Kanye West Won't Face Criminal Charges in Teen Battery Case

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After paying big money to the teen he allegedly pummeled at a chiropractor’s office in Beverly Hills, Calif., it appears that Kanye West won’t be charged criminally for the assault.

According to the Associated Press, the Los Angeles County prosecutor rejected the case because Yeezy reached a civil settlement with the young man and there were no significant injuries to report.

West reportedly paid the 19-year-old victim $250,000 in order to settle the case.

The prosecutor’s evaluation report also revealed that there were conflicting eyewitness statements about how many times West punched the victim, who was uncooperative when prosecutors tried to speak to him about the incident.

As we previously reported, West got into a physical altercation with the young man after he allegedly hurled a racial epithet at Kim Kardashian.

West was not arrested, and his attorney Blair Berk had no comment on the prosecutor’s decision.

Next: Vote Kanye West's 'Yeezus' for Hip-Hop Album of the Year

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BlackBerry Posts Huge Loss on Write-Down and Charges

The stock rose as much as 17 percent after the company announced the five-year partnership with Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Co Ltd, which will initially build low-end devices for sale in Indonesia and other emerging markets. BlackBerry said it hoped to expand the fledgling relationship to its top-of-the-line smartphones.

The deal is unconventional in that BlackBerry will no longer pay upfront for components used in the devices made on its behalf in Foxconn's Indonesian and Mexican factories.

Instead, Foxconn will take a share of profit on each device in return for taking on inventory management, which can result in writedowns if smartphones go unsold. Foxconn will also help with developing, designing and distributing the handsets.

Chief Executive John Chen, who took the helm at BlackBerry last month, said he expected the Foxconn deal to help BlackBerry's handset business turn cash-flow positive, and for the company as a whole to post a profit for the fiscal year that begins in early 2015.

"It's almost like BlackBerry is disposing of its consumer handset business without actually disposing of it," said Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, who likened the deal to what Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell have done with laptops.

The move, which comes a month after BlackBerry said it was giving up on a plan to sell itself, helped take the sting out of the massive, $4.4 billion loss that it posted for the quarter ended November 30, as smartphone sales shriveled.

A new line of devices running on BlackBerry 10 software has failed to gain traction, forcing the company to write off $1.6 billion of inventory and supply commitments for the quarter. The previous quarter it wrote off $934 million for unsold phones.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company pioneered the concept of on-the-go email, and for years its pagers and phones were must-have devices for political and business leaders. But in recent years it has lost its once-dominant market share to Apple Inc's iPhone and a slew of smartphones powered by Google Inc's Android operating system.

As of Thursday's close, the stock had fallen 47 percent this year. It was last trading up 14 percent on Nasdaq at $7.13.

"The most immediate challenge for the company is how to transition the devices operations to a more profitable business model," said Chen, who is credited with turning around Sybase, a database and mobile software company, before it was sold to German software company SAP AG in 2010.

Chen has said he is counting on strong growth in BlackBerry's service business, which manages smartphone traffic on the internal networks of corporate and government clients.

"Just jettisoning all the stuff and driving on with the part of the business that makes money makes a heck of a lot of sense to me and that is very clearly where Chen is going," said Ross Healy, a portfolio manager at Macnicol & Associates who owns a small number of BlackBerry shares.

Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Kantar Comtech, said the deal is a good move for Foxconn, the world's largest electronic parts manufacturer and a major partner of Apple Inc.

"This might be the first step for them to try and diversify, and experiment with putting their brand on the products they make," she said.

DEVICES ARE A CHALLENGE

In his first presentation to analysts after the release of BlackBerry's results, Chen struck an upbeat tone tempered with a heavy dose of realism. The mix may have helped soothe nervous investors who had sharply lowered their expectations for BlackBerry after a string of disappointing news.

"It's clear that he's not the old guard, he's not there trying to do what Lazaridis and Thorsten were up to. He's actually been taking some concrete steps," said Mark McKechnie, an analyst at Evercore Partners, referring to BlackBerry's founder Mike Lazaridis and Thorsten Heins, Chen's predecessor.

Bits Blog: Online Marketer Settles Privacy Charges

140 Characters Spell Charges and Jail

“Let’s Go Kill the President,” wrote Mr. Britton, who is 26 and unemployed. “I think we could get the president with cyanide! #MakeItSlow.”

