Business news with words commission+phone. 19 news.

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, told a Treasury committee meeting that there never was a firm Lloyds TSB proposal to buy Northern Rock before the bank was forced to take emergency Bank of England support. He said there was "a vague phone call" in which Lloyds TSB wanted 30 billion pounds of funding for a few years at no penalty rate. King said he was of the view such a loan would be akin to state aid barred by the European Commission.

Nokia won a legal victory in its long-running cross-licensing dispute with Qualcomm, the biggest mobile phone chipmaker, after a US trade judge ruled it had not infringed on three of the chipmaker's patents

The European Commission will present a plan Tuesday to set up an EU-wide regulatory body with the power to separate telecom networks and access providers to foster competition and reduce costs for customers.

STRASBOURG, France - The European Commission is expected to propose the creation of a regulatory body with power to separate telecom networks and access providers to foster competition in Europe and reduce costs for customers.

A deeply divided Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will move ahead with plans to close a contractor-operated call center next month, running the risk that the agency may not be able to quickly return calls from the public during a transition of phone service to an in-house team.

The Federal Communications Commission angered the cable industry, but made the phone companies very happy. It nixed formerly exclusive deals between cable companies and apartment dwellings.

MOBILE phone makers will face a "shuffle" of market positions after China announced two weeks ago that it would relax license regulations for handset manufacturing. Put simply speaking it means that a heap of new players, most of them with unknown brands, will appear in the world's biggest cell phone market. China's State Council has abolished some 186 administrative examination and approval items covering mobile communication systems and terminals. The move indicates that the country will formally cancel the mobile phone production license examination and approval system, which started about a decade ago. Chinese companies intending to manufacture phones, had to have at least 200 million yuan (US$26.31 million) in registered capital and get approval from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Then, if they wanted to sell phones in China, manufacturing companies had to have their products quality tested and authorized by the Ministry of Information

MICROSOFT Corp has agreed to obey key parts of a 2004 antitrust ruling upheld by an appeals court last month, EU regulators said yesterday, cutting royalties for server software rivals and handing information over to open source developers. EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said she reached the deal in a phone call with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in the early hours of the morning, and hoped that "this dark chapter" was now behind them. "As of today, the major issues concerning compliance have been resolved," Kroes said, but cautioned that Microsoft was not completely in the clear because it has ongoing obligations, and the company "should bear this in mind." Kroes said she was sad that it took so long before Microsoft obeyed, years when consumers suffered through lack of choice as rivals were held back from developing better software. "It is a victory day for the consumer ... not the Commission," she said. If the software

BRUSSELS, Belgium Microsoft Corp. agreed to obey key parts of a 2004 antitrust ruling upheld by an appeals court last month, EU regulators said Monday, cutting royalties for rivals and handing information over to open source developers. The world's largest software company said separately that it would not appeal the decision, dropping a challenge a European Commission order that found it guilty of monopoly abuse three years ago. EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes reached the deal in a phone call with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in the early hours of the morning, she said, adding th

CHINA Citic Bank Corporation yesterday denied media reports saying it is bidding for a stake in United States investment banking and securities firm Bear Stearns. The bank said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange that it has not held any talks with Bear Stearns or any other relevant parties and no intention or agreement was reached on buying shares of Bear Stearns. The bank has no immediate plans to acquire a stake in Bear Stearns, according to the statement dated October 16. The nation's seventh-largest lender by assets also pledged that it will not draw up a bidding plan for at least three months. On Tuesday, media reports cited Jiang Dingzhi, vice chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, as saying that China Citic Bank was bidding for part of Bear Stearns, which was hard hit in the US by the subprime crisis. Phone calls to the press office at Citic's headquarters in Beijing were not answered yesterday. The New York Times reported earlier that Bear

The Competition Commission is to investigate mobile phone companies for charging other telecoms operators ?2.5bn a year to connect calls to their customers.

