Proposed legislation currently making its way around the hallowed halls of Congress would put an end to the common carrier exemption, a shifty little clause of the FTC Act that essentially bails telecom carriers out from under Federal Trade Commission jurisdiction. In lay terms, that means carriers can engage in all manner of anticompetitive behavior and deceptive advertising and there's really not a heck of a lot the FTC can do about it. Carriers are currently reviewing the bill -- they're not really commenting on it in depth at this point -- but something tells us that by the time they get to the last spellbinding page, they're going to have an objection or two that necessitates the disposal of some lobby money. Then again, this isn't the first time congressmen have attempted to nix the common carrier exemption (an action the FTC fully supports, naturally), so there's certainly no guarantee it'll make it through to law this time, either.

While Verizon had its own go 'round with the law about crippling Bluetooth functionality on its phones, now South Korea's SK Telecom is facing a stiff fine of its own due to antitrust violations. The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) tagged the telecommunications giant with a $356,070 fine after taking issue with programming installed on handsets that only allowed users to play back music purchased through the firm's "Melon" music service. Interestingly, the report claims that "MP3 files obtained legally through different online sources cannot work on SK Telecom licensed phones, forcing MP3 file users to purchase only MP3 files from Melon," which leads us to believe that MP3 -- at least in this instance -- refers to any digital audio file. Nevertheless, the company now has 60 days to correct the problem and allow users to rock out to whatever tunes they so desire, so those affected by this snafu should be good to go come February.

[Via Techdirt]

We all know that Qualcomm likes to play up its market dominance everywhere possible -- and we also know they've taken some heat for it in Europe -- so it comes as little surprise to us that would-be CDMA competitors in the South Korean market are raising a fit. Texas Instruments and Broadcom have appealed to South Korea's Fair Trade Commission, alleging unfair practices by Qualcomm in bundling its CDMA chipsets with application processors. Presumably, the argument is that manufacturers should be allowed to mix and match chipsets without taking a hit on cost and without losing their relationships with suppliers, and since Qualcomm lays claim to portions of virtually every wireless standard -- not just IS-95 and CDMA2000 proper -- the implications of this are fairly far-reaching. Qualcomm's Korean offices have been raided by investigators in the past on similar allegations so we're not terribly confident this tussle will change their attitude, but we can dare to dream.

Were you aware that your phone records are available to just about anyone willing to fork over $100 beans in exchange for a month’s worth of activity? Yeah, in what has become a booming Internet business aimed primary at Private Dicks, your phone records (including lists of incoming and outgoing calls) are being made available via dozens of web-based brokers who openly advertise their ability to obtain your data with the help of company insiders or via a little deception -- in violation of law. See, the 1996 Telecommunication Act which deregulated the phone and media industries, also states that consumers’ phone records are private property and can only be publicly disclosed with our approval. As such, the FTC has now taken action and like Cingular, T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel, and Verizon before them, are going after these bastages in a variety of sting operations and costly litigation meant to oust and ultimately shut ‘em down. The five sites targetted by the FTC in their lawsuit include 77 Investigations, Accusearch, Check Em Out, Information Search, and Integrity Security & Investigations Services with the latter accused of selling personal financial info and credit card deets to boot. Sure, these US-based companies will just reopen off-shore but still, we’ve got your back on this one FTC.