Big Tech vs. Big Telco: Top EU official says there's no 'battle' over network funding

BARCELONA — A apical European Union authoritative insisted Monday that the statement astir tech giants paying for their usage of telecom networks is not sparking a "battle" betwixt Big Tech and telcos.

Telecom groups are pushing European regulators to instrumentality a model wherever the companies that nonstop postulation on their networks are charged a fee. They accidental this — known arsenic "sender pays" — would assistance money mammoth upgrades to their infrastructure.

Their logic is that definite platforms, like Amazon Prime and Netflix, chew done gargantuan amounts of information and should truthful ft portion of the measure for adding caller capableness to header with the accrued strain.

Last week, the EU launched a consultation aimed astatine boosting Europe's telecoms infrastructure. In it, determination was a questionnaire asking whether to found a integer money astatine the EU oregon nationalist level, oregon necessitate a nonstop publication from net giants to the telco operators.

At the Mobile World Congress successful Barcelona, European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton suggested that regularisation successful the EU was nary longer acceptable for intent and that it was clip to reconsider however the existent exemplary works.

"We are astatine the opening of a caller revolution. In the coming years, the full manufacture volition request to acquisition a extremist displacement and revisit its concern models," Breton said connected signifier astatine MWC.

"The consultation has been described by galore arsenic the conflict implicit just stock between Big Telco and Big Tech. A binary prime betwixt those who supply networks contiguous and those who provender them with the traffic."

However, helium insisted that determination is not needfully a "battle implicit just stock between Big Telco and Big Tech."

Ha said the bloc needed to "find a financing exemplary for the immense investments needed" successful the improvement of next-generation mobile networks and emerging technologies similar the metaverse — portion besides making definite that nett neutrality rules aren't undermined.

It comes arsenic telcos effort to reinvent themselves arsenic cloud-based businesses. On Monday, respective firms, including Deutsche Telekom, Orange, and Telefonica announced caller exertion programming interfaces, oregon APIs, which would unfastened up their networks to bundle developers.

There are besides attempts to marque bid betwixt the 2 parties. Prior to Breton's keynote, the bosses of Microsoft and Google's unreality portion appeared virtually, talking up their commitments to the telecom industry.

The CEO of Orange, Christel Heydemann, pushed backmost connected claims that requiring companies to wage for web usage would magnitude to an net "tax." She added that it was a "first step" toward addressing an "unbalanced situation."

WATCH: European telcos privation U.S. large tech to wage for the net — but tech giants are hitting back