Big Tech Should Share Europe Network Costs, France, Italy and Spain Say 81
France, Italy and Spain are stepping up pressure on the European Commission to come up with legislation that ensures Big Tech firms partly finance telecoms infrastructure in the bloc, a document showed on Monday. This was the first time the three governments have expressed their joint position on the issue. Reuters reports: EU regulators said in May they were analyzing the question of whether tech giants Alphabet's Google, Meta and Netflix should shoulder some of the costs of upgrading telecoms networks. In a joint paper, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, the three governments said the six largest content providers accounted for 55% of internet traffic.
"This generates specific costs for European telecom operators in terms of capacity, at a time they are already hugely investing in the most costly parts of the networks with 5G and Fiber-To-The-Home," the document said. It urged that European telecom networks and large online content providers pay fair shares of network costs. "We call for a legislative proposal ... ensuring all market players contribute to digital infrastructure costs," the document said.
"This generates specific costs for European telecom operators in terms of capacity, at a time they are already hugely investing in the most costly parts of the networks with 5G and Fiber-To-The-Home," the document said. It urged that European telecom networks and large online content providers pay fair shares of network costs. "We call for a legislative proposal ... ensuring all market players contribute to digital infrastructure costs," the document said.
They already are paying (Score:5, Insightful)
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Some might say that regulations requiring stuff like no roaming charges put pressure on the telecoms to find revenue in other places. The counter argument to that is I have no roaming charges across north and South American for not much more that I was paying 5 years ago before the US telecoms faced equal downward pressure.
Re: They already are paying (Score:5, Informative)
We pay extortion rates in the US for telecoms. By no means do we pay "fair market value". The US has an aging network that suffers from under investment in broadband, fiber to the home in particular and not even available to many américains.
Re: They already are paying (Score:3)
CenturyLink charges me $65/month for symmetric gig service, no data cap either. I believe they do the same for everybody across their entire fiber footprint. Not even Google fiber, who people generally say is fairly priced, is that low.
I think CenturyLink charges such a low price because they probably don't have any actual tech support. They kinda do, but any CenturyLink customer will tell you that it's a really bad joke. Fortunately their fiber service is so damn reliable that you don't need it. I first sw
Re: They already are paying (Score:2)
Comcast charges me $80/month for gig download / 40 mbps upload. The alternative is 128 kbps IDSL with AT&T for $40+. None of the cell operators exceed 1Mbps inside the house. Plenty of no cell coverage area. Some 1 kbps cell areas.
Meanwhile, my mom pays $30/month for 300 Mbps symmetric fiber in Paris. I would take that deal if it existed. I believe the price it also includes some TV and cell service as well. Would have to check when I visit her next month. I very much feel like we are being overcharged
Re: They already are paying (Score:3)
Re: They already are paying (Score:3)
This isn't about domestic vs foreign. The US telecom operators tried the exact same blackmail. Remember net neutrality ? Same issue. Except there is more regulation of telecoms and their rates in Europe than there is in the US.
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Re: They already are paying (Score:3)
Re: They already are paying (Score:2)
I have stuff running 24/7. While I don't watch it like a hawk, I'd have noticed by now if there was anything more than 5 minutes worth of outage over say a 1 hour period. I've got an enterprise grade UPS that has kept everything running during the longest power outage I've had here, which was 45 minutes. The connection was up the entire time. So basically I've had more power outage than internet outage, which says a lot considering how reliable Phoenix's power grid is.
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I think CenturyLink charges such a low price because they probably don't have any actual tech support.
To be fair, Comcast doesn't have tech support either.
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I find myself curious - what do you pay for your internet, and what would be "fair market value"?
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How much I pay for Internet was already posted. Fair market value would be something closer to what people pay for Internet services in non-US developed countries.
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So, why don't you start a business providing internet in the USA for that price? Should take off big-time, being far below market price, which means you'd get tens of millions of customers.
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Do you really need to ask ? The entrenched telecoms enjoy monopolies on last mile in most locales. The only way to bring the prices down and improve service is to force sharing of those resources. It would take a minor miracle given the deadlocked congress we have.
