Weekly news round-up: BBC's Brexit plans & Discovery “not for sale”

Russia accused BBC of ’violations’
Russia’s state communications regulator Roskomnadzor said the BBC World News channel had committed “certain violations” while operating in Russia. The Russian government launched an investigation last month with “an assessment of the procedural status of these violations is currently being carried out,” Reuters reported. The BBC said it is in full compliance with the Russian law, however, the regulator said the broadcaster published material that propagated ideas of a terrorist group.  

BBC’s Brexit base plans
BBC director general Tony Hall has confirmed rumours around it opening a base in a nearby European-based city amid the current Brexit negotiations. Broadband TV News reported that Brussels and Amsterdam are the front-runners, however, Hall said no decision will be made until after 29 March deadline but establishing a small office outside the UK would enable the broadcaster to continue operating channels within the EU.  

Discovery “not for sale” 
Discovery Communications was reported by CNBC as “interested in selling to CBS or combined CBS-Viacom,” with its stock jumping more than 5%. Discovery chief corporate operations officer said in a statement the company was not interested in a sale, according to The Hollywood Reporter he said: “We remain extremely confident in our growth strategy in the US and globally.”  

Huawei denies wrongdoing to US
US prosecutors have filed a host of criminal charges against the Chinese firm Huawei which include bank fraud, obstruction of justice and theft of technology. BBC reported Huawei has claimed it did not commit “any of these asserted violations”. The news comes as Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou remains detained in Canada at the request of the US since her arrest in Vancouver last month. 

Vodafone pauses Huawei partnership
Vodafone joins the likes of governments globally who have boycotted the Chinese telecom giant Huawei. According to Telecoms, Vodafone uses its equipment in its core and radio markets and has confirmed it will continue to use them in the radio 5G operations.

Apple bans Facebook research app
Facebook was found to have created a research VPN app which was blocked by Apple, Tech Crunch investigated. Facebook exchanged $20 per month to those participating in order to access all data passing through their phone, which broke Apple’s policy that enterprise systems are to be used only for distributing internal corporate apps to employees.      

Bodyguard and Killing Eve top iPlayer programmes
The BBC have named Bodyguard, Killing Eve and McMafia as its most request programmes on iPlayer in 2018, with the first episode of the Bodyguard the service’s most popular programme ever, with 10.8 million requests across the year, while Killing Eve came a close second with 9.2 million requests for episode one, followed by McMafia with 4.7 million requests, TVB Europe reported. 

Microsoft reported revenue growth
In its most recent quarter, Microsoft’s revenue jumped 12% during its most recent earnings report hitting $32.47 billion, the company attributed the success to be fuelled by its commercial cloud business which grew 48% from the previous year to $9 billion, CNN reported.