Brussels is insisting and looking for a way to make the web giants pay for bandwidth present on European territory. Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, particularly sensitive to issues related to digital, is ready to give up.
Brussels wants to make the web giants pay for their use of bandwidth
At the beginning of February, through the French Telecom Federation, Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom had published 15 proposals for the 2022-2027 five-year term, with the aim of encouraging the web giants to participate in the financing of infrastructures. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Netflix were directly targeted by French telecom operators. This is an idea that does not seem to displease in Brussels. After the validation of the DMA and the DSA, this is also the new priority for the European Commission: to make the web giants pay for their use of the bandwidth.
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According to Thierry Breton, “a handful of players alone occupy more than 50% of the world’s bandwidth. It is now time to reorganize the fair remuneration of the networks. After DSA & DMA, it is now one of the main projects in our digital space”. This reflection actually dates back to November 2021, when thirteen CEOs of the main European telecom operators published an open letter in which they “called on the major technological platforms to contribute financially to the costs of deploying telecommunications networks”.
“The rules in place for twenty years are running out of steam”
To keep up with technological developments and meet demand in Europe, “in order to ensure ever more capacity and bandwidth for more voluminous and resource-intensive services”, telecom operators are planning an additional investment of 300 billion euros. They want this investment be supported by the web giants that use this bandwidth. For Thierry Breton “The rules in place for twenty years are running out of steam and today operators no longer have the right return on their investments. We must reorganize the fair remuneration of the networks “.
The six giants Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Netflix generated more than 55% of the traffic of all telecom networks, but did not make a financial contribution to the development of national networks. Etno (European Telecommunications Network Operators), the European telecoms lobby, would like to rebalance the balance thanks to “significant contributions from tech giants”. With a European Commission in full confidence, the GAFAM are preparing to have to undergo new restrictions.