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EU The Internet

Europe's Telecoms Want High-Traffic Companies Like Netflix to Fund Infrastructure Upgrades (cnbc.com) 139

"Faced with a squeeze on profits and dwindling share prices, internet service providers are seeking ways of making additional income," reports CNBC.

One example? "Telecom groups are pushing European regulators to consider implementing a framework where the companies that send traffic along their networks are charged a fee to help fund mammoth upgrades to their infrastructure, something known as the 'sender pays' principle." Their logic is that certain platforms, like Amazon Prime and Netflix, chew through gargantuan amounts of data and should therefore foot part of the bill for adding new capacity to cope with the increased strain. "The simple argument is that telcos want to be duly compensated for providing this access and growth in traffic," media and telecoms analyst Paolo Pescatore, from PP Foresight, told CNBC.

The idea is garnering political support, with France, Italy and Spain among the countries coming out in favor. The European Commission is preparing a consultation examining the issue, which is expected to launch early next year.... Meta, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix accounted for more than 56% of all global data traffic in 2021, according to a May report that was commissioned by European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association. An annual contribution to network costs of 20 billion euros ($19.50 billion) from tech giants could boost EU economic output by 72 billion euros, the report added.... U.S. tech giants should "make a fair contribution to the sizable costs they currently impose on European networks," the bosses of 16 telecom operators said in a joint statement last month....

The debate isn't limited to Europe, either. In South Korea, companies have similarly lobbied politicians to force "over-the-top" players like YouTube and Netflix to pay for network access.... Meanwhile, tech giants say they're already investing a ton into internet infrastructure in Europe — 183 billion euros between 2011 to 2021, according to a report from consulting firm Analysys Mason — including submarine cables, content delivery networks and data centers. Netflix offers telcos thousands of cache servers, which store internet content locally to speed up access to data and reduce strain on bandwidth, for free.

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Europe's Telecoms Want High-Traffic Companies Like Netflix to Fund Infrastructure Upgrades

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  • by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Sunday October 30, 2022 @10:36AM (#63010241) Homepage

    They want to charge the senders and consumers of data for service, which is fair enough, but then they want to charge the senders even MORE money because they dare use the service they already paid for?

    Do I have that about right?

    • by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Sunday October 30, 2022 @10:42AM (#63010259)

      No, the basic idea is wherever there is an American pot of money, it needs to be sucked on ever more. The justifications are just window dressing.

      • by kurkosdr ( 2378710 ) on Sunday October 30, 2022 @04:00PM (#63010947)
        If Netflix is smart, they will make the fee transparent in the UI, make it clear it's an arbitrary EU fee, and make it be different for every resolution. Let's see how voters react to that.
        • by sodul ( 833177 ) on Sunday October 30, 2022 @04:47PM (#63011051) Homepage

          Whatever EU regulators decide goes, then each country's government has to vote a law that complies with the new regulation within a given time.

            It does not matter much what people voted for in most case. If a government that does not like the new rules refuses to pass marching laws, then that country gets fined for doing what their voters asked.

          Once in a while there will be referendums to agree to a major change and if the voters say No, then the change will still be implemented but in some other way.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          • It does not matter much what people voted for in most case.

            This has come as a shock to many Americans I talk to, but you need to realise that nothing is decided by anyone in the EU who isn't an elected official. Either the EC made up of the elected heads of country or the European Parliament made up of MEPs voted for by voters of nations in the EU itself.

            Literally no regulation is forced on countries by anyone other than an elected official. It's amazing how many people don't even realise there is a European Parliament or their role in the regulatory process.

            It's n

            • by jabuzz ( 182671 )

              I would further add that all the commissioners and "eurocrats" in Brussels are appointed by elected officials from the member states. They are no different from all the appointees by the US president in that respect.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mz721 ( 9598430 )

        The big tech companies can afford any amount of fees out of the tax they don't pay.

        If the big US tech companies paid their share of taxes in the markets they exploit, maybe (maybe, I do say maybe) there'd be a different dynamic out there (they have burned a lot of good will). In many countries the key infrastructure is a national asset, not owned by some private business, and so it is at least part-funded by taxpayer dollars. And if companies are not going to pay their share of tax, then governments are goi

        • This may be a bit confusing, but Australia is not in the EU, using three articles about Australia does not support your argument.