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Ah yes, "fair market value".
Prices are set by availability, demand and healthy competition.
The USA lacks the latter when Internet Access is discussed.
Here in my country there is no Internet subsidy, and I pay 9 bucks a month for Gigabit fiber. As a matter of fact, the whole package from the same provider is $40 per month, which includes Gigabit Fiber, Digital TV with smart cards for 4x TVs (including all optional packages), 3x phone subscriptions and a phone landline (which I never use but costs $2 per mont
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Not only are they already paying via their own hosting/peering fees, this would be a tax on them for creating unprecedented demand for the product the telcos sell. That’d be like taxing after-school sports programs to help sports drink companies recoup the cost from increased demand for their products.
They should be thanking them.
Re: They already are paying (Score:2)
Yeah, these services are why high speed wired connections and 5G are at all marketable. Between those, I pay around â150 per month. Aside from my cloud backup, take away video and I've little reason to be paying so much.
These whiners could just as equally be bar owners in Dublin, demanding airlines contribute towards fixing the wear and tear tourists inflict on their floors. The correct response is 'thank you'.
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Or like taxing the TV stations because more people are buying more TVs and the electrical grid needs to be upgraded. It seems like the EU commission is just looking around to see who has money and trying to figure how it can legislate a share of it.
What's next on their radar? Taxing the swimming pool manufacturers because more people are using water to fill their kiddy pools? Taxing Philips because they make window fans and the electrical grid needs upgrading?
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I really, really hate to defend these companies ... but they don't connect to the Internet for free. They are already paying to connect to the Internet. If anyone is not paying enough for infrastructure costs its the ISPs.
It is made a bit more complex in that the tech majors actively provide their own infrastructure and transit agreements with transit providers. They aren't like you or I who go buy a connection from an ISP for a monthly fee.
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Exactly. They (big tech, just like every other consumer) are paying whatever the telcos request of them for the services provided by the telco.
For example, am paying about 25USD for 1gbps symmetrical fiber now. If an ISP starts a service which charges 30USD(or higher) for similar speeds, but with less overselling so that less constraints exist(or other functionality - maybe a static IP or something else), I may consider it.
Funny thing is, I am not facing any issues doing 1gbps transfers any time of the day,
I'm sorry (Score:3)
I'm sorry/not sorry that the for-profit tech businesses have been dragging governments and state monopolies kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
If 25 years ago we asked permission first to have network bandwidth for a billion people to watch 3 minute videos about weird internet jokes and 10 hour loops of the same song I'm sure regulators would have jumped at the opportunity.
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I'm sorry/not sorry that the for-profit tech businesses have been dragging governments and state monopolies kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Yeah -- I'm petty sure that Google, Netflix, etc. don't pay a flat monthly rate for internet access. As people watch more cat videos and more woke SJW bullshit programs, those companies pay more for their increased bandwidth usage. It then becomes the responsibility of the network operators to spend that money on upgrading their equipment and building out more capacity.
Re:I'm sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's exactly right. All data centers pay by amount of bandwidth used + a flat maintenance fee for each circuit that is available to them. Network operators have basically not laid any new equipment because they've been pocketing the profits. When Google Fiber started laying fiber, all of a sudden all the ISPs started offering Gigabit service when they said it was impossible because of bandwidth constraints just a few month earlier. It really forced those ISPs to compete and lay new cables and upgrade service.
Google was preemptively banned in parts of the EU from laying new fiber and becoming an ISP, because competition from Google specifically would case harm forcing ISPs to compete.
I don't remember if that was an EU ban or just a number of EU members.
The UK, Germany, and France were involved at the time.
JMHO I'm not at all surprised France is pulling this move. Banning only foreign competition while trying to extract money from them to hand over to that very competition seems to be a long favored past time th
Re: I'm sorry (Score:2)
What they want is even worse than merely the absence of net neutrality, they want to actually force content companies to pay ISPs. So if you want i.e. web hosting, you're now expected to pay every european ISP, even if they're in a country that doesn't even understand the language of your content.
