EU Telcos Call For Shared Network Costs (reuters.com) 41
Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and 13 other European telecoms providers on Monday made their strongest push for Big Tech to share network costs, citing the energy crisis and EU climate change goals. From a report: The call comes as the European Commission prepares to seek feedback from both sides before making a legislative proposal that could force tech companies to help pay for the roll-out of 5G and fibre cables across the 27-country European Union. The sector which invests some 50 billion euros ($48.5 billion) annually in infrastructure, needs more funding and urgently, the chief executives of the companies said in a statement.
"Costs of planning and construction works are increasing. Prices for fibre optic cables, for example, have almost doubled in the first semester 2022. Similarly, the hikes in energy prices and in the prices of other inputs are also hitting the connectivity sector," they said. "Timely action is a must: Europe missed out on many of the opportunities offered by the consumer internet. It must now swiftly build strength for the age of the metaverses," the CEO's said. Europe's telecoms operators argue that U.S. tech firms such as Alphabet's Google, Meta and Netflix account for more than half of internet traffic and should bear some of the cost of upgrading infrastructure. Big Tech has rebuffed such requests, saying they are already investing in equipment and technologies to deliver content more efficiently.
"Costs of planning and construction works are increasing. Prices for fibre optic cables, for example, have almost doubled in the first semester 2022. Similarly, the hikes in energy prices and in the prices of other inputs are also hitting the connectivity sector," they said. "Timely action is a must: Europe missed out on many of the opportunities offered by the consumer internet. It must now swiftly build strength for the age of the metaverses," the CEO's said. Europe's telecoms operators argue that U.S. tech firms such as Alphabet's Google, Meta and Netflix account for more than half of internet traffic and should bear some of the cost of upgrading infrastructure. Big Tech has rebuffed such requests, saying they are already investing in equipment and technologies to deliver content more efficiently.
Seems like a money grab (Score:5, Insightful)
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Subsidize us... (Score:5, Insightful)
...because we don't know how to manage our businesses.
They build infrastructure, and then cagrge people and companies to use it. They are just trying to double-dip.
Re:Subsidize us... (Score:5, Insightful)
Headline should read: "EU Telcos jealous of US Telcos sweetheart deals."
Telcos in the US get massive sums of money from the government to build out infrastructure. They'll do a study over it, sit on it, spread the money around through stock buybacks and CEO bonuses, then get the same or more money later for the exact same reason. The EU telcos are sick and tired of having to actually work for money, and they're ready to start getting some of that sweet, sweet US style freebie money. This is step one, since they know the EU governments aren't as liable to jump right to handing them fat wads of cash for existing.
Maybe if they push for the EU equivalent of Citizens United? Gotta make it legal to kickback that money directly into politician pockets before going for the big grabs.
They know exactly how to manage their business (Score:1)
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"then cagrge (sic) people and companies to use it. "
Well, then, charge them. Charge the big platforms and their enabling technologies the appropriate amounts to support the current business, finance growth and modernization, and for research for the further future.
Are they afraid that charging the 'users' generating the demand a reasonable and appropriate fee will cause problems? Right now they charge end users because we want these services, dammit, and so we pay. But our content providers also want us, co
Don't big tech also pay for net access? (Score:5, Informative)
Last I checked big tech pays for internet access - just like everyone else.
If they are using too much bandwidth for their data centres, just push them to upgrade to a faster link just like everyone else.
I don't think ISPs bill anyone (regardless small or big customer) at a rate which costs them money. If they are, they are obviously doing something wrong and should change their bandwidth rates obviously.
Otherwise, this seems like a stupid double dip idea.
Yes and maybe telcos should pay them? (Score:3)
Yes, tech companies pay plenty for bandwidth. They even pay consumer ISPs directly sometimes - that's called paid peering. Otherwise they pay backbone telcos to transit their traffic.
This is just an attempt from consumer telcos to double-dip and nothing else. Telcos want to get paid but they don't want to upgrade their infrastructure, and I have no sympathy for that at all.
How about those telcos pay the large tech companies for providing the reasons why anyone even has internet connectivity? Do they think
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Prices for fibre optic cables, for example, have almost doubled in the first semester 2022.
Not Big Tech's fault.
Similarly, the hikes in energy prices ....
Also not Big Tech's fault.
As much as we like to hate Big Tech, they already pay *A LOT* of money for Internet connectivity. If the EU isn't using that money to build out more capacity, that's *THEIR* fault. Not Big Tech.
Investment (Score:2)
Telco companies: Big tech needs to help fund building out more capacity
Translation: Instead of feeding profits into upgrading and expanding capacity, we use them to prop up our stock price, and when we have capacity issues and need to expand, we ask the government to make someone else pay for it
Re:Don't big tech also pay for net access? (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly right.