          The Italian one looks like a disagreement over if they had a presence in Italy to then be forced to pay taxes there as well. They did not have a presence in Italy, but Italy claimed that they use network lines and servers in Italy, so should have to pay there too despite having no business presence in the country.

          The problem is, almost universally, businesses are taxed on their p

    • They want to ask both sides for money, that's not that uncommon. You have it with garbage, you have it with the content industry, why not try it with telecom?

      Hey, you can't blame them for trying.

      • They want to ask both sides for money

        Here's my proposal:

        The ISPs charge the big content providers for using bandwidth on their networks.

        The big content providers charge the ISPs for access to their exclusive content.

        Set the rates so that the two fees cancel out.

        • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          The big content providers charge the ISPs for access to their exclusive content.

          I really REALLY hope you were being either sarcastic or trolling with that one. The idea that you have to choose between ISPs based on what content you want access to sounds absolutely terrifying.

          • by Wycliffe ( 116160 ) on Sunday October 30, 2022 @02:08PM (#63010723) Homepage

            I really REALLY hope you were being either sarcastic or trolling with that one. The idea that you have to choose between ISPs based on what content you want access to sounds absolutely terrifying.

            And this right here is the problem. If an ISP starts charging netflix, netflix might decide to not pay and the ISP cuts the content or if the country makes it non-optional, netflix could decide to leave the entire country.

            The ISP is charging the consumer for access to the internet. It shouldn't matter whether that is netflix, youtube, TOR, or something else. If the consumer is using too much bandwidth, either put monthly/daily limits or have some way to deprioritize based on usage or package. Just like a gym membership, it's really not unlimited as it's oversold. If everyone showed up at the gym on the same day, there wouldn't be enough room. No one likes overage charges but you could progressively slow someone down after they reach their daily or monthly bandwidth limit. Giving customers warnings and/or ways to control it better would also help. If consumers could save a certain percentage off their bill by watching netflix at a lower resolution, some would likely choose this option.

            Charging Netflix for their customers using more bandwidth is like taxing a shower manufacturer for the number of showers a customer takes.

      • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Sunday October 30, 2022 @11:00AM (#63010301) Homepage Journal

        Hey, you can't blame them for trying.

        Sure I can. They won't stop with Netflix. They'll keep working their way down until they're double-charging individuals. There's absolutely no legitimate justification for this no matter who is being double-charged. This kind of thing literally breaks capitalism. Charge everyone enough to expand infrastructure, proportionally, and the people who use the services naturally pay to expand what they actually use. It's exactly the same fuckery that goes on with truck registration fees in the USA. We've decided that the money for roads has to come from vehicle registration fees, but we don't charge proportionally more for vehicles which do more damage, so people who drive anything but heavy vehicles are getting completely fucked over on fees. A semi or bus does literally 2-3 orders of magnitude more road damage than a pickup or a van, but only pays 2-3 times as much in fees and fuel taxes. End result, the people who buy goods that come off a truck are subsidized by people who don't.*

        * Yes, everything comes by truck, but some things make part of their journey by rail, or are transported by road in a lighter vehicle which does less road damage.

        • They're already double charging, on consumers and producers. What they actually want is the ability to triple charge. Pay for internet access on both sides, and then pay again for the ability to actually use what you're already paying for. This absurdity must be fought before it expands even more.

        • No, you can hate them for trying, you could even refuse to do business with them for trying. And I really wish I could shut them down for trying.

          But blaming them trying to do it if others already got away with it? Why do you hate capitalism?

          Yes, it's a trick question, I know, I know...

          • I'll be laughing at them for trying. Basically they're just screwing themselves by making themselves pay more for what they're already getting. Whether they realize it or not, nobody in the US will even notice this. Maybe a few Netflix executives will notice marginally lower subscriber numbers after they have to raise their prices to make up for it, but that's about it.

        • They'll keep working their way down until they're double-charging individuals.

          What Europe is doing here is indefensible, but your comment is not only silly, it's a slippery slope fallacy combined with being completely insane and unrealistic.

          The EU is known for many things, and among them is that they do *not* go after individuals. A large part of their laws (especially the stupid ones like this) are about doing the exact opposite.

          This kind of thing literally breaks capitalism.