When Secret Service agents showed up at his house to question him, Mr. Britton said he had been drunk and apologized. But in September, he posted another round of death threats against President Obama and was arrested. Last month, he was sentenced to a year in federal prison.

“Because of the repeated threats on Twitter, we took him seriously,” said Joyce White Vance, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, who prosecuted the case.

Mr. Britton was the latest in a recent series of social media users to overstep the boundary of legal free speech and face jail time for threatening the president’s life. Last month, a Twitter user in Charlotte, N.C., Donte Jamar Sims, was sentenced to six months for posting “Ima assassinate president Obama this evening!” among other threats. And Daniel Temple of Columbus, Ohio, is awaiting sentencing for saying on Twitter that he was “coming to kill” the president and “killing you soon.”

A Secret Service spokesman, Brian Leary, said social media are increasingly useful for finding and tracking threats. In 2011, the agency created the @SecretService account, to let users report suspicious tweets. And a group of agents, called the Internet Threat Desk, focuses specifically on threats posted online.

“We get information from many sources. Social media is one of them,” Mr. Leary said. “We have the right and certainly the obligation to determine a person’s intent.”

The Secret Service investigates an average of 10 threats against Mr. Obama each day, roughly the same number as during George W. Bush’s administration, said Ronald Kessler, author of “In the President’s Secret Service,” a book about the agency. The agency would not confirm that number and does not say how many threats it receives and turns over to the Justice Department to prosecute.

But privacy advocates worry that remarks intended for friends and followers may be misinterpreted in a courtroom or that carelessly typed posts will be seen in the same light as letters mailed to the White House.

“Twitter makes it easier for people to say things they don’t mean seriously and be broadcast far and wide,” said Hanni Fakhoury, a staff lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group. “If I say online that I want to kill Obama, it’s far harder to assess how serious I am than if I’m standing across the street from the White House and I have a gun.”

Federal law makes it punishable by up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine to threaten the life of the president or anyone else under Secret Service protection. The law does not require proof that the suspect intended to carry out the plot.

Ms. Vance, the prosecutor, said the case against Mr. Britton was clear cut: He had posted two rounds of threatening messages and ignored the Secret Service’s initial warning.

Mr. Britton, who is in prison, could not be reached. But his lawyer, Rick Burgess, said Mr. Britton had no actual plans to harm the president. Court records show that Mr. Britton has received medication for schizophrenia.

A spokeswoman for Twitter did not reply to requests for comment about whether the company removes death threats from the site or provides the Secret Service personal information about users accused of threatening the president. Court records show that in Mr. Britton’s case, a woman saw his messages, alerted the Secret Service and agents found his home address.

The Justice Department does not say how many threats against the president have been prosecuted, according to a spokesman.

Last year, a college student in Florida said he was joking when he posted on Facebook about killing the president during a trip to the University of Miami. “Who wants to help me assassinate Obummer while hes at UM this week?” the student, Joaquin Serrapio, asked. He later was charged with threatening to harm the president, a felony. He pleaded guilty and received three years’ probation.

In another case, Walter Bagdasarian of San Diego said he was drunk when he posted a rant on his blog saying the president “will have a 50 cal in the head soon,” referring to a .50-caliber rifle bullet. In federal court, he won an appeal by arguing that his comment stopped short of being a threat.

The cases based on such threats should be a reminder that there are limits on the First Amendment’s protection of free speech, said Mr. Burgess, the defense lawyer. “Whether you meant it as a joke or not,” he said, “a Twitter message takes on a whole new meaning when it’s read in a courtroom.”

HTC Settles F.T.C. Charges Over Security Flaws in Devices

The Federal Trade Commission charged HTC with customizing the software on its Android- and Windows-based phones in ways that let third-party applications install software that could steal personal information, surreptitiously send text messages or enable the device’s microphone to record the user’s phone calls.

The action is the first attempt by the commission to police a manufacturer of mobile devices. As smartphones and tablets become a common way for consumers to shop, bank and chat online, personal information and privacy will need to be guarded.

HTC America, based in Bellevue, Wash., agreed to settle the civil suit with the commission by issuing software patches that close the security holes, and by creating a security program that will be monitored by an independent party for the next 20 years. The F.T.C. does not have the authority to assess fines in consumer protection cases.

