The European Commission was told to pay for broadband Big Tech

The three governments want content providers to support the EU’s 5G and broadband rollouts.

The European Commission is increasing pressure for tech giants to pay for the construction of telecoms infrastructure in the EU. Reuters Reports. A new paper signed by representatives of France, Germany and Italy urges EU authorities to pay Big Tech to avoid the huge costs associated with building Europe’s 5G telecoms infrastructure and better broadband access.

The “fair contribution” debate in the EU has been slowly increasing for months, if not years. Last November, executives from Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and 11 other European carriers called on US tech giants to pick up the tab for 5G, fiber and cable network builds. But this is the first time that officials from the three countries have proposed to the EU Commission to look into it.

The European Association of Telecom Network Operators (ETNO) presented a challenge to the European Commission in May to implement a kind of fair contribution policy to reduce infrastructure costs.

“In the European Digital Rights and Principles, the European Commission proposed the principle that all market actors benefiting from the digital transformation should contribute fairly and proportionately to the cost of infrastructure. It is part of our reflection in the investment context,” writes ETNO.

According to ETNO, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Netflix will account for 56 percent of global data traffic by 2021. Investment. A recent letter to the European Union Commission cites the same figure of 56 percent.

“A large and increasing part of the network traffic is generated and generated by large technology platforms, but it requires continuous, intensive network investment and planning of the telecommunications sector,” read the document, according to him. Reuters. “This model – which allows EU citizens to enjoy the fruits of digital transformation – can only be sustainable if such large technology platforms make a fair contribution to the costs of the network.”

Danish politician Margrethe Vestager, currently the European Commission’s Executive Vice President for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age, acknowledged the issue at a May press conference.

“We saw that there were players who were generating a lot of traffic and activating their business, but they weren’t contributing to enabling that traffic. They weren’t contributing to enable investments in relationship expansion,” Vestager said.

Vesteger’s comments have concerned dozens of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which in June submitted an open letter to the European Commission saying it could jeopardize EU net neutrality rules if content providers are forced to pay for fees.

“Charging content and application providers to use internet infrastructure is inconsistent and at odds with core neutrality protections in the EU,” the letter said in part.

Meanwhile, the EU and European Commission continue to grapple with cybersecurity issues related to Europe’s Open RAN efforts. In May, they published a report showing that Open RAN offers promising opportunities, but cyber security remains a major challenge. The report notes that risks to the Open RAN concept include a larger attack surface and additional entry points for malicious actors, the risk of network misconfiguration, and potential impacts on other network functions due to resource sharing. The report highlights that technical specifications such as the O-RAN Alliance are not sufficiently mature and reliable by design.