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This basically is the doomsday scenario that can result from a lack of net neutrality. Ironic thing is, it hasn't happened (yet) in the USA. My guess would be sleazy back room dealings between the telcos and big tech, as the status quo is mutually beneficial. Also, shitty broadband service isn't really a hot button issue with the average US voter - we kind of just grin and bear it.
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The theory is that peering agreements makes the Internet mostly work. If you don't offer a path through your network into another network, then you have to pay for service.
Some of the problems arise in that US and Chinese companies pay very different retail rates than what EU telecoms are charging their equivalent businesses. Maybe they need more content produces and media companies pushing data in the other way to strike a balance.
I suspect new peer agreements are impossible at this point. And for various
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Why would regulators have been involved? Thirty years ago you could have done that over the MBone with negligible network impact, by means of VIC/VAT, Network Video, or CU-SeeMe bounced off an MBone Reflector.
It may not have been billions, but a significant fraction of the Internet population watched NASA TV, medical operations conducted live over the Internet between continents, and other such broadcasts, and a smaller but still significant number enjoyed watching live video from MIT car parks, professors'
Well now (Score:5, Insightful)
According to a study released by telecoms lobbying group ETNO earlier this year, an annual contribution of 20 billion euros to network costs by the tech giants could give a 72-billion-euro boost to the EU economy.
Sure, but isn't that a slippery slope? Even without considering that this possibly weakens net neutrality, this really smells like a protectionist shakedown. And, what gives with Google, Meta, and Netflix? Have they forgotten to lobby politicians in these countries? That is usually cheaper in the long run.
An absurd parallel would be for the US to ask China for money to beef up American rail and highway infrastructure, since the goods traveling on them are statistically likely to be from mainland China>
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An absurd parallel would be for the US to ask China for money to beef up American rail and highway infrastructure,
..or expecting Mexico to pay for a wall on our side of the border.
Re: Well now (Score:2)
It's okay. Orange man is gone and can no longer hurt you.
Re: Well now (Score:2)
What they're asking for is the exact opposite of net neutrality.
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And, what gives with Google, Meta, and Netflix? Have they forgotten to lobby politicians in these countries?
Why not look at the distribution of datacentres and traffic flows in the EU before you start saying this is a "shakedown". They are quite evidentially going after the biggest bandwidth users.
That said the rule should really fall on local utilities to reinvest the profits and charge them correctly. Too often you see government handouts to build datacentres, which ultimately get paid to ISPs or transit providers and then pocketed rather than investing in infrastructure expansion.
Corruption Corruption, what's your function? (Score:3)
Notice the lack of a question mark on that last one.
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To be fair:
For example, many European carriers offer plans that don't count the data you use on Facebook or Whatsapp against your data cap.
The reason they do this? This is the content their subscribers want when they pay for their internet service.
Wouldn't it be something if a popular social media site only streamed on certain internet providers?.?.? paying for the rights like having HBO?
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You mean the companies that already pay for bandwidth from local network providers?
These companies are not like us. Don't for a moment think they are paying market rates from local network providers. Heck you're lucky if the local government doesn't offer to pay it for them in exchange for a promise that they can cut the ribbon in front of the cameras when the datacentre is opened.
taxes (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe if Big Tech just paid its fair share of taxes instead of finding and using loopholes we wouldn't be having this conversation. Why is there a 'double irish' and a dutch sandwich'?
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Maybe if Big Tech just paid its fair share of taxes instead of finding and using loopholes we wouldn't be having this conversation. Why is there a 'double irish' and a dutch sandwich'?
Because of politicians, and corrupt politicians at that. Also, they are the same ones who are proposing this measure because they don't have enough money yet.
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If this were the reason, then it would be useful for the powers-that-be to say so. Otherwise, this just smells of cronyism - the old boys in the impoverished telecoms sector just come see the law makers and ask for some richer people's money.
The thing that irks me the most about this is that the smaller network providers won't see any of this money, and that the smaller content providers (who aren't that small, at 45% of the total) don't have to pay anything towards this. IMHO, "they" can't have it both way
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The laws in question are typically bought and paid for by the wealthy, through corporate "donations". It's corruption all the way down.