“The company didn’t design its products with security in mind,” Lesley Fair, a senior lawyer in the commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, wrote in a blog post. “HTC didn’t test the software on its mobile devices for potential security vulnerabilities, didn’t follow commonly accepted secure coding practices and didn’t even respond when warned about the flaws in its devices.”

An HTC official said Friday that the company had already started to update its software and distribute it to users of some, but not all, of the affected phones.

“Working with our carrier partners, we have addressed the identified security vulnerabilities on the majority of devices in the U.S. released after December 2010,” Sally Julien, an HTC spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We’re working to roll out the remaining software updates now and recommend customers download them once available.”

“Privacy and security are important,” the statement added, “and we are committed to improving practices that help safeguard our customers’ devices and data.”

The trade commission charged that the security flaws resulted from HTC’s modifying the operating system software used on most of the affected phones. In the case of Android, created by Google, the system is designed to protect sensitive information and phone functions through what is known as a permission-based security model.

That requires a user, when installing an application that is not a standard part of the operating system, to be notified and to agree that the application could gain access to certain information or functions.

HTC, however, preinstalled certain apps on its phones in a way that, in addition to preventing consumers from removing them, disabled the permission-based model and allowed newly installed apps to have immediate access to personal data.

“The analogy isn’t exact,” wrote Ms. Fair of the F.T.C., “but it’s like giving a friend the combination to a safe only to find out he’s handing it over to anyone who asks.”

That security hole could, for example, let the rogue software secretly record users’ phone conversations or track their location.

Flaws in the security system could also give third-party apps access to phone numbers, contents of text messages, browsing history and information like credit card numbers and banking transactions. Those flaws also affected HTC phones that used Windows-based operating systems.

While HTC’s actions introduced numerous security vulnerabilities to its phones, a commission official said it was not clear how many users experienced illegal incursions into their phones and personal information.

The flaw in the company’s phones has been known since at least 2011. HTC acknowledged the problems at that time and developed software patches for at least some of the deficiencies that year.

But the problems were far from minor. The F.T.C. said that text-message toll fraud, in which a hacker causes a phone to send text messages to a number that charges the user for delivery of the message, “is one of the most common types of Android malware,” or malicious software.

HTC’s user manuals either said or implied that a user was protected against malware because of the permission-based security, the commission said.

The commission will collect public comments on the proposed remedies for 30 days, after which it will decide whether to formally carry out the order. If HTC subsequently violates the order’s restrictions and requirements, it faces civil penalties of up to $16,000 a violation.

DealBook: Man Claiming Facebook Ownership Arrested on Fraud Charges

John Anderson/Wellsville Daily ReporterPaul Ceglia, who claimed he owned half of Facebook, at home in 2010.

In 2010, a New York entrepreneur made an explosive legal claim: An agreement that he had with Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, entitled him to a major stake in the social-networking giant.

Mr. Zuckerberg staunchly denied the allegation, and his lawyers insisted that the entrepreneur, Paul Ceglia, was a scam artist.

On Friday, federal authorities sided with Mr. Zuckerberg, arresting Mr. Ceglia and charging him with a multibillion dollar scheme to defraud Facebook.

Prosecutors say that Mr. Ceglia, 39, of Wellsville, N.Y., filed a sham federal lawsuit claiming to have been promised a 50 percent share of Facebook in 2003, and then doctored, fabricated and destroyed evidence to support his allegations.

“Ceglia’s alleged conduct not only constitutes a massive fraud attempt, but also an attempted corruption of our legal system through the manufacture of false evidence,” said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan. “Dressing up a fraud as a lawsuit does not immunize you from prosecution.”

Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersMark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook.

Mr. Ceglia is expected to make an appearance in federal court in Buffalo on Friday afternoon. His lawyer, Dean Boland, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

The improbable claims made by Mr. Ceglia received outsized attention in part because it came at around the same time as the release of “The Social Network,” the Academy Award-winning film that told the tale of Mr. Zuckerberg’s legal battle with his Harvard schoolmates, the Winklevoss twins, over the origins of Facebook. Mr. Zuckerberg paid the Winklevosses at least $65 million to settle their case.

