Let’s hope the EU holds its nerve and sees off the greedy demands of telecoms operators
On Friday, European telecoms operators’ plans to force technology companies to to pay extra for the use of their infrastructure hit a large pothole: at a meeting in Luxembourg of the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Thierry Breton (formerly Chairman and CEO of France Telecom between 2002 and 2005, and still linked to the company as honorary chairman), telecoms ministers from 18 European countries rejected or criticized the proposed network tariff tax on technology companies.
The proposal, which came from Deutsche Telekom, France’s Orange, Spain’s Telefonica and Telecom Italia, had already been criticized by the European telecom regulator BEREC, and rejected by Google, Apple, Meta, Netflix, Amazon and Microsoft, who say they already invest more than enough in the digital ecosystem and that it makes no sense for telecom companies to try to charge an additional tax to cover their costs when they already make a lot of money by charging those who use their infrastructures, in other words, double dipping.
At the same time, such as tax threatens European neutrality rules, which require all users be treated equally. Basically, ministers from Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta and the Netherlands rejected…
