The big telecom companies want fines for particularly attractive internet offers from third parties. Long time. Now the lobby groups GSMA and ETNO (European Telecommunications Network Operators) are naming a specific threshold, but which the so-called network fees should be due: Companies from which users access so much data that the annual average of five percent of the data traffic during the most intensive hour should pay every day.
This emerges from a non-public (yet?) statement submitted by the GSMA and ETNO in the ongoing EU consultation on network charges, as reported by Reuters. The consultation ends on Friday. GSMA and ETNO speak for around 160 network operators in Europe, including Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, A1 Telekom Austria, British Telecom, KPN and Swisscom. Small network operators, on the other hand, are questioning the Big Tech cost sharing they are aiming for.
The traffic on each “individual network” is to be measured. “Large traffic generators would only be those companies that account for more than 5% of an operator’s yearly average busy hour traffic measured at the individual network level“, quotes Reuters from the document. It is not known how high the network operators want to set the fine. The bills initially went to Amazon, Apple, Google (including Youtube), Meta, Netflix and TikTok, who would pass this on to their EU prices. Last but not least, that would be a competitive advantage for the in-house video and cloud services of the network operators.
With the network fees, EU consumers would end up paying twice, warns Meta. The digital ecosystem is so successful precisely because of the content providers; the EU should drop the idea of network charges. On Tuesday also Google his opinion published in the consultation process. “Europe’s commitment to net neutrality is the basis for its success in this area,” summarizes Google’s EMEA boss Matt Brittin – and network charges would jeopardize net neutrality. “Qui dotat, vocat”, the Latin rhymes: whoever pays, creates.
Google: network charges are “solution in search of a problem”
Network fees are a solution to a problem, says Google, pointing to the rapidly increasing investments in European networks. They worked well and had plenty of capacity. In addition, content providers are already working together with network operators to increase the efficiency of the networks, think of the countless content delivery servers that install large services such as YouTube close to the user.
There was no evidence that network charges would promote Internet openness, but much evidence that they would harm. So far, only South Korea has network fees, and there is a deterioration in network quality due to higher latencies and a simultaneously decreasing selection of content.
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In Europe too, network charges would probably lead to less choice, poorer quality and higher prices. Providers would simply pass on the fees or withdraw from the EU market. That harms not only consumers, but also companies: because a significant proportion of the data traffic that the network operators attribute to Google actually comes from Google’s cloud – and thus actually from many different companies across Europe. Of course, they would have to pay the network fees. “This could impede the move into the cloud by small and medium-sized companies, which would be a competitive disadvantage compared to global competitors”, which would undermine the EU’s self-imposed goals of the Digital Decade.
Regulatory authorities also reject grid fees
Even Europe’s creatives who want to make their work available online would end up paying. In addition, there would be no guarantees that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) would spend the network fees they collect for the common good. “ISPs could use the revenue for other purposes, such as takeovers, sports rights or dividends,” Google writes to the EU Commission, “Any arbitrary guaranteed payment would reduce the competitive incentive for network operators to invest in infrastructure in the long term; and this fee as ” Introducing sender pays” would revive the previous problem of interconnection monopolies – as BEREC has already warned.”
BEREC (Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, English BEREC) is the umbrella organization of the national telecoms regulators in the EU. Back in October, regulators warned about network fees because they could “cause significant damage to the Internet ecosystem”. It is to be feared that the access providers to the Internet could exploit their delivery monopoly in a similar way to the earlier autocracy in the area of traditional telephony. The Internet’s ability to self-adapt “has been and remains critical to its success and ability to innovate”.
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