Category Archives: Telecommunications

Politics in the De-politicised: TikTok as a Source of China’s Soft Power

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 9, No. 11, November 2021

TikTok logo. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Zuza Nazaruk

Last year’s “TikTok war” revealed unprecedented hostility of the US government towards the Chinese tech newcomer. The seemingly innocuous software was developed by ByteDance, a Chinese unicorn company. TikTok is a sister app of Douyin, created for the Chinese market. Both apps allow users to share and watch short videos. In July 2020, then-President Donald Trump accused TikTok of a series of breaches, the most serious of which was sharing user data with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (Levine, 2020). Yet, some experts, including Adam Segal from the Council of Foreign Relations, considered the near-ban a smokescreen to hinder the growth of the most globally successful Chinese app to date (Campbell, 2020). In 2020, TikTok was the most downloaded app globally, with 89 million new users just in the US (Geyser, 2021). To date, 23% of Americans use or have watched TikTok, with an average American user having spent 14.3 hours monthly on the app in 2020 (Tankovska, 2021).

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Facebook Libra And Reliance Jio Compete With WeChat By Targeting The Unbanked

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 9, September 2020

Source: Tim Bennett, (Unsplash).

Vikram Chopra
CEO of Gift Jeenie

There’s a technology arms race developing between the West and China. At the frontier are emerging technologies such as 5G, Big Data, AI, Blockchain and Crypto. China already has an advantageous position in many of these areas, including 5G and AI, and is looking to challenge Bitcoin and the US dollar with its digital Yuan.

Facebook’s recent moves with Whatsapp and Libra are interesting strategies in this larger game of global tech domination where the likes of WeChat and TikTok have been resoundingly successful market leaders. A big reason for the success of WeChat is its complete market domination within China’s 1.4 billion population. Furthermore, Wechat has seamlessly integrated into the daily lives of its users. It’s more than just a chat application: it’s a platform for shopping, ordering groceries, booking travel, dry-cleaning, reserving a table at a preferred restaurant and sending money among other services. Add the 40 million global Chinese diaspora who use WeChat to communicate with loved ones back home, and you can see why WeChat is one of the leading social media networks with over 1.2 billion users globally. Continue reading →

How Much Does Your Internet Service Provider Spend On Lobbying?

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 10, October 2019

Comcast Headquarters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2011. Wikimedia/Smallbones.

Paul Bischoff
Freelance Tech Writer

When people think of lobbying, they often picture backroom deals made by big pharma executives. In reality, though, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are one of the largest lobbying groups in the US. With this in mind, we analyzed publicly-available data to see just how much money your ISP spends on influencing legislators and regulators every year.

Why do ISPs lobby?

ISPs might provide a valuable service but they are, first and foremost, businesses. As such, they tend to lobby against anything which could impact profits. This might mean opposing bills that stop the sale of customer data, for instance, or scrapping rules that make it easier for competitors to get up and running.

Of course, this cuts both ways; if there’s the potential to make more money via lobbying, ISPs will almost always try. If your ISP has been trying to push through a massive merger or looking to scrap industry regulation so it can charge you for an inferior service, you can bet huge amounts of money has changed hands to expedite the process. Continue reading →

5G Fight With China: Politicization Leads to Suboptimal US Outcome

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 4, April 2019

A customer wearing a headset plays a virtual reality (VR) game, 2018. Source: Marco Verch via Flickr.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a national 5G auction of large slices (up to 3.4 gigahertz) of the millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum, along with $20.4 billion in subsidies over 10 years for rural connections, on April 12. The plan ignores expert cyber-security advice, has major security, timing, strategic and financial problems, and will not facilitate new competitors in the telecommunications market. The announcement by President Trump and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, likely under the influence of telecommunications lobbyists, was a surprise to most experts and took place with no real public input. The auction of the mmWave spectrum is set for December 10. At the press conference announcing the decision, Chairman Pai thanked Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow and Ivanka Trump for their assistance, with Ms. Trump giving a speech in support of the plan.

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