UK
EU Merger Guidelines telecoms reset: the draft elevates scale, innovation and resilience as procompetitive factors. What it means for UK M&A with EU jurisdiction.
DSIT Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/2026 published 30 April 2026: 47% of UK businesses use 2FA, 14% hold unprotected personal data, 25% have a formal incident response plan. What it means for Article 32 UK GDPR compliance and ICO enforcement.
In short: Section 166 DPA 2018 is the only route a data subject has to take the Information Commissioner to a tribunal over how she handles a complaint. McDonnell [2026] UKFTT 524 (GRC), 9 April 2026, confirms the tribunal can push the ICO to act, but cannot make it change its answer. DUAA 2025 does…
In short: Altnet PIA, the Openreach product that lets operators build using its ducts and poles, is not new. It has been a regulated wholesale input since 2010, and the Electronic Communications Code requires operators to consider sharing apparatus more broadly. Two recent moves progress those arrangements. INCA’s Infrastructure Sharing Framework formalises operator-to-operator duct, pole…
The CMA’s coordinated push against fake and misleading consumer reviews lands the new Part 3 direct enforcement powers in the DMCCA 2024 on the consumer reviews supply chain. Five cases opened on 27 March 2026 reach across that supply chain at the same time and signal that consumer review compliance is now a discrete deal due diligence item.
CityFibre’s intervention in the CMA’s nexfibre/Substantial inquiry turns on local market definition. Why that question shapes Phase 2 risk and the altnet consolidation pipeline.
In short: The ICO wrote to Meta in March 2026 over outsourced human review of audio-visual data captured by Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The enquiry tests controller/processor allocation under UK GDPR Article 28, lawful basis for AI training data, and whether the DUAA 2025 “meaningful human involvement” standard is met where reviewers validate AI outputs…
DSIT’s Compute Roadmap envisages £2bn of UK AI compute investment by 2030. The data protection regime that attaches to organisations building, procuring or operating that infrastructure is not in the Roadmap. This post sets out the four obligations under UK GDPR and DUAA 2025: DPIA, automated decision-making, international transfers, and Article 28 processor agreements.
In short: The CMA has accepted the first voluntary commitments under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, from Apple and Google in respect of aspects of their UK mobile platforms. The commitments cover app review, app ranking, data use and iOS interoperability. They are legally binding and signal how the new digital markets…
In short: The CMA opened its invitation to comment on the £2 billion nexfibre/Substantial transaction on 23 April 2026. The case is in pre-notification; the statutory 40-working-day Phase 1 clock has not started. The deal is publicly targeted at Q3 2026 completion; that timeline carries real Phase 2 risk, and mandatory NSI Act 2021 notification…
After a year of testing frontier AI models and legal-specific platforms, the problem was not capability but structure. A law firm cannot be built around a model. It needs a method in which AI operates under controlled, auditable workflows, with the lawyer as the final gate.
In short: Ofcom has written to UK Communications Providers on 21 April 2026 to assess cyber risks from frontier AI, citing the AI Security Institute’s evaluation of Claude Mythos Preview. The duties already sit in section 105A of the Communications Act 2003 and the Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021 framework. CPs must now document assessment of…