European mobile network operators want YouTube, Netflix and Co. asking to pay Tesla must update 362,800 cars with “Full Self-Driving” due to the risk of accidents

YouTube, Facebook and streaming services such as Netflix: Some large tech companies provide a lot of data traffic in the telecom networks. The mobile phone providers now want to share in the costs.

Mobile phone providers are more emphatically demanding that major online services be paid for the use of their network. Every day, 55 percent of data traffic is caused by just five companies Head of the telecom group Orange, Christel Heydemann, on Monday. This costs the European telecommunications companies about 15 billion euros a year.

In Europe alone, EUR 600 billion has been invested in networks in recent years, Heydemann said at the start of the industry meeting Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. But many mobile phone companies find it difficult to make money from it.

Consumers expect to pay less and less and in some cases have to deal with outdated regulations. Regulators and politicians play a key role in balancing this “unsustainable” situation, Heydemann said.

The network operators have been demanding for years that companies such as Google, Netflix or the Facebook group Meta must contribute to the costs of the networks because they cause a lot of data traffic. The online heavyweights counter that it was the fast data networks that first made their services attractive to users.

The European Commission is looking for a “fair” financing model

The mobile phone industry is now more heard in politics than it used to be. The European Commission launched a public consultation last week, which included the question of who should bear the costs of expanding the network.

EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said in Barcelona that a fair model had to be found to finance the huge expansion costs. It is about more than a conflict between the interests of network operators and online services.

The aim should be to prepare Europe for the next networking boost and to better exploit the potential of the EU common market.

At the same time, mobile phone providers want to grow beyond their previous activities as network operators. “It’s not a telephone network anymore. It’s a decentralized and distributed supercomputer,” gab Telefónica boss José María Álvarez-Pallete as a target. The mobile phone companies wanted to create a common new standard for this – as was the case with the mobile phone networks, which enabled the rapid proliferation of mobile phones.

(dsc/sda/awp/dpa)