SoylentNews

Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/11/big-tech-firms-should-pay-isps-to-upgrade-networks-telcos-in-europe-claim/ [arstechnica.com]

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 [etno.eu]," 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 [attpublicpolicy.com] and other US-based ISPs have made at times over the past 15 years [washingtonpost.com], 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 [netflix.com] and others have built their own content-delivery networks to help deliver the traffic that home-Internet customers choose to receive.

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