          And this comment is even more silly. "Capitalism" is an economic theory that literally no one would want. The only stable condition of capitalism is a singl

          • You don't really understand capitalism. Free market means the prices are governed by the forces of supply and demand as opposed to being set by an actual government. Capitalism needs laws and regulations to work, in fact it can't work at all without them. Believe it or not, if regulations are done correctly, they make companies more profitable, even if they complain about them.

            Case in point, the FDA made the food industry much more profitable by regulating the allowed levels of hazardous chemicals in the fo

            • You don't really understand capitalism. Free market means the prices are governed by the forces of supply and demand as opposed to being set by an actual government. Capitalism needs laws and regulations to work, in fact it can't work at all without them.

              No, you don't understand it. You have a very superficial understanding of the topic (most people do) and if you pick up any economics textbook you can be set straight.

              Capitalism is the free market at work. It defines the absence of regulatory intervention by definition, a market controlled by private entities alone. The only thing you're right about is that capitalism can't work (at least for the good of the consumer).

              What we do is intervene in the market (government sets rules - not capitalism), but do so

        • This kind of thing literally breaks capitalism. Charge everyone enough to expand infrastructure, proportionally

          Come on, structuring your pricing according to how much money your customers have is literally capitalism at its finest.
          I'll spare you the car analogy but that's how we get products that are 10% faster and twice as much, because the pricing needs to scale from what most people can afford to as far down the tail of the bell curve as you can get. This is how a market responds to income disparity.

          A flat rate like you're suggesting is a fine idea and all, but the rate for water, power, internet etc has to be l

          • Well, it doesn't have to be a flat rate. And it often isn't; the big guys get to negotiate rates, it's only the plebes that get stuck paying advertised prices. The big guys can afford to move their operation around, we are where we are. They can afford their own fiber run, they are probably close to an exchange, etc etc. But negotiate the price and then stick to it for the contract period, and if you can't provide the service without charging more for infrastructure updates then it's your own fault.

          • No, it's not really what people have, it's what it's worth to people. Companies generally should not compete on price, but on value. If two things are basically identical from two different sources, then yeah, price will be the sole differentiator. But not everybody wants to pay $30,000 on a car because that's what they have budgeted for. Rather than getting the best car they can for their money, they might just rather pay $20,000 on a different car that has every feature they want and would even care for,

        • My opinion, is that you should not be picking on trucking fees. An honest question; do you really understand logistics? You could absolutely make trucks pay more, what would be the outcomes? It would drive up prices on consumer goods not only for obvious, but also obscure reasons. "so people who drive anything but heavy vehicles are getting completely fucked over on fees." No, they are saving money on everything they buy where that cost has been passed along. It's a chicken and egg, or pay me now-pay

          • My opinion, is that you should not be picking on trucking fees. An honest question; do you really understand logistics? You could absolutely make trucks pay more, what would be the outcomes?

            People who incur costs would pay costs.

            • OK, cool. Truck licensing fees go way up. Cost of consumer goods goes way up. inflation and cost of living go way up. As a purist you gotta love medical costs.... - " People who incur costs would pay costs."

            • Actually, I should never have answered you. The question to you is - you want to put 10x as many trucks on the road, using 5x the fuel per weight; clog up roads, create more air pollution etc. How is your plan better, please explain.

        • A semi or bus does literally 2-3 orders of magnitude more road damage than a pickup or a van, but only pays 2-3 times as much in fees and fuel taxes.

          A bus presumably carries many more passengers than the typical pickup, so that damage is spread out appropriately. Likewise the cargo on any given semi is far more useful to society than just you travelling pretty much anywhere. All that raising taxes on them will accomplish is raising transit fees (when many places are trying to encourage its use), and making goods (even) more expensive, since end users always bear those costs anyway.

          Basically, society has decided that large vehicles are significantly

    • by fazig ( 2909523 )
      No.

      The angle I'm seeing it from is more about abusing Net Neutrality regulations where these large and super wealthy corporations can offload a lot of what would be rightfully their networking cost to carry onto ISPs.
      Or if you will, it highlights a flaw(s) in Net Neutrality regulations. It's one of the valid things that Net Neutrality opponents have been warning about for a long time. It's just that it's been buried among a lot of nonsense, so it seems people easily lost sight of that angle.
      • by xous ( 1009057 ) on Sunday October 30, 2022 @12:03PM (#63010453) Homepage

        I've run ISPs.

