July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

BlackBerry isn’t going to let a recent report detailing high return rates for its new flagship smartphone go without a fight.

The company announced today that it will seek a review of the Detwiler Fenton report by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Security Commission in Canada. BlackBerry will be sending out a formal request to the regulators over the next few days.

“Sales of the BlackBerry Z10 are meeting expectations, and the data we have collected from our retail and carrier partners demonstrates that customers are satisfied with their devices,” BlackBerry president and chief executive Thorsten Heins said in a statement today. “Return rate statistics show that we are at or below our forecasts and right in line with the industry. To suggest otherwise is either a gross misreading of the data or a willful manipulation. Such a conclusion is absolutely without basis, and BlackBerry will not leave it unchallenged.”

Specifically, the report claimed that returns for the BlackBerry Z10 are outpacing sales, and that consumers found the interface unintuitive, according to Bloomberg. Verizon Wireless has also refuted the report’s claims.

BlackBerry also noted that Detwiler Fenton refused to make its report and its methodology available, even after it called out the findings.

Without seeing what went into the report, it’s tough to determine its validity. I found the Z10 to be a pretty disappointing device in my review, but I can’t imagine too many people outside the BlackBerry faithful were eager to buy it. If the returns are coming from BlackBerry fans, then the company has an even bigger problem on its hands.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Not to be outdone by its competition, Uber has reached an agreement with the California authorities.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) struck its first deal with popular ride-sharing service Lyft. Twenty-four hours later, the state has also agreed to suspend its $20,000 fine and cease-and-desist action against Uber, the smartphone app that you can use to summon a car instead of hailing a traditional cab.

This agreement provides Uber with the breathing room to continue operating its hire-a-car service and expand into the ride-sharing market.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick told the New York Times that the ride-sharing service will be unveiled in California in the coming weeks. In California, Uber operates in San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange County, Sacramento, and a few smaller cities.

As part of its official statement to the press, Uber said:

The agreement states that ride-sharing — or rides provided by drivers not specifically licensed to drive a limousine or taxi — is legal, too. This paves the way for Uber to begin offering ride-sharing services in California in the near future.

As we reported yesterday, California is taking six months to perform background checks and assess whether services like SideCar, Lyft, and Uber are in compliance.

The CPUC is also considering new regulations that could legalize ride-sharing. In December it issued a proposal for new rulemaking, which will evaluate how these new businesses are using “mobile communications and social networks to connect individuals wishing to offer and receive low cost and convenient, sometimes shared, transportation.”

Uber has faced similar regulatory battles in other cities as it expands. In a blog post, a company spokesperson stressed that California is “cutting edge” and appears set to lead a “steady drumbeat of progress.”

Google’s controversial new privacy policy went into effect today, but resistance to the sweeping changes still appears strong, with a judge in the EU saying it violates EU law.

In late January, Google announced it would change its privacy policy by combining 60 policies into one. While simplification of hard-to-read policies is nice, Google has attracted criticism because it will now combine user data across all of its services, including search, Gmail, YouTube, Google+, and Google Docs. Critics have included European regulators, U.S. Congress, and many U.S. state attorneys general.

Now we’ve finally hit Google Privacy Policy (GPP) day. Clearly, many organizations are not down with GPP, but now a judge in the EU has taken that criticism a step further by saying it’s a violation of EU law.

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding told BBC Radio Four that there were serious issues with the privacy changes. She noted that France’s data protection watchdog, the CNIL, had decided necessary “transparency rules have not been applied.”

“Protection of personal data is a basic rule of the European Union. It is inscribed in the treaties. It is not an if, it is a must,” Reding reportedly said.

A Google spokesperson, echoing past statements from Google, told us the company is not worried about the criticism.

“We are confident that our new simple, clear, and transparent privacy policy respects all European data protection laws and principles,” a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat via e-mail. “It provides all the information required in Articles 10 & 11 of the directive, plus much additional information, and it follows the guidelines published by the Article 29 Working Party in 2004.”

Are you down with GPP? Or are you concerned about the changes?

[Angry man: olly/Shutterstock]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The U.S. Security and Exchange Commission said Wednesday that AT&T and other wireless telecom companies will have to let shareholders vote on net neutrality, thanks in part to a proposal from a group that includes Mike D of the Beastie Boys.

Net neutrality, the notion that online traffic must be treated equally by ISPs, is now a “significant policy” issue, the SEC said in a letter posted on its website. The agency is recommending that AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon include a resolution in their annual shareholder votes declaring that they won’t treat data differently based on its “source, ownership or destination.”

The move comes in response to a proposal sent to the SEC by Trillium Asset Management, which represents Mike D and two other AT&T shareholders. Previously the SEC found net neutrality wasn’t a large enough issue to include in shareholder votes. But thanks to the policy push by the likes of Trillium, as well as the FCC’s own support of net neutrality for landline ISPs, it seems the tide is finally beginning to shift in favor of those who want fair wireless-web access.

Of course, the SEC’s recommendation doesn’t guarantee that carrier shareholders will vote in favor of net neutrality. But at least shareholders can now get their say, instead of just accepting the carrier’s position.

Via Bloomberg; Mike D photo via Fabbio Venni/Flickr

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After spending the better part of 2011 fighting regulators, the wholesale wireless company Lightsquared suffered a killer blow from the FCC today that could squash its 4G LTE network plans.

We’ve been hearing from government regulators since June that Lightsquared’s proposed LTE network could interfere with GPS devices. Today the NTIA, an agency that oversees spectrum use, issued a letter to the FCC that claims Lightsquared’s network will indeed impact GPS services, and that “there is no practical way to mitigate the interference at this time.”

The FCC then issued a statement announcing that it planned to reject Lightsquared’s application to build an LTE network, the Wall Street Journal reports. The agency’s decision could still be appealed, but at this point there seems to be little that Lightsquared can do to convince the FCC otherwise.

In a statement of its own, Lightsquared said that it disagrees with the judgement but will still work to find a resolution:

LightSquared profoundly disagrees with both the NTIA’s and the PNT’s recommendations, which disregard more than a decade of regulatory orders, and in doing so, jeopardize private enterprise, jobs and investment in America’s future. NTIA relies on interference standards that have never been used in this context, and were forced by the GPS community in order to reach the conclusions presented today. This, together with a severely flawed testing process that relied on obsolete and niche devices, shows that the FCC should take the NTIA’s recommendation with a generous helping of salt.

Lightsquared at one point blamed the GPS industry for creating devices that don’t stay within their required spectrum ranges. The company also said a potential antenna fix could solve its GPS interference issues — though now that doesn’t seem very likely.

Reston, Virginia-based LightSquared was founded by billionaire Philip Falcone with the goal of reselling its LTE mobile broadband network to others. Its network, if built, would cover up to 260 million people. At this point, it looks like that’s not going to happen anytime soon.