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Maybe if Big Tech just paid its fair share of taxes instead of finding and using loopholes we wouldn't be having this conversation.
You're looking at the wrong culprit. If there is any missing Internet infrastructure, the fault lies directly with the big ISP's who took customer money, then failed to use it to build out their infrastructure. It also lies directly with the politicians who passed laws that encouraged entrenched monopolies/duopolies to disregard not only the infrastructure they already had, but to active neglect building out better infrastructure.
If anyone should now shoulder the burden of improving Internet infrastructure,
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Let's face it, telecoms are utilities. There's rarely any natural competition so they should be prevented from mismanaging the infrastructure & price-gauging. We can
Re: taxes (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't even a tax thing, those ISPs are literally asking to double dip from you, their customer. You already pay your ISP for the bandwidth, and you already pay Netflix for the content, but they now want you to pay Netflix more so that Netflix may pay more of your money to your ISP than what you're already paying your ISP.
Essentially this allows your ISP to add hidden costs to your internet bill that you literally cannot protest. THAT is what European politicians want.
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Governments (the ones asking here) can invest in infrastructure but only if they have the money to do so, which generally comes from taxes.
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No, they already have the needed infrastructure. Taxes are a totally moot issue here.
Re: taxes (Score:2)
Most investment in infrastructure is private. If government plays a role it tends to be to inhibit infrastructure through regulation and red tape.
Re: taxes (Score:2)
Do you have some evidence that indicates tech companies are not paying the taxes they are required by law to pay?
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Legal and fair are not the same thing. Notice that I used the word 'fair'.
Re: taxes (Score:2)
Fair is doing what you are required to do.
Unfair is expecting companies to donate funds to the govt treasury.
Re: taxes (Score:2)
Drawing on knowledge of historical rollouts of broadband and high-speed mobile data in these countries, how would handing more money to governments address that matter at hand?
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Yeah yeah, government taxes are passed on to the private telcos to lay cables.
I agree big tech (and for that matter other big companies, suck as IKEA) should pay their share of taxes. But I don't think government tax income should be spent on giving telcos a bailout.
It worked once before... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an oldie but a goodie -- tax those who have no vote. Tax foreigners, foreign companies.
So they forced Google and Facebook to pay to prop up their dying media dinosaurs and got away with it. Why not have them pay to build their infrastructure?
What's next? Tax those foreign internet companies for driving down petrol tax revenues by enabling work from home!
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Tax companies that do business in your region? How horrible.
Oh no, I guess those companies have no lobbyists in the region either. Oh wait.
Re: It worked once before... (Score:2)
Yeah, in principle there's little difference. Given how broadband is difficult to market without content and services for which it is used, why aren't telecoms companies in these countries contributing towards the high production costs of films and TV?
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Well in the case of France, they're already taxing Hollywood films to pay for local productions. Some crap about protecting Europe's culture from the big bad Americans, but yeah, just the usual taxing foreign companies explicitly.
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tax those who have no vote
LOL. You are talking about mega corporations. It's the people who do vote who don't get any say in governments or laws. Those are largely driven by the lobby spending. And that's before we consider one name on the list "Meta" which has the power to not just vote but to sway entire frigging elections.
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So they forced Google and Facebook to pay to prop up their dying media dinosaurs and got away with it.
Are you sure that's what's happening? Where do you think the news that you see on Google's & Facebook's services comes from? Do Google & Facebook have news rooms with teams of journalists who go out & investigate stories, interview people, & cultivate sources all over the world? You know, those "media dinosaurs"?
Perhaps what you meant to say was that Google & Facebook have made themselves middle-men for accessing the news reported by media dinosaurs & imposing their own advertisin
Better routers would be a better investment (Score:2)
Man I must really be getting old (Score:2, Insightful)
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Yeah, but you didn't place the taxes on just some specific companies. Every taxpayer made a contribution. Some more fairly than others, but this isn't fair either. Why can't they just have a fair taxation scheme in the first place instead of this bullshit band-aid that penalizes some companies unfairly?
