Some NGOs have criticized the EU’s plans to allow big tech companies to share infrastructure costs with the biggest network operators. 34 organizations spread across 17 countries warn that such measures will have a serious impact on the free and open internet.
At the beginning of May, European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager expressed a positive opinion that companies such as Amazon, Meta and Netflix should pay the costs incurred by providers to expand their network infrastructure. These giants will generate a lot of data traffic, but they do nothing to make that traffic possible.
According to an ETNO study, Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Netflix are responsible for more than half of the worldwide data traffic.
However, the collective states that users are already paying for the amount of data they consume, and telecom companies want to get paid twice for the same service. In addition, only major operators such as Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, Vodafone and Orange will be able to benefit from this measure. Smaller operators will therefore be excluded.
If you want to read the open letter, you can access it from this link, and you can find 34 different NGOs that signed the document here.
Sources: Heise (1), (2)
Source: Hardware Info
