The US tech giants will have to cover part of the financial cost of developing European telecommunications networks, as they use them extensively, as the CEOs of Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and eleven other major European telecommunications companies said today. companies.
The CEOs’ request comes as the telecommunications industry invests heavily in 5G, fiber-optic and cable networks to manage the vast amount of data and cloud technology provided by Netflix and Google YouTube. , but also Facebook.
Investment in Europe’s telecommunications sector rose to € 52.5 billion ($ 59.4 billion) last year, reaching a six-year high.
“A large and growing part of the internet traffic is created and financed by the big technology platforms, but it requires a continuous and intensive flow of investments for the network, but also the design of the telecommunications sector”, as the executive directors stated in their joint announcement, read by Reuters.
“This model, which enables European citizens to enjoy the fruits of the digital transformation, can only be sustained if the major technology platforms make a fair contribution to the cost of developing and modernizing the network,” the executives said.
The CEOs did not mention the tech companies with their commercial identities, but they clearly mean the tech giants listed on the US stock market, such as Netflix and Facebook.
The signatories of the letter include the CEOs of Telefonica, Orange, KPN, BT Group, Telekom Austria, Vivacom, Proximus, Telenor, Altice Portugal, Telia Company and Swisscom.
They themselves criticized the high divestiture and acquisition rates used by European governments as “gold mines” of financial liquidity, stressing that this tactic introduces unsustainable companies in the telecommunications sector.
European lawmakers’ efforts to eliminate additional charges for intra-European telephone communications have also been a point of reference for CEOs, who see these charges as a source of revenue for their network users.
“We estimate that they can impose the abolition of revenues of more than two billion euros from the telecommunications sector over a period of four years, corresponding to 2.5% of the industry’s investment capacity in mobile telephony infrastructure,” the companies announced.
European lawmakers have to discuss their proposal with European countries before it is adopted, and an agreement may be difficult to reach.
SOURCE: AMPE
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Source From: Capital
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