Last November, T-Mobile confirmed it had been working with the UK government's Information Commissioner’s Office following suspicions that employees had been selling customer data.
The Register now reports that former T-Mobile employee David Turley has pleaded guilty to 18 charges under section 55 of the Data Protection Act. He hasn't been sentenced yet.
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CTIA The Wireless Association – one of the wireless communication industry's international trade bodies – has filed a lawsuit against the city of San Francisco. It's unhappy with the new so-called "Cell Phone Right-to-Know" ruling, which insists that retailers publish Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) figures for the mobile phones they sell.
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Vodafone has agreed to pay £1.25 billion to HM Revenue & Customs, settling a tax dispute that dates back ten years. The dispute arose with Vodafone's Luxembourg business and HMRC's Controlled Foreign Companies (CFC) rules, which were intended to prevent UK businesses from setting up foreign businesses to avoid UK tax.
Vodafone will pay £800 million in the current financial year; the rest of the tax bill will be paid in instalments over the next five years. Vodafone had already set aside £2.2 billion after losing a Court of Appeal case last year.
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UK communications regulator Ofcom has announced changes to the way fixed-line and mobile phone companies deal with customer complaints. From next year, UK communications providers will need to include information about dispute resolution services on all paper bills. They'll also be obliged to write to consumers whose complaints have not been resolved within eight weeks to tell them about their right to take complaints to a dispute resolution service.
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NTP Incorporated – co-founded by the late Thomas J Campana, who invented many of the technologies used in wireless email – has filed lawsuits against Apple, Google, HTC, LG Electronics, Microsoft and Motorola in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The company says eight of its patents, which relate to the wireless delivery of electronic mail, have been infringed.
NTP is probably best-known for a lengthy legal case with Research in Motion that's now been settled. The US government was forced to intervene after RIM was ordered to stop infringing the patents, which would have shut down BlackBerry email in the United States.
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