Since the lawsuit was first filed, Facebook’s lawyers have raised questions about Mr. Ceglia’s credibility. In 1997, he pleaded guilty to possessing hallucinogenic mushrooms. And in 2010, the New York State attorney general criminally charged him with defrauding customers in a now-defunct wood pellet manufacturing business that he had run with his wife.

Questions are now also being raised about the lawyers that represented Mr. Ceglia in his lawsuit.

In his original complaint, filed in 2010, Mr. Ceglia was represented by Paul Argentieri, a sole practitioner in upstate New York. An amended lawsuit was filed in April 2011 by Robert W. Brownlie of DLA Piper, the world’s largest law firm, and Dennis C. Vacco, a former New York attorney general now in private practice at Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman in Buffalo.

In 2011, Mr. Brownlie of DLA Piper declined a request by The New York Times to produce the original documents backing his client’s legal claims. “That will come out during the course of litigation,” Mr. Brownlie said. “Anyone who claims this case is fraudulent and brought by a scam artist will come to regret those claims.”

Yet court records indicate that another law firm, Kasowitz Benson Friedman & Torres, had been hired by Mr. Ceglia before DLA Piper and Lippes Mathias becoming involved. Kasowitz Benson withdrew from the case and put DLA Piper and Lippes Mathias on notice that it had determined that the purported contract was a fraud.

Mr. Brownlie and Mr. Vacco later withdrew from the case. They did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Mr. Ceglia’s alleged plot dates back to 2003, when Mr. Zuckerberg was a student at Harvard University. Mr. Ceglia had placed an advertisement on Craigslist looking for a programmer for an Internet business he was trying to get off the ground. Mr. Zuckerberg responded to the ad, and Mr. Ceglia agreed to pay him $1,000 for his work.

Months later, in his college dorm room, Mr. Zuckerberg started a business called Facebook.

Mr. Zuckerberg did not hear from Mr. Ceglia again until 2010, when he was served with a complaint that claimed Mr. Ceglia was entitled to a substantial ownership stake in Facebook.

According to the lawsuit, Mr. Zuckerberg had promised him a substantial interest in either “The Face Book” or “The Page Book.” Attached to the legal papers was a contract that contained language giving Mr. Ceglia an interest in Mr. Zuckerberg’s start-up. The filing also included e-mail exchanges between Mr. Ceglia and Mr. Zuckerberg that purported to show their collaboration on ideas for the social network business.

Federal prosecutors say that Mr. Ceglia’s claims were entirely false. Government investigators searched Mr. Ceglia’s hard drive and discovered the original contract, which had no reference to Facebook. And Harvard’s e-mail servers had no record of the supposed e-mails.

Facebook’s lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher commended the Justice Department for filing criminal charges and, in statement, indicated that it would pursue possible claims against the lawyers that represented Mr. Ceglia.

“Ceglia used the federal court system to perpetuate his fraud and will now be held accountable for his criminal scheme,” said Orin Snyder, a partner at Gibson Dunn. “Facebook also intends to hold accountable all of those who assisted Ceglia in this outrageous fraud.”

Fan Sites Settle Children’s Privacy Charges

In a complaint, the Federal Trade Commission said that Artist Arena, the operator of the sites, violated a children’s online privacy rule by collecting personal details — like the names, e-mail addresses, street addresses and cellphone numbers — of about 101,000 children aged 12 or younger without their parents’ permission.

The law, called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or Coppa, requires operators of Web sites to notify parents and obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting, using or disclosing personal information about children younger than 13.

The sites are BieberFever.com, SelenaGomez.com, RihannaNow.com and DemiLovatoFanClub, which is no longer in operation. The agency did not accuse the pop stars themselves of any wrongdoing.

At a conference on children’s marketing in New York on Wednesday, Edith Ramirez, a member of the F.T.C., said the settlement still required ratification in court.

As part of the registration process, the four fan sites asked users to submit personal details including their birth dates that would enable members to create online profiles, post messages and sign up for newsletters about the pop stars, the complaint said. Because the sites therefore knew the children’s ages, the F.T.C. charged, the company had knowingly collected information and failed to properly notify their parents.

