European Telecom Groups Ask Brussels To Make Big Tech Pay More For Networks (ft.com) 60
Europe's biggest telecoms companies have called on the EU to compel Big Tech to pay a "fair" contribution for using their networks, the latest stage in a battle for payments that has pitched the sector against companies such as Netflix and Google. From a report: Technology companies that "benefit most" from telecoms infrastructure and drive traffic growth should contribute more to costs, according to the chief executives of 20 groups including BT, Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica, who signed an open letter seen by the Financial Times. It will be sent to the European Commission and members of the European parliament. "Future investments are under serious pressure and regulatory action is needed to secure them," they warned. "A fair and proportionate contribution from the largest traffic generators towards the costs of network infrastructure should form the basis of a new approach."
They added that regulators need to take action to help secure future investment, with telecoms groups having to spend billions to support the rollout of 5G and upgrade to full-fibre networks. Signatories included Timotheus Hottges at Deutsche Telekom, Christel Heydemann at Orange, Jose Mara Alvarez-Pallete at Telefonica and Pietro Labriola at Telecom Italia. It was also supported by outgoing BT chief executive Philip Jansen, his successor Allison Kirkby, who is currently chief executive at Telia, as well as Vodafone's chief executive Margherita Della Valle. They suggested that a payment mechanism might only make demands on "the very largest traffic generators" with a focus on "accountability and transparency on contributions...so that operators invest directly into Europe's digital infrastructure."
They added that regulators need to take action to help secure future investment, with telecoms groups having to spend billions to support the rollout of 5G and upgrade to full-fibre networks. Signatories included Timotheus Hottges at Deutsche Telekom, Christel Heydemann at Orange, Jose Mara Alvarez-Pallete at Telefonica and Pietro Labriola at Telecom Italia. It was also supported by outgoing BT chief executive Philip Jansen, his successor Allison Kirkby, who is currently chief executive at Telia, as well as Vodafone's chief executive Margherita Della Valle. They suggested that a payment mechanism might only make demands on "the very largest traffic generators" with a focus on "accountability and transparency on contributions...so that operators invest directly into Europe's digital infrastructure."
Here We Go (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's make the EU even less friendly than it already is to any leading edge technology corporations.
And I've got one question for the Overlords in Brussels - What happens when you run out of other people's money? Just print more of it?
Unlikely to Work (Score:3)
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They can measure the traffic at the border and Netflix/Google sell subscriptions/ads inside Europe, doesn't really help.
Not taxing Ads or Surpscriptions (Score:2)
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they are not talking about taxing ad revenue or subscriptions - which would be extremely hard to do unless you tax all subscriptions and ads regardless of the network bandwidth involved.
That's because they already talked about that half a decade ago when the GDPR came into effect. Per article 27, any firm that does business in the Union and isn't established in the Union must designate a company in the Union as its representative for subject data inquiries or be subject to severe fines. If the tech giants don't follow EU laws, nobody will agree to represent them.
Re:Not taxing Ads or Subscriptions (Score:2)
Re: Unlikely to Work (Score:1)
General Tax vs. Bandwidth (Score:2)
peering (Score:3, Insightful)
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I can understand how two nearby ISPs can peer by linking their networks between cages in a crossconnect site and the small costs of that are covered by their subscriber fees. But how does, say, a submarine cable operator get paid. They have no subscribers to directly charge.
I've wanted to know the answer to this as well. It has to cost millions to bury a sea cable. Some ISP somewhere is footing the bill for it. But what's their incentive?
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Unlike EU networks, most of the undersea cables are commercial. So you have Google and other companies get together and order a cable when they need one, they pay for it and its maintenance through access agreements and contract. You need 100 Gigabit out of a Terabit connection, then you pay 1/10th of the cost, very simple.
Their incentives are obviously that they need to reach a customer on the other end of the ocean and/or increase their available bandwidth. The problem with EU net-providers is that everyt
Re:peering (Score:5, Informative)
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That sounds sensible.
Consider an ISP in, say, Africa, that uses a transit ISP to connect to the internet in other continents.
A new holographic version of zoom becomes available and while it only consumes 10Mbit/s both ways, it has to be live - it can't use a CDN in any meaningful way. Those wildly popular CSPAN conferences with billions of participants suddenly require much more bandwidth through the intertubes.
The consumers were already paying for 25Mbit/s and don't see why they need to pay more to send a
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The same telcos that complain about platforms not paying their fair share own most all submarine cables, and similarly terrestrial cables. They sell capacity, of course, to those who provide connectivity beyond, like ISPs and the same telecoms, sometimes selling from one subsidiary to another.
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They do pay for using those networks... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I know this is hard to comprehend, but the EU tends not to go with "just make the little guy pay for it", and does expect corporations that benefit greatly from the resource in question to contribute to its upkeep.
That is especially true of utilities, which internet access counts as in their eyes.
