Britain's failed attempt to send satellites into orbit was a "disaster" and MPs are being urged to redirect funding to hospitals, with the country now seen as "toxic" for future launches. The Guardian reports: Senior figures at the Welsh company Space Forge, which lost a satellite when Virgin Orbit's Start Me Up mission failed to reach orbit, said a "seismic change" was needed for the UK to be appealing for space missions. Lengthy delays by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), as well as the launch failure, had left Space Forge six months behind its competition in the race to be the first company to bring a satellite back down to Earth, when it had been six months ahead, the science and technology committee heard.

Patrick McCall, a non-executive director at Space Forge, said: "The CAA is taking a different approach to risk, and a bit to process and timing as well. But I think unless there is, without wanting to be too dramatic, a seismic change in that approach, the UK is not going to be competitive from a launch perspective. I think the conclusion I've reached is right now it's not a good use of money, because our regulatory framework is not competitive." He added that the UK ought to consider spending the money it was investing in launch capability on other areas, such as hospitals.

Greg Clark, the chair of the committee, said it was a "disaster" that an attempt to show what the UK was capable of had turned "toxic for a privately funded launch." "We had the first attempted launch but the result is that you as an investor in space are saying there is no chance of investors supporting another launch from the UK with the current regulator conditions." Dan Hart, the CEO of Virgin Orbit, told MPs he had expected the CAA to work more similarly to the Federal Aviation Authority in the US but he had found the UK regulator more conservative. The company has since ended its contract with Spaceport Cornwall at Newquay airport but said it was still hoping to launch from the site in the future. Sir Stephen Hillier, the chair of the CAA, said: "Our primary duty is to ensure that the space activity in the UK is conducted safely. The CAA licensed in advance of technical readiness."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Fifty-four members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are protesting what they call a "radical proposal" to require payments from online service providers to Internet service providers. Noting that Europe's 2015 "Open Internet Regulation ensures that citizens are free to use whichever apps and websites they wish," the MEPs said they have "deep concern about the European Commission's plans to change our net neutrality legislation in the upcoming Connectivity Infrastructure Act to be proposed in autumn, without having consulted the public, technology experts, academics, civil society, or expert regulatory agencies."

No specific proposal has been released, but "statements to the press indicate that a new provision would require payments from online service providers to broadband providers -- ostensibly to fund the rollout of 5G and fiber to the home," the MEPs wrote in the letter yesterday (PDF) to the European Commission. The letter cited a May 2 Reuters article that said, "Tech giants such as Google, Meta, and Netflix may have to bear some of the cost of Europe's telecoms network, Europe's digital chief Margrethe Vestager said on Monday, following EU telecoms operators' complaints." The MEPs' list of references also includes two Ars Technica articles from 2012 when a similar proposal was being discussed.

Vestager reportedly said at a news conference that "there are players who generate a lot of traffic that then enables their business but who have not been contributing actually to enable that traffic. They have not been contributing to enabling the investments in the rollout of connectivity... and we are in the process of getting a thorough understanding of how could that be enabled." [...] The MEPs' letter further argued that charging websites for access to broadband consumers would help ISPs abuse their monopolies: "Adopting a model that allows for or mandates access fees would be a disastrous return to the economic model for telephony, where telecommunications companies and countries leveraged their termination access monopolies to make communication expensive. Because phone companies had a monopoly over their customers, they could charge exorbitant prices to anyone seeking to call their customers. Broadband providers have the same monopoly over their customers. Allowing them to charge content providers for access could cause significant harm to the Internet economy." The MEPs also doubt such fees would improve broadband connectivity, saying that "factors such as permits or construction capacities can act as more severe barriers than lack of funding." They urged the European Commission to take its time and open an official consultation, saying, "There is no emergency that requires action in autumn 2022."

Sonos became a favorite with audiophiles by selling sleek, wireless speakers for streaming music long before technology titans such as Alphabet''s Google entered the market with cheaper, internet-connected models. Now Sonos is hoping a U.S. trade judge finds Friday that its partner turned foe, Google, infringed its patents for multiroom audio systems. From a report: Sonos is asking U.S. International Trade Commission Judge Charles Bullock to support its bid to block imports of Google's Home and Chromecast systems and Pixel phones and laptops, which are made in China. "Google has thrown everything at us in this case, but we believe that the evidence before the ITC demonstrates Google to be a serial infringer of Sonos' valid patents and that the ITC case represents just the tip of the iceberg," Sonos Chief Legal Officer Eddie Lazarus said in an earnings call Wednesday.

The dispute has caught the attention of regulators and Congress who are investigating whether the big Silicon Valley tech companies have become too powerful. Sonos officials urged politicians to beef up antitrust laws and enforcement against companies like Google and Amazon.com. Sonos and Google have each accused the other of bad behavior, and suits have been filed in California, Texas, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands. A federal judge last year said the legal fees being incurred in the global battle "will likely have been able to build dozens of schools, pay all the teachers, and provide hot lunches to the children." Sonos is fighting over what CEO Patrick Spence says is the "Golden Age of Audio." Buoyed by consumers who buy more audiobooks, streaming music and podcasts and are looking for "theater-like" sound while watching movies from home, the focus on home sound systems is likely to survive even after the Covid-19 pandemic and work-from-home orders end.