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There has long been a debate in the EU about whether and how Netflix, Google and others Internet Service Provider from internet service providers stronger asked to pay for their data-intensive business should be. In the discussion about “fair share”, Austria will speak out against the introduction of a gigabit levy at European level, according to State Secretary for Digitization Florian Tursky at the APA.
Simply make offers more expensive
“And for two reasons. The service providers could simply make the offers more expensive and consumers would then pay twice through higher prices for services and their Internet contracts. Also, I see them net neutrality endangered by such an additional levy,” says Tursky.
Wherein the warning not on free services for end customers such as Google or YouTube, but to paid offers such as Netflix, which would then probably pass on the additional costs to consumers, it said. The costs of the consumers for the Internet provider would not increase, but the possibly passed on costs of the content providers would then come, according to the State Secretariat.
Pretty disagreeable
The EU Commission is currently holding a public consultation on the fair share debate (deadline May 19). The Financial support after such taxation already exists since 2012. At the time, however, this proposal was rejected as unfair and unworkable, Tursky explained. France and Spain are currently in favor of such a levy, while Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Belgium, for example, are opposed.
