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  EU fines LCD price fixing cartel $857M, Samsung given immunity

  Publié: décembre 8, 2010, 4:52pm CET par Tim Conneally

  By Tim Conneally, Betanews

  Wednesday, the European Commission announced the fines it will hand out to the LCD price-fixing cartel that it has been investigating since 2006. The EC first began its investigation of leading LCD panel manufacturers, which it found had been conspiring to artificially inflate the cost of LCD screens for televisions and personal computers between October 2001 and February 2006.

  "In total...six manufacturers met around 60 times for the purpose of agreeing prices, including price ranges and minimum prices. They exchanged information on future production planning, capacity utilization, and trading conditions," Joaquín Almunia, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for Competition Policy said today. "All of these discussions were clearly illegal under EU competition rules. And the evidence shows that the participants were aware of the illegality of their conduct."

  Five of these six companies were hit with fines totaling €649 million ($857 million.) Chimei InnoLux was fined €300 million ($396 million), LG Display was fined €215 million ($284 million), AU Optronics was fined €116.8 million ($154 million), Chunghwa Picture Tubes Limited was fined €9 million ($11.9 million) and HannStar Display Corp. was fined €8.1 million ($10.7 million.)

  The sixth company involved, none other than market leader Samsung Electronics, was absolved of any fines because it blew the whistle on the cartel. Similarly, the fines against LG, AU, and Chunghwa were all reduced for their cooperation with the Commission's investigation.

  Almunia said two of the companies asked for fine reductions due to their inability to pay, but did not mention which companies it was. The requests were denied.

  The Commission's crackdown on "hardcore cartel activity" has yielded more than €3 billion this year alone.

  Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
  
  
  
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  Net neutrality debate needs a reset, says former FCC head Powell

  Publié: décembre 8, 2010, 2:29am CET par Tim Conneally

  By Tim Conneally, Betanews

  At the next open FCC meeting on December 21, the first order of business will be the Open Internet Order, a revision to the FCC's Net Neutrality policies that have sprung from the nearly seven-year old doctrine on preserving internet freedoms by former FCC Chairman Michael Powell.

  With net neutrality policy coming to the forefront of the FCC's agenda in just a matter of days, it's only fitting to hear how former Chairman Powell assesses the state of net neutrality.

  At a symposium held by the Internet Innovation Alliance in Washington DC Tuesday, Powell aired concerns that regulation has simply taken far too long.

  "I have to say, right after President Obama's election, there was moment of great opportunity in which the public and the industry were galvanized in commitment to public and private partnership to drive broadband availability and access, and to drive increases in adoption. This took the form, of course, of the National Broadband Plan, for which I really do give great compliment to Chairman Genachowski and the FCC," Powell began.

  "In my opinion, unfortunately, we seem to have fallen off the track in the last year, and I think that for the better part of the year, regrettably...we have been stuck in a neverending debate over net neutrality. Rarely in my time in communications have I ever seen so much time and energy spent on so modest a gain."

  Powell says it's time for a reset, and that it's time to reconsider how lightly the Internet is regulated, if at all.

  

  "I think we should go back to a commitment that the presumption should be against regulating an Internet ecosystem without clear and compelling justifications for doing so," Powell said.

  Powell had to clarify that he wasn't pandering to "some kind of Tea Party ethos," and it wasn't just haughty political discourse, but that it is necessary in the fast-moving reality that is the high-tech economy.

  He pointed out that it's taken just fifteen years for giant telecommunications companies to completely dissolve and be supplanted by companies offering newer technologies.

  "When I first started in the FCC, fear of the market power of long-distance [telephone] companies was much more significantly percieved than any other types of company. Where are those companies now?" Powell asked. "Killed. Creatively destroyed."

  Furthermore, Powell said that existant telecom policy can simply not be applied to the Internet, which is a "system of ever-evolving, organic undulation," not the easy-to-follow telephone system, which had 60 years of regulation behind it when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was laid down. Therefore, Powell said he considered the potential reintroduction of Title II regulations to be the "most fatal of errors."

  In the end, Powell concludes that it's undoubtedly positive that the regulations are coming up for review in the FCC soon, but progress toward an actual resolution can unfortunately not be assured, given the strong disagreements regulators still have.

  Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010