        This goes fundamentally against how the internet works. Customers pay for internet access and that includes access to anything on the internet no matter who provides it. That is the fucking point.

        It's not Netflix's problem that they failed upgrade their networks. Netflix already goes out of their way with their cashing boxes to mitigate the stress on the ISPs networks.

        Allowing them to get away with this would ruin the internet. Telcos are far more despicable than Netflix or Amazon in their practices and behavior don't let your bias against these companies cloud your judgment.

        What's your suggesting with ultimately turn the internet into a broken form of cable tv.

        • by fazig ( 2909523 )
          What? Guessing by the cable tv analogy, you're from the US?
          This is not about the US. This about Europe, where people often do not pay for the traffic they're causing on their tethered internet connections.

          So the next step, if throttling isn't an option would be to increase prices considerably on unlimited data plans while introducing a lot more metered data plans.
          • by ffkom ( 3519199 )

            This about Europe, where people often do not pay for the traffic they're causing on their tethered internet connections.

            Those Internet connections are limited in traffic - just multiply the available bandwidth with a one month period, and there you have it, the traffic limit.

            ISPs advertising huge bandwidths just to cry foul when people actually use it is just stupid - they even try to lure people into more expensive contracts by suggesting that oh so much is needed for video streaming. Many people left the TV running for many hours per day, don't be surprised when they do the same with the "streaming" that they pay an exce

            • by fazig ( 2909523 )
              Is it the same to you to download a 10GB file in a minute over a 1.5GBit/s downstream or download that same file over the course of a month over dial-up?

              To most people I suppose it would not be the same. They would likely prefer the former option at a much higher price tag. And that's likely what's going to happen, prices will go up and or a lot more data caps will be introduced.
              It was nice to have cheap internet in Europe where you pay only like 60€/month for your GBit connection from the small bus
          • by N1AK ( 864906 )
            Very few people in Europe have unlimited bandwidth on tethered (4g/5g) based connections and if they do they pay a considerable amount. It is very common for broadband connections to be unlimited, but that is a choice of the companies selling those packages; so it isn't a justification for them needing to charge content providers as well.
            • So then what's all this shit with Europeans always claiming that internet access is shit in America compared to there? I literally pay $65/month for symmetric gig fiber, no data cap, at my house in Phoenix, AZ.

              • by fazig ( 2909523 )
                I'd say that many of the claims are overrated and or fail to see/acknowledge the circumstances at play. Like where rural internet vs urban or even metropolis internet are conflated.

                Options in rural Europe can be pretty shitty despite the much higher population density as well. That is unless you count wireless like 4G/5G as an option, which often has decent enough coverage except perhaps if you live deep in the forest or something like that.
                It also varies greatly from nation to nation, where Germany for e
          • Well then they should do that. Let the market work it out instead of going behind the customer's back. In the end the consumer will have to pay if costs go up, whether it's the ISP or the services that charge more. The ISP's are just trying to shift the blame. They seem to have enough money to pay for their lobbyists.
      • by lsllll ( 830002 )

        It's one of the valid things that Net Neutrality opponents have been warning about for a long time.

        They can take that "valid thing" and shove it up their ass since it's not valid at all. All the money they've been collecting for years that should have gone into keeping their infrastructure up to date ended up going into pockets of owners and shareholders. And Netflix makes things very easy for ISPs. They send a free appliance which offloads the viewers' traffic off back bones, so the ISPs don't have issues with their upstream tier providers. The ISPs are just plain greedy. Net Neutrality is a very g

        • by fazig ( 2909523 )
          Again, this is about ISPs in Europe.

          We've got a lot of small business ISPs as well as municipal ISPs that aren't the greedy monopolists that exist in some other places where the presence of a monopoly suffices the criteria for "competition". Unlimited data plans are pretty much standard for non mobile connections and have been since dial-up times.
          If you don't offer those at a good price you won't be able to compete as an ISP.

          I can see why they're upset about the current trend since the only other way i
          • by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

            None of that makes is correct to charge Netflix in this manner.

            Why does having to increase prices put smaller ISPs at a disadvantage compared to the previous monopolies? Don't they have to spend money on infrastructure as well and need to raise rates?

