France, Italy and Spain are stepping up pressure on the European Commission to come up with a legislation that ensures Big Tech firms partly finance telecoms infrastructure costs, a document published by Reuters showed. This is the first time the three governments have expressed their joint position on this issue.
Regulators from the European Union said in May they were analyzing the question of whether tech giants such as Google, Meta and Netflix should shoulder some of the costs of upgrading telecoms networks. In a joint paper, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, the three governments said the six largest content providers accounted for 55% of internet traffic.
"This generates specific costs for European telecom operators in terms of capacity, at a time they are already hugely investing in the most costly parts of the networks with 5G and Fiber-To-The-Home," the document said. "We call for a legislative proposal ensuring all market players contribute to digital infrastructure costs,” it added.
According to a study released by telecoms lobbying group ETNO earlier this year and cited by Reuters, an annual contribution of €20 billion to network costs by the tech giants could give a €72-billion-euro boost to the EU economy. However, digital rights activists have warned that making Big Tech pay for networks could threaten EU net neutrality rules, which they feared could be watered down in a deal with online giants to help fund telecoms network.
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