Google says shared network costs is 10-year-old idea, bad for consumers

BRUSSELS, Sept 26 (Reuters) – Alphabet (GOOGL.O) unit Google on Monday rebuffed a force by European telecoms operators to get Major Tech to assistance fund community fees, saying it was a 10-calendar year-previous thought that was undesirable for consumers and that the company was presently investing tens of millions in world wide web infrastructure.

The remarks by Matt Brittin, president of EMEA company & operations at Google, appear as the European Commission explained it would find responses from the telecoms and tech industries on the concern in the coming months prior to building any legislative proposal. read far more

Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE), Orange (ORAN.PA), Telefonica (TEF.MC) and other massive operators have prolonged complained about tech rivals freeriding on their networks, saying that they use a enormous section of world-wide-web traffic and need to lead financially.

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The thought, floated more than 10 years in the past, could disrupt Europe’s net neutrality or open up web accessibility, Brittin said.

“Introducing a ‘sender pays’ basic principle is not a new concept, and would upend a lot of of the rules of the open up internet,” he stated in accordance to the textual content of a speech to be delivered at a meeting organised by telecoms lobbying team ETNO.

“These arguments are identical to individuals we heard 10 or a lot more a long time ago and we have not witnessed new data that changes the predicament.”

It “could have a destructive impact on individuals, in particular at a time of rate increases,” Brittin reported, citing a report by pan-European buyer team BEUC outlining these concerns.

He said Google, proprietor of YouTube, has carried out its aspect to make it a lot more effective for telecoms companies by carrying traffic 99% of the way and investing millions of euros to do so.

“In 2021, we invested in excess of 23 billion euros in cash expenditure – significantly of which is infrastructure,” Brittin stated.

These include six massive information centres in Europe, 20 subsea cables globally, with five in Europe, and caches to retail store electronic content material inside of nearby networks in 20 locations in Europe.