency Spectrum and Provision of Postal Services. Earlier this month, mobile operators Kyivstar, Vodafone Ukraine and lifecell, plus the newly created telecom regulator, government, state information protection services and the Ukrainian Association of Telecom Operators, reportedly launched a national roaming pilot to ensure continuity of communications services.

The SMPTE board of governors is “suspending the activities” of its Russian chapter until further notice in protest over the Ukraine invasion, said the society Tuesday. The board issued a resolution “condemning the unprovoked invasion by Russia of the sovereign country of Ukraine, the slaughter of innocent Ukrainian citizens, the destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and the suppression of individual rights of Russian citizens to speak and associate freely.” It urged Moscow to “immediately cease its invasion, withdraw all its troops from Ukrainian territory, and restore the rights of Ukrainian and Russian citizens.” The board also asked SMPTE’s “partner associations” in the TV, movie, social media and related industries “to join us in our resolve against the actions of the Russian government.”

The invasion of Ukraine challenges the concept of multistakeholder internet infrastructure governance, said representatives from ICANN, academia, the European Parliament, civil society, security organizations and others. At such pivotal times, "we must decide as a community whether Internet self-governance has matured sufficiently to address such newly encountered issues." Governments have historically imposed sanctions but the global Internet community hasn't developed a process for doing so, they said. Principles they set out Thursday for sanctions include: (1) Don't disconnect a country's population from the internet because that hampers access to information that might lead people to withdraw support for acts of war. (2) Make sanctions focused and precise, and minimize the possibility of unintended consequences. (3) Military and propaganda agencies are potential targets of sanctions. (4) While it's inappropriate for governments to try to compel internet governance mechanisms to impose sanctions outside the multistakeholder process, there are some effective and specific sanctions that could be considered. Signers backed forming of a "new, minimal, multistakeholder mechanism ... which after due process and consensus would publish sanctioned IP addresses and domain names in the form of public data feeds ... to be consumed by any organization that chooses to subscribe to the principles and their outcome." They urged the community to launch a dialogue on a mechanism to decide whether the IP addresses and domains of the Russian military and its propaganda arms should be sanctioned. After analyzing Ukraine's requests for various ICANN actions (see [2203020002), they concluded that blocklisting is the most effective solution.

To counter malicious domain name registrations involving Russia's invasion of Ukraine, ICANN has begun adding terms in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and other languages to its domain name security threat information collection and reporting system, it said. The watchlist, originally rolled out to fight COVID-19 DNS security threats, searches for phishing or malware names that match a set of related keywords. When evidence of malice appears, the results are reported to the corresponding registrars. Measures European telecom companies are taking to help Ukraine are updated here. Telcos welcomed governments' call to reinforce cybersecurity measures (see 2203090038) and promised to "remain trusted partners to public institutions in countering cyber threats to digital infrastructure." The European Telecommunications Network Operators Association stressed, however, that critical IT infrastructures in sectors such as energy, finance and transport will be increasingly in the sights of cyberattackers, and that there, too, "adequate regulatory precautions must be taken." It urged officials to consider the need to allocate more responsibility for risk management in digital infrastructures to providers of ICT products and services that become integral parts of communication networks.