Every company pays for Internet access—even ISPs!—and these companies aren't billing less than their own costs to send and receive data. Big tech companies have some of the largest Internet access bills out there, which they pay to their ISP(s). From there, Level 3 ISPs make peering agreements with other ISPs and pay their own Internet bills to get service from Level 2 ISPs. Level 2 ISPs do the same, except that their backbone access comes from Level 1 ISPs. The money keeps getting moved around, with ISPs jockeying among themselves to argue who needs whom more as they negotiate peering agreements. Those peering agreements include clauses that both sides agree to accept each other's traffic at a set rate or as a ratio (e.g. I accept from you as much as you accept from me), with the stipulation that if one side starts to exceed that rate/ratio, they'll need to pay the difference. So, no matter how it plays out, the residential customer's ISP is already being compensated for the traffic by their own (residential) customers or through favorable peering agreements they're able to negotiate thanks to the directionality of the traffic.
And if for some reason their costs still exceed their prices at that point, then that means their cost of doing business is more than what they're charging, which is a problem that is entirely within their power to solve: charge their own customers more to deal with their costs. But they don't want to do that because it makes them less competitive, so they're attempting to push the costs off on taxpayers or all users of X platform, rather than their own customers.
To me, that sounds like a failed business plan (or greedy execs who simply want more profits). It's not my problem, let alone something that I should be asked to pay.
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While I don't have quite the negative outlook you do, I do wonder how much this metaverse will really catch on for the extreme widespread use they seem to anticipate...?
I mean, sure, there wi
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Hint... (Score:1)
It's the telco's job to upgrade their own infrastructure.
I don't see the telco's in the U.S. asking for handouts for service upgrades... oh, ya.. just ignore that infrastructure bill that was passed by congress.... and subsidies for rural folks... and poor folks... and...
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Well, you're mostly correct. They asked for handouts for service upgrades, and then just didn't do the service upgrades. So you can argue, they didn't get money.. For service upgrades?....
Yeah. I don't know where that came from..
Share costs with robo-callers and others first (Score:4, Interesting)
Once you share costs with the folks that have abused the PSTN voice network for the past 100 years - namely
- Robo callers ... then you can go after big tech.
- Pollsters
- Scammers
- Government lapdogs hunting for donations
You don't get to go after someone just because they have a big wallet. There has to be logical consistency. Claiming that Google and Netflix have to pay to ride on the 5G network while others can coast on it scott-free, is illogical.
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You don't get to go after someone just because they have a big wallet.
Wait, what?
I thought that is the EU Government's business model.
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Wait, what?
I thought that is the EU Government's business model.
... they're the traffic cops of the internet. "We've got a budget shortfall coming, better issue more traffic citations!"
How about (Score:5, Interesting)
paying "Big Tech" for the content that makes their service worth the price they charge.
Seems silly, but. (Score:4, Interesting)
* Advertisements and cat videos.
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Because Cox, in my area, doesn't provide much service to Facebook, as an example. I'm on the other end of the network from Facebook. In between are my direct providers, routing partners, and of course platform links. Even the cached CDNs are at the other end of a network route.
Cox pays for their (a proxy for my) connection to this network. If the network providers are suffering for lack of revenue, it isn't because Cox hasn't raised my rates like clockwork.
customers pay for access (Score:2)
The entire business of being an ISP means that your customers pay you for access. If you cannot expand your network due to cost then maybe you are not charging your customers enough. Really, you just want to be paid twice for the same thing, in perpetuity.
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Think about the original telco business, you pay for phone service then you likely pay per call to use that service but (generally) the party you are calling does not pay for the call. A large/popular call center might busy up a lot of equipment with people calling in (let's assume for a second that we are not talking about an 800 type number). The telco still only charges the calling party and does not ask the call center to pay up too (the call center already pays for its own service separately and no par
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You pay to receive calls by having phone service, essentially buying a phone number. Service is paid for on both ends. I suppose you could flip my scenario around and have a large call center calling everyone in a small town at the same time. The call center might overwhelm the small telco, does the telco the turn to the called parties (their customers) and ask them to pay up for those incoming call center calls, voice was bidirectional after all.
Each voice channel for a call is really 64kbps worth of data
Why the need for government involvement? (Score:2)
Europe's telecoms operators argue that U.S. tech firms such as Alphabet's Google, Meta and Netflix account for more than half of internet traffic...
Imagine if a few major dairy farms said: Actually.. firms such as Walmart account for more than Half of Consumption of milk products, and we need new bigger faster trucks to deliver it. WAAHHH That's not fair.. We didn't get them to pay us enough money. Government, you should take money from them and make give them give those extra dollars to us to pay fo
Comrades (Score:3)
Didn't realize these EU Telcos were struggling enough as to need investors.
Already paying (Score:2)
Aren't the "big tech companies" already paying to be connected to the network?
Aren't customers already paying to be connected to the network too?
If you want more money, just increase your prices.
yep... (Score:3)
Telcos have been double and triple dipping to maximize profits for decades all the while refusing to do whats best for their customers because it'll upset the investors.
Peering (Score:2)
It's called peering and it already exists. For decades.
Or charge based on costs and demand? (Score:2)
It's not my fault your peering agreements don't make much profit, which is what would measure the usage by other networks. Or you decided to give away your hosting space to big companies.
Reap what you sow.