“These were fan sites that knew that a very substantial percentage of users were 12 or under,” said David C. Vladeck, the director of the F.T.C.’s bureau of consumer protection. “There is really no excuse for violations like these.”

Artist Arena, a division of the Warner Music Group that manages artist fan clubs, neither admitted nor denied the agency’s allegations. Warner first invested in Artist Arena in 2007 and bought the company in 2010. James Steven, a spokesman for Artist Arena, declined to comment. The fan sites no longer allow children under 13 to register as members.

The proposed settlement comes at a time when the agency is preparing to extensively strengthen the children’s online privacy protection rule for the first time since its introduction more than a decade ago.

In an effort to keep pace with innovations like mobile apps and facial recognition technology, the agency has proposed to widen both the kinds of data about children that would require parental consent and the kinds of operators — like advertising networks or data miners — whose activities could be subject to the rule.

Last week, major corporations including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Viacom responded, submitting public comments to the F.T.C. in which they argued that some of the proposed changes were so unworkable that they could deter companies from providing sites and online services to children.

“To ensure that the Internet continues to be a robust and enriching place for children, the commission should avoid promulgating rules that frustrate operators’ ability to continue providing the same quantity and quality of sites and online services, including those that are directed to children,” Michael D. Hintze, Microsoft’s chief privacy counsel, wrote in comments to the agency.

But the case of the pop star Web sites bolsters the viability of at least one of the agency’s proposals: that child-friendly sites aimed at audiences of varying ages must either assume all users are under 13, or screen users for age to identify those for whom data collection requires prior parental consent.

Some companies, like Viacom, have objected to this proposed change, saying that such a screening process might cause some sites to block children from participating or deter some children, who might then end up on inappropriate adult sites that do not screen users for age.

But BieberFever.com and the other fan sites, even if they failed to properly notify parents, seemed to be able to collect information on tens of thousands of children who willingly identified themselves as being younger than 13.

“Marketers need to know that even a bad case of Bieber Fever doesn’t excuse their legal obligation to get parental consent before collecting personal information from children,” Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the F.T.C., said in a statement. “The F.T.C. is in the process of updating the Coppa rule to ensure it continues to protect kids growing up in the digital age.”

Each of the fan Web sites had slightly different registration processes. But the agency charged that Artist Arena had falsely claimed that it would not activate a child’s registration without parental consent.

SelenaGomez.com, for example, required users who wanted to sign up for the online fan newsletter to enter information like their e-mail address, birth date, parent’s name and e-mail address, and in some cases full name, city, state and ZIP code as well, according to the complaint. The child then received an on-screen notice that said “registration successful” and was able to edit his or her online profile, the complaint said.

The site sent the child’s parent an e-mail saying that it needed parental consent to complete the child’s registration. According to to the complaint, the e-mail falsely stated that if a parent did not want to approve the child’s registration, “you do not need to do anything else: simply do not click on the above link.” Regardless of the parent’s actions, the site had already registered the child, the complaint said.

From April 25, 2010, to Aug. 2, 2011, SelenaGomez.com registered 10,026 children for its fan newsletter and 2,196 children for its fan club. The site also collected and kept information on 48,531 children who started but did not finish the registration process, the complaint said.

As part of the settlement, Artist Arena agreed to delete the personal information about children under 13. The company also agreed that the sites, in places where they collect personal data, would prominently display links to a federal Web site, www.OnGuardOnline.gov, that offers information on protecting children’s privacy online.

Raw Data: Big Carriers Win an E.U. Victory on Landline Charges

Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for telecommunications, signaled the new era July 12 when she announced that further cuts in wholesale access charges, a basic type of regulated fee that operators receive from rivals, would discourage network investment and thwart the commission’s goal of creating a superfast broadband grid by 2020.

The decision by Ms. Kroes, a Dutch policy maker who served as the European Union’s competition commissioner from 2004 to 2010, drew praise from big operators and criticism from smaller carriers, most of which lack national coverage of their own and must lease access to a former monopoly’s landlines to deliver their services to customers.

Besides giving operators more pricing power over their older copper networks, Ms. Kroes said she might permit them to ban competitors temporarily from the new, faster fiber networks that are crucial to fulfilling the commission’s broadband aspirations. The announcement was an about-face in European policy.