          • by lsllll ( 830002 )

            ISPs in Europe. Got it. So many of them are mom and pop shops. That still doesn't change the fact that they needed to foresee how the usage was going to go up. My personal digital photo collection is a lot bigger than it used to be. True that I've taken more pictures over time, but the size of the collection has grown more exponentially because I started with pictures at 1.3 megapixels and am now taking 20 megapixel pictures and storing many of them in 2 formats (RAW and jpeg). They knew this was goin

            • by fazig ( 2909523 )
              Prices will go up for the end users. That's likely what will happen. A lot of ISPs will go out if business.

              Um, I didn't argue for doing away with Net Neutrality.
              This isn't an all or nothing situation like the Net Neutrality opponents made it out to be. But it's something that can be learned from and improved upon without abolishing the entire thing.

              If you run your own private business server, the ISP that hooks you up to the internet will have you pay for a business contract where you will be billed ac
      • by N1AK ( 864906 )
        Then you are seeing it wrong. I am paying my ISP for an internet connection, there will be an agreed standard for bandwidth, contention, and potentially a usage limit. Netflix and all these other companies also pay for there own access. If those charges aren't sufficient then ISPs are free to increase the amount they charge or alter the standard they offer. The issue with this is ISPs don't like having to increase prices because that encourages customers to find a more cost effective alternative. What ISPs
        • by fazig ( 2909523 )
          I see it how it is in Europe, because that how it works in Europe.
          So again, this is about Europe's ISPs and their infrastructure in Europe, it even says so in the damned headline of the summary. Everything I say here concerns how it works in Europe, I'm making no statement about how other places should run things.

          For example in Europe you usually do not get a guaranteed minimum bandwidth with your contract. You get an "up to transfer rates", the same "up to bandwidth" that's used in advertising with an "
    • They want to charge the people that make their service valuable more for doing that.

    • Yeah, it's double-billing. Make two folks pay for the same byte and don't give it to either unless both pay.

    • If this is the case, then Netflix should own their share of the infrastructure that they paid to upgrade....
    • by havana9 ( 101033 )
      You're reading it wrong. The infrastructure now is perfectly working, if they want a faster fiber rollover they should give some money or make a partnership. If the don't like it, they should become an ISP themselves.
      https://www.sky.com/broadband [sky.com]
      https://www.sky.it/sky-wifi-fibra [www.sky.it]
      https://www.tim.it/offerte-tv/timvision [www.tim.it] (This one is a telco that secided to make a streaming service too, scroll down the page and see that one of the offers has also Netflix and Disney+)
    • by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Something like that.

      It's also incorrect to charge "more" when data should not be discriminated against in priority. VOIP only gets a special privilege here because it's damn near impossible to have a coherent phone call if you're lagging by more than a 1/10th of a second.

      But VOD and Streaming video? That's bulk data. The cheapest. If anything should be happening, is the nationalization of ISP's that refuse to upgrade their infrastructure to ensure equitable access to all customers.

      The ISP's can't have it bo

  • they already pay (Score:5, Interesting)

    by theheadlessrabbit ( 1022587 ) on Sunday October 30, 2022 @10:41AM (#63010257) Homepage Journal

    Typical European government double dipping. These companies are already paying for the telecom infrastructure they are using.

    • But they don't. They make much heavier use of the infrastructure while paying the same or less than companies that don't have the legal, lobbying and accounting resources to get out of paying taxes.

      My bigger issue with this is that the infrastructure isn't public. I don't know how Europe works though as far as Telecom. In America all our telecoms privately owned but paid for by the government through massive subsidies. It's frustrating but it's not something we can change given how our political system
      • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday October 30, 2022 @11:51AM (#63010425)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
          Yes anyone mugt give a shit even uf it where nit fir streaming, what about that enormous download if the game you just purchased on stem/egs/goog/etc, it would be a really long wait at 10Mbps. Or maybe you want to work from home and need to be in a zoom meeting/teams/etc with several people how insist on cameras, and screen sharing. No i 'm not picking on you, not intentionally anyway, but 10Mbps is really not that much today, and I remember dialup at 19.2Kbps ( not fun)
    • Typical European government double dipping.

      It's the private telco who are asking this, not the government. The government (the Commission) does exactly what it has to do: a group of companies has been asking (lobbying) for legal changes, so let's launch a public consultation during a full year for all interested parties to openly voice their opinion, and if a consensus emerge then we'll draft a proposal and send it for public review for 2 months before it reaches Parliament.

