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: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday November 30 2021, @04:31PM
Well I'm not (approx 200M north, small market town) but availability is similar. I can't get fttp, yet, but for physical both cable and fttc are available, as is mobile from multiple providers, 4G at least (don't have any 5G capable stuff to check that coverage).