EU seeks input on making tech companies pay for ISPs’ network upgrades

The European Union government is seeking public input on a controversial proposal to make online platforms pay for telecom companies' broadband network upgrades and expansions. If it goes forward, tech companies like Google and Netflix and possibly many others could have to make payments toward the financing of broadband network deployment.

The European Commission's exploratory consultation released today said there "seems to be a paradox between increasing volumes of data on the infrastructures and alleged decreasing returns and appetite to invest in network infrastructure." Large telecom companies have been seeking payments from web companies, the consultation notes:

Some electronic communications operators, notably the incumbents, call for the need to establish rules to oblige those content and application providers ("CAPs") or digital players in general who generate enormous volumes of traffic to contribute to the electronic communications network deployment costs. In their view, such contribution would be "fair" as those CAPs and digital players would take advantage of the high-quality networks but would not bear the cost of their roll-out.

The tech companies that would have to start paying "argue that any payments for accessing networks to deliver content or for the amount of traffic transmitted would not only be unjustified, as the traffic is requested by end-users and costs are not necessarily traffic-sensitive (notably in fixed networks), but would also endanger the way the Internet works and likely breach net neutrality rules," the document notes.