The regulator responsible for telecommunications announced on Wednesday that the cost of ending a mobile phone contract early would be reduced. Elsewhere, Google was slapped with a €1.49 billion fine for allegedly blocking results by rival search engines.
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Daily headlines from the UAE and around the world brought to you by Gulf News. See more at: http://gulfnews.com/videos
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00:00The UAE's Telecommunications Regulator, the TRA, has today announced sweeping changes
00:09to its mobile phone contract termination policies. That means the contracts you sign with Do
00:14and Etisalat when you take out a plan on a mobile phone have been changed. Now how have
00:20they changed? Well, the key issue here is the ending of the contract early. So say you
00:25have a 12-month contract and you end it after six months, previously you'd have to pay one
00:31month's rental fee, say it's 100 dirhams, times the number of months left on the contract.
00:38So if you had six months left, you'd have to pay 100 dirhams times six, so you'd have
00:42to pay 600 dirhams. Now, under the new rules just announced by the TRA this afternoon,
00:49users will only have to pay one month's rental fee. Meaning instead of paying 600 dirhams,
00:54you would have to pay 100 dirhams to end the contract six months early. So obviously
00:59ending contracts early now is going to become a lot, lot cheaper and a lot less hassle compared
01:05to what existed previously. This won't change for users who already have contracts existing.
01:10So if you signed a contract with Do or Etisalat last year or in the first few months of 2019,
01:16nothing changes for you. But for all users signing mobile contracts from today, the rules
01:22will be in place so that if you decide to cancel that contract early, you won't have
01:27to pay as much as you used to. The TRA says that it's been listening to customers and
01:32has decided to make this decision based on their feedback. Elsewhere, Google has been
01:37fined by the EU 1.49 billion euros for blocking the results of rival online search advertisers.
01:45In response, the company changed its AdSense program or its advertising program to allow
01:50third parties to advertise other rival search engines. Now, this isn't the first time that
01:55Google has been fined by the EU. Previously, the search engine was fined around 5 billion
02:01euros, again for anti-competition practices. The company obviously says that it denies
02:07wrongdoing, but this is not the first time. And currently, the total fines against the
02:12search engine provider in the EU amount to close to 10 billion euros. And lastly, despite
02:18cautious optimism from US President Donald Trump on the prospects of a US-China deal,
02:24some within those negotiations have expressed fear that China may be trying to walk back
02:29some of its commitments on issues such as intellectual property and that the prospects
02:34of a deal may not be as close as had been hoped.
02:38That's all from us today. Thanks very much for watching. You can find the latest news
02:41on golfnews.com and we'll be back tomorrow with more updates. Thanks again.
02:48Thanks for watching.