Ms. Kroes’s predecessor, Viviane Reding, who is now the European justice commissioner, had sued Deutsche Telekom over its decision to ban competitors from its new fiber grid, which uses a technology called V.D.S.L.

Ms. Kroes, an economist and member of the Dutch free-market People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, has taken a softer tone with Deutsche Telekom, France Télécom, Telefónica and Telecom Italia than Ms. Reding, a Luxembourg conservative who in 2007 pushed through the first European retail price controls on mobile roaming charges.

Whether the new incentives translate into new networks is up for debate.

The European Union is far from its goal of wiring the 27-nation bloc with superfast broadband. Currently, half of E.U. residents have access to broadband with download speeds of at least 30 megabits per second. The goal by 2020 is 100 percent. Only 2 percent of E.U. households have access to the broadband speeds of 100 megabits per second. The commission’s goal is to cover half the E.U. population.

“These recommendations will encourage operators to invest, strengthen competition across all networks and allow alternative operators to compete on more than just price,” Ms. Kroes said in announcing the policy change.

Large operators, which have been lobbying for the concessions, cheered the change of direction in Brussels. “This will facilitate planning investments in next-generation networks,” said Luigi Gambardella, the chairman of the European Network Operators’ Association, the Brussels group that represents large operators.

The European Competitive Telecommunications Association, which represents smaller operators, said the decision would do the opposite. With the former monopolies allowed to extract large profits from old copper networks, carriers will have little incentive to build, they argued.

As a safeguard, Ms. Kroes said she would draft guidelines to discourage dominant operators from controlling access to landline networks to the disadvantage of rivals and consumers. But her recommendations require approval by E.U. countries and could be watered down.

The European Consumers’ Organization said it was surveying its members before responding. The same Brussels group criticized Ms. Kroes, saying she had set the initial retail price cap on mobile data roaming too high. The cap, which took effect July 1, is 70 euro cents, or 85 U.S. cents, per megabyte, a multiple of domestic rates.

For E.U. consumers, the new approach may usher in an era of rising prices, as operators ban competitors from the fastest networks and derive greater profits from old copper landlines. At least that is how telecommunications investors judged it. They bid up shares of European carriers 3.5 percent, on average, the day after the announcement.

Raw Data: Big Carriers Win an E.U. Victory on Landline Charges

Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for telecommunications, signaled the new era July 12 when she announced that further cuts in wholesale access charges, a basic type of regulated fee that operators receive from rivals, would discourage network investment and thwart the commission’s goal of creating a superfast broadband grid by 2020.

The decision by Ms. Kroes, a Dutch policy maker who served as the European Union’s competition commissioner from 2004 to 2010, drew praise from big operators and criticism from smaller carriers, most of which lack national coverage of their own and must lease access to a former monopoly’s landlines to deliver their services to customers.

Besides giving operators more pricing power over their older copper networks, Ms. Kroes said she might permit them to ban competitors temporarily from the new, faster fiber networks that are crucial to fulfilling the commission’s broadband aspirations. The announcement was an about-face in European policy.

Ms. Kroes’s predecessor, Viviane Reding, who is now the European justice commissioner, had sued Deutsche Telekom over its decision to ban competitors from its new fiber grid, which uses a technology called V.D.S.L.

Ms. Kroes, an economist and member of the Dutch free-market People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, has taken a softer tone with Deutsche Telekom, France Télécom, Telefónica and Telecom Italia than Ms. Reding, a Luxembourg conservative who in 2007 pushed through the first European retail price controls on mobile roaming charges.

Whether the new incentives translate into new networks is up for debate.

The European Union is far from its goal of wiring the 27-nation bloc with superfast broadband. Currently, half of E.U. residents have access to broadband with download speeds of at least 30 megabits per second. The goal by 2020 is 100 percent. Only 2 percent of E.U. households have access to the broadband speeds of 100 megabits per second. The commission’s goal is to cover half the E.U. population.

“These recommendations will encourage operators to invest, strengthen competition across all networks and allow alternative operators to compete on more than just price,” Ms. Kroes said in announcing the policy change.

Large operators, which have been lobbying for the concessions, cheered the change of direction in Brussels. “This will facilitate planning investments in next-generation networks,” said Luigi Gambardella, the chairman of the European Network Operators’ Association, the Brussels group that represents large operators.