Re: Man I must really be getting old (Score:2)
Yes, comrade. It worked brilliantly until we ran out of other people's money.
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Simple, drop 5G and WTF? (Score:3)
Microsoft and Amazon are carrying boatloads of traffic as well over their vast intercontinental fiber and data center networks built of dark fiber everywhere.
Now the crux... Microsoft, Google, Netflix, everyone but Meta (with Oculus) have absolutely no need for 5G.
4G is more than enough. For bidirectional communication, all companies offering such services can employ adaptive spatial, temporal, and bitrate scaling.
For all other services, there are no latency requirements and as such, buffering is fine. Hell, almost all services from these companies actually run over TCP which is solid proof that they just don't care about latency.
Facebook and their ridiculousverse.... sorry, metaverse... that's something which under the exact right conditions will actually benefit from 5G.
I have heard rumors that VR is supposed to require a lot of bandwidth. I don't have any idea what for... after all, 99% of real-time VR processing will happen data-center side and then be transmitted as streaming video to the glasses. As such, even at 8Kx120fps, we should actually be able to live with 4G speeds.
If you are in the ISP business, the only reason to upgrade is remain competitive. Or because the government forces you to.
User interest has no impact whatsoever. If you're a monopoly, you upgrade when the government forces you to.
If you're a competitive market, you have to decide what your competitive edge is. If it's speed and latency... go for it. If it's coverage so people can even be online in the mountains... go for it. But there is absolutely no one forcing anyone to upgrade to 5G. In fact, if you were to survey 100,000 people to ask how much impact 5G has made on their lives, I expect at least 90,000 to say "what's 5G?", then 9 more percent to simply say no, the remaining 1% will tell you have they bought Monster brand stranded gold hdmi and ethernet cables to properly appreciate it.
5G is and always will be 100% advantageous to the provider rather than the consumer. If the provider builds out their 5G network, there are hundreds of technical and financial reasons why a good 5G network is worth money to them.... but not worth enough to rush deployment as the CapEx is just nuts... and if they can't buy Huawei, they're just bleeding cash like crazy.
I would say to the companies... no you can't have more money for stuff which really only benefits you.
Run your 4G equipment for as long as possible. In areas where you need denser coverage or longer range coverage (two strong points of 5G), replace towers and add towers as needed.
It's a minimum of 4-5 years before there is likely to be an actual 5G application which would make users care about 5G and even then, it will work just fine on 4G
And this is about 5G... not FTTH. Google, Netflix and others all have massive CDNs that are often routed from multiple data centers to multiple points within carrier networks who need it. Consider that PornHub alone documents (information released in 2019 I believe) a somewhat sustained 300Tb/s except during sporting events when before the event traffic is higher and during half-time breaks, it's much higher. There is no technology on earth that would allow delivery of that performance without an extremely well established CDN.
The point is that those companies they're blaming already are footing massive parts of the bill and the part of the bill they're being asked to chip in for provides no return on investment for them. It's charging them for services they simply don't use.
So... drop 5G
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The primary goal of 5G is not faster speeds, rather it's better handling of longer distances and better handling of congestion. The more users who move to 5G equipment the better for everyone including the carriers.
The more (2/3/4g) users you have on the network, the more of the limited radio spectrum has to be allocated to these less efficient protocols.
The same is true of Wifi6 as well as IPv6. Superior technology that provides increasing benefits as they become more widespread.
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Dear god how can you write so much on the false assumption that 5G has anything to do with internet speed? There are several hundred changes to the 3GPP revision for 5G, nearly all of which don't impact speed in the slightest.
Fair enough, it cuts both ways (Score:2)
Telcos aren't bearing the production costs of the content and services that make their high-bandwidth services marketable. Why aren't telcos in these countries paying so studios can properly invest in developing content?
stupid question (Score:2)
...but don't they already pay to connect to the internet?
And if they do and it's not enough, then the fault lies at the feet of the people calculating the rates, no?
Or...the simplest explanation would be that euro governments and quasi governments are growing addicted to the idea of meeting budget shortfalls by picking the pockets of anyone nearby that they think is "rich".