Re:They do pay for using those networks... (Score:4, Informative)
You don't have to make the little guy pay for it, you can make big tech pay for it. Unless big tech has set up their own ISPs in Europe, they're paying someone to access the internet. Why isn't their bill higher?
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Different people own the backbone links and the last mile stuff that consumers use. You could use tax to transfer the money, but it's better to have the big tech companies involved so they can make sure their needs are served, and so they can contribute technology.
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'Big Tech' already pays. The asymmetrical nature of the Internet leaves consumer ISPs provisioning significant bandwidth to the networks that these large platforms use, including CDNs, and they resent those costs. Rather than further insult their consumer (and small business) subscribers with significant price increase, and then offering virtually no improvement in service (mostly because they are already doing as well as they can given current infrastructure etc.) nor any changes in the services us, the co
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You didn't just say that, did you? If you "make big tech pay for it", all that happens is that this additional cost will be tacked on to the consumer.
Not a good idea (Score:2)
the EU tends not to go with "just make the little guy pay for it", and does expect corporations that benefit greatly from the resource in question to contribute to its upkeep.
The companies in question do pay for the upkeep because they have to pay and maintain a high bandwidth link from their data centres to the network just like the "little guy". The problem with a model where big corporations pay for everything is that things naturally get tailored to best serve whoever is paying. If governments are concerned about the little guy then transfer some of the tax burden away from us and onto companies. That way we will have the money to pay for our internet connection and ISPs wi
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I know this is hard to comprehend, but the EU tends not to go with "just make the little guy pay for it", and does expect corporations that benefit greatly from the resource in question to contribute to its upkeep.
I know this is hard to comprehend, but the corporations are actually allowed to charge customers for expansion, and they will simply do that and the "little guy" will wind up paying anyway.
The internet providers want someone else to pay for expansion so that they don't have to raise their rates, because then they actually have to compete on technical merit — who can get lines laid most efficiently.
There are only two rational ways to handle this problem. One is to tell them to go fuck themselves, chang
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If the ISPs are forced to pay for it all, you will end up with fewer ISPs. Europe isn't like the US, it's mostly unbundled so we have a choice of many different ISPs. The lines are owned by other companies who are obliged to offer them to every ISP on the same terms, including their own.
The market is supposed to work for the consumer. Again, very different to the US.
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Then put your money where your ideals are and nationalize the infrastructure, which will allow more providers and yet also create more efficiency because you won't have multiple providers installing parallel infrastructure which could instead be shared.
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So your claim is that when natural gas prices increased in Europe the big players paid and the little guy didn't see any increase?
I don't think it worked that way at all.
Then don't make the network wrothless (Score:5, Interesting)
Consumer network operators have 100% played into big tech's hand by not letting people run servers etc. Since at least according to the TOS I am not even allowed to say host a multiplayer game. or small personal website on my home internet plan.
Well the ONLY value in the network is access to 'big' tech. What the hell would I use 5G for other than to connect to services offered by 'big tech' I certainly have exactly no other reason to want that level of network access at home or on the go.
So I can't see why these guys should be allowed to rent-seek here. They should just raise prices to cover the real cost of service, or meter access or whatever they need to do. Can't wait watch the euro-dumbdumbs on here cry when suddenly the cheap internet access they always boast over isnt...
Meanwhile big tech does not have a product if they can't distribute it, so my advice to the telcos would be raise your rates, switch to metered access and come hat in hand to Alphabet/Netflix/Spotifiy/Amazon etc and ask them if maybe they WANT to subsidize services...
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Your shitty ISP is not the reason for big tech. The vast majority of ISPs do not have TOS that prevent you hosting a server, and even those which do largely don't give a shit.
If you want to know who actually played into big tech's hands then all of Slashdot should take a look in the mirror. After all you can just scroll through the history of this tech site promoting the idea of "I can't remember an IPv6 address", "IPv4 will last forever if only ${company} gives up their allocation", and "NAT is the bestest
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it started with shitty ISPs. It started with them gradually turning over the value add services like e-mail and news to Google etc. Yes it took 20 years but combination of things gave big tech exactly what they wanted.
They TV-ified the Internet.
The transit layer network operators who were largely telcos also played along up till now as well.
It was because they got to play their little carriage fee and transfer agreement games and make money; but as they have increasingly become the "shitty ISP" themselves
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The only thing my ISP offers is a local loop. Every other service over this local loop is provided by others. So I suggest that the local loop should be nationalized and allow other ISP's to offer services over the local loop since this loop is provided by right of passage which limits who is permitted to offer the service.
The biggest bottleneck is always the local loop especially when there is no competition. When you have options and a choice on who provides the local loop cost seem to drop. The more comp
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No it didn't. ISPs have taken up a pre-existing trend. People were migrating away from ISP email services long before ISPs started doing that on the back end. Why would you as an ISP invest to provide a service that everyone gets from somewhere else?