The European Competitive Telecommunications Association, which represents smaller operators, said the decision would do the opposite. With the former monopolies allowed to extract large profits from old copper networks, carriers will have little incentive to build, they argued.

As a safeguard, Ms. Kroes said she would draft guidelines to discourage dominant operators from controlling access to landline networks to the disadvantage of rivals and consumers. But her recommendations require approval by E.U. countries and could be watered down.

The European Consumers’ Organization said it was surveying its members before responding. The same Brussels group criticized Ms. Kroes, saying she had set the initial retail price cap on mobile data roaming too high. The cap, which took effect July 1, is 70 euro cents, or 85 U.S. cents, per megabyte, a multiple of domestic rates.

For E.U. consumers, the new approach may usher in an era of rising prices, as operators ban competitors from the fastest networks and derive greater profits from old copper landlines. At least that is how telecommunications investors judged it. They bid up shares of European carriers 3.5 percent, on average, the day after the announcement.

Raw Data: Big Carriers Win an E.U. Victory on Land Line Charges

BERLIN — The era of steadily declining phone bills in Europe, which began with deregulation of the industry in 1998, may have drawn to a close this month, with the European Commission’s decision to give the biggest operators greater leverage over what they can charge competitors for access to their land line networks.

Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for telecommunications, signaled the new era July 12 when she announced that further cuts in wholesale access charges, a basic type of regulated fee that operators receive from rivals, would discourage network investment and thwart the commission’s goal of creating a superfast broadband grid by 2020.

The decision by Ms. Kroes, a Dutch policy maker who served as the European Union’s competition commissioner from 2004 to 2010, drew praise from big operators and criticism from smaller carriers, most of which lack national coverage of their own and must lease access to a former monopoly’s land lines to deliver their services to customers.

Besides giving operators more pricing power over their older copper networks, Ms. Kroes said she might permit them to bar competitors temporarily from the new, faster fiber networks that are key to fulfilling the commission’s broadband aspirations. The announcement was an about-face in European policy.

Ms. Kroes’s predecessor, Viviane Reding, who is now the European justice commissioner, had sued Deutsche Telekom over its decision to bar competitors from its new fiber grid, which uses a technology called VDSL.

Ms. Kroes, an economist and member of the Dutch free-market People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, has taken a softer tone with Deutsche Telekom, France Télécom, Telefónica and Telecom Italia than Ms. Reding, a Luxembourg conservative who in 2007 pushed through the first European retail price controls on mobile roaming charges.

Whether the new incentives translate into new networks is up for debate.

The European Union is far from its goal of wiring the 27-nation bloc with superfast broadband. Currently, half of E.U. residents have access to broadband with download speeds of at least 30 megabits per second. The goal by 2020 is 100 percent. Only 2 percent of E.U. households have access to the broadband speeds of 100 megabits per second. The commission’s goal is to cover half the E.U. population.

“These recommendations will encourage operators to invest, strengthen competition across all networks and allow alternative operators to compete on more than just price,” Ms. Kroes said in announcing the policy change.

Large operators, which have been lobbying for the concessions, cheered the change of direction in Brussels. “This will facilitate planning investments in next-generation networks,” said Luigi Gambardella, the chairman of the European Network Operators’ Association, the Brussels group that represents large operators.

The European Competitive Telecommunications Association, which represents smaller operators, said the decision would do the opposite. With the former monopolies allowed to extract large profits from old copper networks, carriers will have little incentive to build, they argued.

As a safeguard, Ms. Kroes said she would draft guidelines to discourage dominant operators from controlling access to land line networks to the disadvantage of rivals and consumers. But her recommendations require approval by E.U. countries and could be watered down.

The European Consumers’ Organization said it was surveying its members before formulating a response. The same Brussels group criticized Ms. Kroes, saying she had set the initial retail price cap on mobile data roaming too high. The cap, which took effect July 1, is 70 euro cents, or 85 cents, per megabyte, a multiple of domestic rates.

For E.U. consumers, the new approach may usher in an era of rising prices, as operators bar competitors from the fastest networks and derive greater profits from old copper land lines. At least that is how telecommunications investors judged it. They bid up shares of European carriers 3.5 percent, on average, the day after the announcement.