    • by dissy ( 172727 )

      Typical European government double dipping. These companies are already paying for the telecom infrastructure they are using.

      Shh! I think this is a great idea!

      Now I can just go to some .eu website, keep hitting refresh, and send the website a bill for the bandwidth consumed over my in house Ethernet!

      The European Commission would never pass some unfair law that doesn't apply equally to all network providers... right? ~

  • I've seen a lot of comments on different sites for some time now, regarding the low cost of internet access in Europe. Especially compared to prices to the US. Is it possible ISPs have not priced their services to cover their costs adequately?

    Its nice to offer symmetrical gigabit service and all that, but multiply that by the number of customers, I suspect they have bit off more than they can chew.
    • European ISPs are in a more competitive market. They can't just raise prices when they crave money. ISPs are profitable, but if there is an opportunity to get more, they'll go for it. There are lots of myths about the economic dealings which underpin the internet, so convincing some cursorily interested politicians that foul play is afoot is easy.
  • They do pay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hobadee ( 787558 ) on Sunday October 30, 2022 @10:47AM (#63010271) Homepage Journal

    They do pay already; they pay for their Internet connections. If you don't like it, up your rates or renegotiate your peering agreements.

    • Yea, I implied in my comment above, that an ISP offering cheap gigabit access into their network is not the same thing as providing those 100,000 gigabit customers cheap access to the rest of the world.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The internet connections that the content providers pay for are not giving money to the ISPs that serve consumers in most cases.

      They won't be able to renegotiate peering arrangements in their favour. If anything the people providing connectivity to the ISPs networks will be asking for more money, to cope with the increase in demand on bandwidth.

      Someone has to pay. If it's the ISPs then they will pass the cost to their end users. Consumer ISP services are already on thin margins. All customers pay, even if t

      • The internet connections that the content providers pay for are not giving money to the ISPs that serve consumers in most cases.

        Why would they? The content providers have their own costs and the "eyeball ISPs" aren't paying them, are they? The ISPs have no product without these "high traffic companies". And no, this is not at the cost of low end users. They profit immensely from the bandwidth increases that the power users pay for. Ten times the bandwidth costs twice as much at wholesale volumes, but that is only a very small part of the consumer price. The last mile costs practically the same. Fast internet access plans are wildly

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Day three ISP decided to block Netflix unless you paid extra to cover their costs. How would you feel about that?

          • Personally I'd have to have someone tell me, as I wouldn't be affected. For the sake of argument, I don't see what you're trying to get at. Day three? Block Netflix unless you paid extra? You know that's illegal. They know too, but I'd remind them to make sure. They could try and instate caps on all traffic, but literally a dozen ISPs on five broadband technologies (DSL, cable, fiber, wireless and satellite) are readily available to me, so yeah, they can try.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's not sender pays. It's just that upgrades are needed, the upgrades benefit both the ISP and Netflix, and Netflix is driving a lot of that growth.

          Someone has to pay, and assuming that we think net neutrality is important, and that the bigger players in the market should shoulder more of the burden (standard in the EU), then it would be expected that Netflix would contribute.

      • If every ISP has to spend more on infrastructure, then they should all be able to pass that cost on to consumers without a major change in price relative to their competitors. Which is what they normally do.

        Is it fair to force one company to invest in another without stock changing hands?

    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      It is not always possible. Look at movie theatre upgrades to digital. The studios, who take most of box office, should have agreed early on to cover Moses of the costs. It would save them distribution costs. They needed to specify equipment that would maximize loss prevention. But the theaters got stuck with a lot of the bill

      Ideally the end user would pay for the service they need. In the US the problem is rural folks who want gigabyte access but are not willing to pay for it. In Europe I have no idea wha

  • Will Microsoft, Amazon and any of these other companies who also own/build infrastructure comms receive a portion of this tax? My money is on Amazon figuring out how to come out ahead on this.
  • So how does Amazon connect to their side? Oh that's right they pay for it otherwise they are not on the internet. How can you act like packets can just come from someone who isn't paying out of thin air?

    They pay for hundreds of thousands of various internet connections and they have to pay high dollar for the traffic they use.

    The same way that the consumer has to pay or else they can't talk to Amazon on the internet.

