Why the EU’s ‘consultation process’ on charging Big Tech for network upgrades is a farce
A few months ago I warned that European telecoms operators were demanding that the technology companies that pay for bandwidth also contribute to the cost of expanding and upgrading their infrastructure.
Now, the European Union is launching a consultation process with this idea in mind; that is to say, they are preparing the ground for a decision that makes no sense at all and that they are disguising with supposed discussion on the subject. Who is launching the consultation? The European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Thierry Breton… who coincidentally was President and CEO of France Telecom between 2002 and 2005, and is currently still linked to the company as honorary chairman. That’s what the EU calls “an impartial observer”. Breathtaking.
The first false question here is who should pay for the infrastructure, the answer to which is simple: those who operate and make money from them. The creation of huge telecommunications infrastructure, which has made the companies that operate them rich, is fundamentally due to the development of a huge range of services linked to their use. The reason we use the internet is not because telecommunications companies have built infrastructure, but instead because there are services available on them that make them…