I get it, you have a thing against your ISP, but the reality is the movement started for other reasons. We run servers, we always have, ISPs didn't stop anyone beyond some of them possibly blocking port 25 to stop email spam in the early 00s, but even that wasn'
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In the UK ISPs mostly don't block servers. Certain ports are blocked like 25, because of well known problems, but you can run your email server on a different port easily enough.
There exception is where you have carrier grade NAT, but even then you usually get a usable IPv6 address.
The real issue is that nobody else will accept connections from your domestic email server, because spammers ruined it for everyone.
Lots of people do run other services though. VPNs, web servers, Nextcloud, Mastodon...
my house (Score:3)
I want big tech to pay for my house. I mean, they push a lot of ads my way and surely this pays for my house. What do they think I go to their site for free?
Overall Picture (Score:2)
What needs to be done by somebody is to construct an overall picture of how the internet is structured: what is needed in terms of bandwidth and connectivity, what we have, and how it is paid for and by whom. Leaving things to the market means you have a bunch of interconnected fragments each controlled by a separate private entity who is primarily interested in their own profitability, not the overall picture and how they fit in. A modern company is incentivised to game rules to improve their own situation
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That is what rent control is supposed to accomplish when in fact it does no such thing.
It's the interest in the game that drives the value. The local ISP want to increase their portion of the pie. The hard way is to compete for the clients eyes. The easy way is to demand compensation. Since the ISP decided to let others provide the value to their service they don't accept that their choices created their problem. They are not even prepared to to expend any effort in adding value. Their effort is expended in
Genius strategy (Score:3)
I understand that they will stop billing their customers. If so, I'm in favor.
All companies should do the same, bill their customers AND their providers too. Supermarkets will bill their food providers, as they are profiting unfairly from the convenience of the supermarket, that cost a lot to build and keep in good order and all that, and the bloody farmers just look at the apples grow in the trees, and make a lot of money.
Unfortunately, they might get a hearing, because logic does not matter, what matters is who has money. If somebody is making lots of money, there is an instinct to tax them, bill them, divide them, whatever. In Italy they will tax the banks, because they are making money. I call that fair, because they will bail out the banks too, when they lose money :-) Apparently capitalism is a difficult concept to master.
Supply and Demand? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because the ISP already interconnects for free with the OTT networks. And they need that interconnection. Thus if they ask for money the OTT may simply reply "then we don't interconnect here, pay someone else to bring your connectivity to us".
The telcos are ALREADY paid by their subscribers to bring traffic to OTT networks. OTT networks are already paying their network. Telcos want to be paid twice.
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Thus if they ask for money the OTT may simply reply "then we don't interconnect here, pay someone else to bring your connectivity to us".
That's exactly how supply and demand works. If you can't supply something by charging enough money to cover your costs, then you should get out of that business. Then supply is reduced, driving prices higher, until break-even is reached. Why should over-supply of something be propped up by governments?
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It is time for the US Congress to retaliate (Score:1)
This can only be seen as a targeted tax on American companies. This after the EU judicial system is already being abused to levy ridiculous fines (10% of *global* revenue) against, again only, American companies.
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It's a general statement but what is good for the goose should be good for the gander. Why is the US so up in arms with TikTok when they do the same? It's amazing how many US services must run in the US.
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It may be equally unpalatable, but the US discussion around banning TikTok is not a blatant attempt to extract money.
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That's interesting. You think the banning of TikTok is not about money. Google collecting personal data is also not about money. Right?
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Nope just worried that Europe is continuing to craft laws that may result in trade wars. Attempting to write laws that only apply to big American companies, exempting their own.
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The EU taxes European companies as well as fining the shit out of them when they do something illegal. Consider Volkswagen and BMW getting fined a billion Euros for cheating on emissions. I've seen other examples of European companies getting massive fines. I think the problem is that generally US media focuses on US problems including when American companies get fined. As well as American companies often pushing the limits of the law or simply ignoring the law in favour of paying off politicians and Judges
It's about time!!! (Score:3)
Yes, we know this one. (Score:2)
Rabble rouse those they fuck on a regular basis then throw to the curb by taking advantage of the general discontent with "big tech" being universal into taking their position to write a concept into law in that it will be very difficult to remove later. A new thing they hope to make normal.
The solution is simple. Raise rates. Simply bringing in more money isn't quite what they have in mind though. They want it to be above argument later too. Locked in as "We've always done it this way." for future freshnes
It's the other way around (Score:2)
Telecom companies would find a market for high speed broadband and unlimited mobile data if not video and streaming services. These telecom companies should be paying these largely American companies who make their services attractive. People aren't paying these expensive contracts to read BBC articles.
Just charge the customers more (Score:2)
Ok so the ISPs have had to increase the amount of bandwidth between their networks and the Internet (due to customers wanting more and more bandwidth for audio and video content etc). In that case, the ISPs should increase their prices to reflect the fact that its costing them more to provide that service.
Its how things are normally done in the world of business, your cost of providing something goes up so you increase your prices to cover that.