Mobile phone bills in Europe have been slashed by as much as 60 percent since the EU placed a cap on roaming charges over the summer, the European Commission said

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Mobile phone bills in Europe have been slashed by as much as 60 percent since the EU placed a cap on roaming charges over the summer, the European Commission said.

WASHINGTON - A senior Democratic lawmaker yesterday urged the Federal Communications Commission to help cut fees that major U.S. phone carriers charge rivals for access to high-capacity lines serving business and wireless customers. Massachusetts...

Some groups or companies got inside information on crucial votes, investigators say. From giant phone companies to small consumer advocates, the Federal Communications Commission is supposed to treat every group equally. But congressional investigators have found some companies and trade groups have received special treatment.

THE European Commission yesterday launched an antitrust investigation into US chipmaker Qualcomm for suspected exploitative practices of its patent rights. The European Union's antitrust watchdog said the investigation was opened after leading mobile phone and chipset makers, including Ericsson, Nokia, NEC and Panasonic, lodged complaints. Qualcomm, the world's second-largest chipmaker for cell phones, was allegedly imposing unfair, unreasonable and discriminatory terms and conditions when licensing its intellectual property rights in the WCDMA standards for mobile telephone, which may breach EU competition rules. The WCDMA standard forms part of the 3G (third generation) standard for European mobile phone technology (also referred to as "UMTS"). In a context of standardization, essential patent holders should not be able to exploit the extra power they have gained as a result of having technology based on their patent incorporated in the standard, according to the so-called Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) commitments, the commission said. The complaints also alleged that Qualcomm's exploitative practices could lead to final consumers paying higher handset prices, a slower development of the 3G standard and negative effect on the standard setting process more generally as well as the adoption of the future 4G standard. However, the commission said it has no conclusive proof of an infringement, and signified an in-depth investigation of the case was conducted as a matter of priority. Jonathan Todd, EU spokesman for competition, told reporters it usually takes years to complete an antitrust case, depending on a number of factors, such as the complexity of each case.

The European Commission has launched formal antitrust proceedings after mobile phone manufacturers complained Qualcomm charged far too much for vital technology licenses.

Mobile phone calls within the EU have become cheaper under new limits set by the European Commission.

DEUTSCHE Telekom AG agreed to buy the Dutch wireless and Internet unit of France Telecom SA yesterday for 1.33 billion euros (US$1.9 billion) including debt to gain 2.1 million clients. The cash purchase by Deutsche Telekom, Europe's biggest phone company, may be closed as soon as October 1. Approvals have been obtained, including authorization from the European Commission, France Telecom said in a statement yesterday. Savings after restructuring costs will reach 1 billion euros, Bonn-based Deutsche Telekom said in a separate statement. The purchase is the second for the Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile division since Rene Obermann became chief executive officer in November. Deutsche Telekom this month agreed to buy SunCom Wireless Holdings Inc in the United States for US$1.6 billion. The Dutch purchase will allow Deutsche Telekom to leapfrog Vodafone Group Plc to become the second biggest mobile-phone company in the Netherlands. France Telecom, the largest French phone company, said in December its Dutch mobile unit, Orange Netherlands, was too small. Orange had 11.9 percent of the Dutch wireless market at the end of 2006, compared with 15 percent for T-Mobile and 22.4 percent for Newbury, England-based Vodafone, according to Credit Suisse Group estimates. Royal KPN NV, the largest Dutch phone company, led with 50.7 percent. Deutsche Telekom made its offer for Orange Netherlands in June, and has since been awaiting the outcome of discussions with the Dutch company's workers' council. European regulators approved the deal August 20. Also in June, France Telecom agreed to buy Deutsche Telekom's Ya.com Spanish Web operations to focus on faster-growing wireless markets such as Egypt and Romania. Obermann is relying on an expansion of T-Mobile, which accounts for half of the former monopoly's sales, to make up for a four-year slump in fixed-line phone revenue in Germany. Deutsche Telekom expects the purchase will lead to savings of about 1 billion euros, "with around half of this being generated in the first six years, in particular from network integration and reduced marketing expenses," Deutsche Telekom said in its statement.