Alphabet unit Google on Monday pushed Big Tech by European telecom operators to help fund network costs, saying it was a 10-year-old idea that was bad for consumers and that the company already has millions in Internet infrastructure. was investing.
The comments from Matt Brittin, president of EMEA business and operations at Google, come as the European Commission said it would seek feedback from the telecommunications and tech industries on the issue before making any legislative proposals in the coming months.
Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and other large operators have long complained about freeriding on their networks of tech rivals, saying they use up a large portion of Internet traffic and must contribute financially.
Britain said the idea, floated more than 10 years ago, could stifle Europe’s net neutrality or open internet access.
“Introducing a ‘sender payout’ principle is not a new idea, and will maintain many of the principles of the open internet,” he said, according to the text of a speech to be delivered at a conference organized by telecom lobbying group ETNO.
“These arguments are similar to those we heard 10 or more years ago and we haven’t seen any new data that changes the situation.”
The UK cited a report from pan-European consumer group BEUC outlining such concerns, saying “consumers could be negatively impacted, especially at times of price hikes.”
He added that YouTube’s owner, Google, has done its part to make it more efficient for telecommunications providers by taking away 99 percent of the traffic and investing millions of euros to do so.
“In 2021, we invested more than 23 billion euros in capital expenditure – most of which is infrastructure,” said Brittin.
These include six large data centers in Europe, 20 subsea cables globally, five in Europe and 20 locations in Europe to store digital content within local networks.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