    This is trying to charge another layer on top of both sides already buying their connections

  • Already paid for (Score:5, Informative)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Sunday October 30, 2022 @11:14AM (#63010341) Homepage Journal

    Every bit sent by Netflix through an ISP's network is a bit that was requested by a paying customer of that ISP. Not carrying that bit is a breach of contract. If they're going to charge Netflix for them, then naturally they will be charging their residential customers less, right?

    Data is data. Bit for bit, Netflix data costs no more than a cookie recipe from Grandma.

  • by msauve ( 701917 ) on Sunday October 30, 2022 @11:45AM (#63010409)
    "Telecom groups are pushing European regulators "

    Because they know they can't do it themselves. Go ahead ISPs, try to block Google, FB, Netflix, etc. when they won't pay you. See how many customers you keep.
  • ... if youmetaflix is using so much bandwidth that the ISP need to build more infrastructure, it would be easier to reduce the Bandwidth Cap, or reduce the amount of bandwidth available. Just like my 'Up To 20GBps" costs the same even when it is only delivering 3GBps.

  • "And that, children, is why video providers no longer serve content in any resolution greater than 480p."

    Of course that's an exaggeration, but I could absolutely see a situation where 4K gets pushed behind a premium paywall on most video services. There's no way this can happen without the brunt of the cost being paid for by consumers. Some people might say that this is a good thing, since the biggest consumers of video content will bear the cost, but then why focus only on video? There are many other
    • Some people might say that this is a good thing, since the biggest consumers of video content will bear the cost, but then why focus only on video? There are many other forms of media that consume lots of bandwidth as well. It would make far more sense to have the ISPs charge more from the customers who use the most bandwidth, regardless of the form of media consumption, and then use that money to upgrade their infrastructure. So if that makes more sense, why aren't they doing that? If I had to guess, I'd say that it has to do with the fact that all of the customers of the ISPs are Europeans while the video providers are not.

      Data caps with charges for overage? Charge more for higher speed lines? What a concept.

  • If you had listened to the quarterly earnings calls a decade or two back, they were all gleeful,

    In a gold rush, we dont know who's gonna strike paydirt and who's gonna die penniless in a mining camp in the boondocks. But... those who were selling shovels and tents always come out ahead. These googles, yahoos, altavistas, aols, netflixes and their co-horts are the prospectors. We just sell shovels. Invest in us. We will make profit

    Now those who stuck paydirt are still digging with the shovels they bought and the shovel sellers realize they are in the commodity business, not as profitable as gold mines.

    I have a simple contract with my electric company and the telcom company. I pay a fixed monthly fee, and you guarantee me 200 amp at 220 volt, 2 phase power. And the agreed bandwidth. They deliver the bits at the agreed upon rate. Thats

    • by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      Oh you are talking about your contract with the local grid owner/operator nit the electricity supplyer, or domyou have a fixed unlimited usage contract there as well? And hoepw does that work in these times of highly volatile ( but generally increasing in ( in real terms)) prices?
      • And hoepw does that work in these times of highly volatile ( but generally increasing in ( in real terms)) prices?

        I think the point is that the power utilities are not going to get paid by the oven, hvac and light bulb companies when they need to increase their infrastructure because of some hot summers or cold winters.

        What happened to net neutrality? These vultures are just going after Netflix because they think they can convince enough of the rabble that it makes sense that they can pressure something dumb like this through. The only thing that should be happening here is that if the government decides that it makes

  • While what is proposed is basically wrong, as it is double dipping, it is a shame that senders of unwanted data could not be charged. I'm think ads, port scans and malware etc. All the damaging traffic you pay for but don't want. It would be great if the senders could charged extra for the bandwidth they waste.

    The catch of course is that it is probably not technically possible and any attempt to implement it would likely have privacy issues or unwanted side effects.
  • This is just an attempt by the ISPs to make an end-run around Net Neutrality laws.

  • for all the cable. If they want to install cables, they need to pay every single property owner a lease charge.

    Fair is fair.

  • Wait until someone tells them that the electricity that powers all the devices that make up the Internet leave a tremendous carbon footprint.

    Your tweet about climate change harms the Earth, every time it is read.
  • I've been saying this for years: the "all you can eat for free" structure of the internet is inherently flawed. At some point, you have to start charging people based on the bandwidth they use (i.e. bytes transferred) to prevent at tragedy of the commons.

"Look! There! Evil!.. pure and simple, total evil from the Eighth Dimension!" -- Buckaroo Banzai

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