Ask “big” bandwidth consumers to finance the deployment of telecom infrastructure? The subject is not new. For years, operators have been pushing for social media players and other streaming specialists to pay some kind of right of way for the network capacity they request.
In a recent study, the French Federation of Telecoms (FFT) has highlighted, supporting figures, an inequitable sharing of the cake. Telecom operators pay the bulk of the investments, taxes and duties of the digital ecosystem, but do not derive the revenue to match.
The phenomenon is reversed for the digital giants, which are essentially American. With their peekaboo strategy, they nest in 5G networks and fiber optic infrastructure and capture much of the value without bearing the costs.
This question is not anecdotal for operators. Faced with the mountain of investments that stand before them, amounting to billions of euros, they had to go into heavy debt. With particularly low margins, they are looking for growth drivers and new sources of revenue.
The morale of the operators is also not looking good. According to a PwC poll conducted in January for the Davos summit, almost 40% of their CEOs think their company will no longer be economically viable in a decade, if it continues on the current path.
At the end of February, the subject of the contribution of the digital giants was put back on the table by Thierry Breton, European Commissioner in charge of the internal market, during a public consultation of the European Commission on the future of future infrastructures. of connectivity.
Facebook and Instagram boost operator revenue
Without even waiting for the end of this consultation, Meta has already given its answer: no. In a blog post, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp puts forward a series of arguments to oppose any future royalty.
In a well-known figure of speech, Mark Zuckerberg’s group is reversing the charge. It is to access the content of its social networks that billions of users around the world are ready to pay an internet subscription to their operator. “Our investment in content is literally driving the revenue and business model of telecom operators. » CQFD.
Heavy investments in transatlantic cables
The American giant has also invested heavily to increase network capacity and optimize bandwidth. These contributions to infrastructure improvements would save operators about $6 billion a year. Since 2017, Meta has invested more than 100 billion dollars in “global digital infrastructure”, including billions of euros in Europe.
Thanks to its investments in submarine cable providers such as Marea, Havfrue, Havhingsten and Amitie, transatlantic capacity is said to have quadrupled since 2016. This “lower cost increase in capacity has benefited individuals and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic “.
Meta recalls that he has also contributed to the deployment of networks linking Europe to Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. On the 2Africa and 2Africa Pearls projects, he is associated with a series of operators, including Vodafone and Orange. Through the Internet Society, he helps bring the internet to the most remote regions of the globe.
Since 2018, Meta says it has committed more than half a billion euros to the rental or purchase of more than a million kilometers of terrestrial fiber. Its content delivery network (CDN) strategy would make it possible to distribute more than 99% of its content more efficiently, thereby reducing the demand on telecom infrastructures.
The metaverse? Fiber and 5G will absorb the increased traffic
But what about the metaverse? Future immersive universes will require significant resources to simultaneously interact hundreds of millions of users with extremely low latency. In a blog post, Raja Koduri, senior VP of Intel, estimated that 1,000 times more computing power than current technologies would be needed.
This time, Meta uses arguments that are more difficult to accept. According to the group, “speculating” on the increase in network capacities is “nonsense”. The adoption of the metaverse will go above all through virtual reality, which is currently mainly supported by fixed networks via Wi-Fi.
However, Europe has already widely deployed fiber optics and its future developments with 10G-EPON and XGS-PON, which should make it possible to withstand the future load. In addition, the operators’ roadmap will allow domestic connection speeds 10 times higher than those of today, reports Meta, forgetting to specify that the fee should precisely help finance these future connectivity infrastructures.
Ditto for use in a mobile situation. Not only is Meta investing in R&D to make its VR headsets less power-hungry, but 5G will absorb the extra load. 100% European Union 5G coverage by 2030 will, he believes, deliver augmented reality mobile experiences.
“There is no evidence that additional investment is required to achieve this,” Kevin Salvadori, vice president of networks at Meta, and Bruno Cendon Martin, head of wireless technologies at Meta Reality Labs, co-signers of the post say without blinking. . A statement that will make more than one operator jump.