By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The EU telecoms regulators’ group BEREC on Friday criticised a push by telecoms providers to get Big Tech to help pay for the rollout of 5G and broadband in Europe, saying it doubted whether such a move would help the bloc meet its connectivity targets.
The comments from The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) to the European Commission which is now looking into the issue underscores the high-stakes battle between Big Tech and Europe’s major telecoms operators.
Echoing Big Tech’s arguments, BEREC said it has its doubts about a mandatory network fee levied on the companies.
“It is questionable that mandatory payments from CAPs (content and application providers) to ISPs (internet service providers) would lead to member states meeting the connectivity targets,” BEREC said.
“On the contrary, it is rather likely that ISPs in already well supplied areas would benefit the most.”
Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and Telecom Italia have been actively lobbying for Big Tech to shoulder some of the network costs.
Alphabet Inc’s Google, Apple Inc, Meta Platforms Inc, Netflix Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp, which telcos say account for more than half of data internet traffic, have rejected the proposal.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Kirsten Donovan)
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