Google says shared community prices is 10-year-old concept, dangerous for customers

Alphabet unit Google on Monday rebuffed a push by European telecoms operators to get Large Tech to assist fund community prices, saying it was a 10-year-old concept that was dangerous for customers and that the corporate was already investing tens of millions in web infrastructure.

The feedback by Matt Brittin, president of EMEA enterprise & operations at Google, come because the European Fee mentioned it might search suggestions from the telecoms and tech industries on the difficulty within the coming months earlier than making any legislative proposal. 

Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and different large operators have lengthy complained about tech rivals freeriding on their networks, saying that they use an enormous a part of web visitors and will contribute financially.

The concept, floated greater than 10 years in the past, might disrupt Europe’s web neutrality or open web entry, Brittin mentioned.

“Introducing a ‘sender pays’ precept just isn’t a brand new concept, and would upend most of the ideas of the open web,” he mentioned in response to the textual content of a speech to be delivered at a convention organised by telecoms lobbying group ETNO.

“These arguments are just like these we heard 10 or extra years in the past and we now have not seen new information that modifications the scenario.”

It “might have a destructive affect on customers, particularly at a time of worth will increase,” Brittin mentioned, citing a report by pan-European shopper group BEUC outlining such considerations.

He mentioned Google, proprietor of YouTube, has accomplished its half to make it extra environment friendly for telecoms suppliers by carrying visitors 99% of the way in which and investing tens of millions of euros to take action.

“In 2021, we invested over 23 billion euros in capital expenditure – a lot of which is infrastructure,” Brittin mentioned.

These embody six massive information centres in Europe, 20 subsea cables globally, with 5 in Europe, and caches to retailer digital content material inside native networks in 20 places in Europe.