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from the double-triple-quad-penta-hexa-keep-on-dipping-money-pot dept.
Big Tech firms should pay ISPs to upgrade networks, telcos in Europe claim:
The CEOs of 13 large European telecom companies today called on tech giants—presumably including Netflix and other big US companies—to pay for a portion of the Internet service providers' network upgrade costs. In a "joint CEO statement," the European telcos described their proposal as a "renewed effort to rebalance the relationship between global technology giants and the European digital ecosystem."
The letter makes an argument similar to one that AT&T and other US-based ISPs have made at times over the past 15 years, that tech companies delivering content over the Internet get a "free" ride and should subsidize the cost of building last-mile networks that connect homes to broadband access. These arguments generally don't mention the fact that tech giants already pay for their own Internet bandwidth costs and that Netflix and others have built their own content-delivery networks to help deliver the traffic that home-Internet customers choose to receive.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday November 30 2021, @01:34PM
THIS! They already sold the bandwidth to their customers and at the price they chose (A price well above cost if they are even vaguely efficient).
Do they really think all those households would pay them for Internet service if there was nothing out there that provided any content?
Meanwhile, years ago, Netflix offered caching servers that an ISP could host on their internal network to drastically cut their upstream bandwidth cost but most of the ISPs demanded huge colo fees or refused outright.
This is every bit as absurd as water works sending Richard Simmons a bill because he made their customers sweat to the oldies and increased demand for water.