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 Massive Tech to help fund community expenditures, expressing it was a 10-calendar year-old concept that was poor for individuals and that the enterprise was already investing thousands and thousands in world-wide-web infrastructure.

The remarks by Matt Brittin, president of EMEA business enterprise & operations at Google, arrive as the European Commission explained it would seek out feedback from the telecoms and tech industries on the difficulty in the coming months just before creating any legislative proposal. read through far more

Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE), Orange (ORAN.PA), Telefonica (TEF.MC) and other significant operators have long complained about tech rivals freeriding on their networks, stating that they use a large element of net targeted visitors and must lead monetarily.

The notion, floated extra than 10 decades in the past, could disrupt Europe’s net neutrality or open world wide web entry, Brittin stated.

“Introducing a ‘sender pays’ basic principle is not a new thought, and would upend numerous of the principles of the open web,” he mentioned in accordance to the textual content of a speech to be delivered at a conference organised by telecoms lobbying team ETNO.

“These arguments are very similar to those people we heard 10 or a lot more a long time in the past and we have not viewed new details that adjustments the situation.”

It “could have a destructive impact on buyers, in particular at a time of selling price raises,” Brittin said, citing a report by pan-European shopper group BEUC outlining these kinds of fears.

He claimed Google, owner of YouTube, has accomplished its element to make it additional productive for telecoms vendors by carrying targeted 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 things like 6 substantial info centres in Europe, 20 subsea cables globally, with five in Europe, and caches to shop digital written content within area networks in 20 locations in Europe.

Reporting by Foo Yun Chee Modifying by Alex Richardson

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