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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: 2) by theluggage on Tuesday November 30 2021, @05:51PM
No. Outskirts of a Midlands city - in the top 20 but outside of the top 10 UK cities by population. Nowhere "special". The tarmac is still fresh over the Fibre option, but there has been a choice between FTTC and TV cable, plus a couple of 4G mobile networks, for years.
This isn't about the rural broadband problem (which still exists) - but with 82% of the UK population living in urban areas (according to Google), that means that a *lot* of the UK population will have a choice of at least two physical networks (usually ADSL/FTTC or TV cable) so no ISP can afford to drop or restrict a major service.