MWC 2023 – In Barcelona, ​​Thierry Breton defends the European consultation on the financing of telecom networks


Will the Gafam participate in the financing of telecommunications networks in Europe? This is the issue behind the public consultation launched by the European Commission on the future of connectivity infrastructures by 2030. In several countries of the Old Continent, particularly in France, pressure is increasing to force the digital giants to get your hands on the wallet. And for good reason, Meta, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix accounted for no less than 56% of global internet traffic in 2021, according to a study conducted by the lobby of European telecom operators (ETNO).

In this context, Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market, finds himself in the front line so that this initiative leads to a fairer distribution of the financing of telecom networks between the main users of bandwidth. Thus, the former boss of Atos defended the European consultation launched by Brussels during a keynote at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, ​​ensuring that there was no question of favoring telecom operators over detriment of technology giants like Google, Netflix and others.

In the eyes of the European Commissioner, this consultation should not be limited to “a binary choice between those who provide the networks today and those who feed them with traffic”considering that there is “much more at stake”. “For me, the real challenge is to ensure that by 2030 our citizens and businesses on our streets across the EU — including here in Barcelona — have access to fast, reliable and powerful Gigabit connectivity. And for that, we need the connectivity networks — highways — of the future. That’s the vision. It’s not about whether one particular interest should prevail over another.”he said from Barcelona.

This sea serpent of the EU being now on the rails, the Gafam are now waiting to see what hangs in their face while Orange, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom or even Telefonica are exerting increasing pressure on the European authorities in order to change things. Their demands had begun to be heard by Thierry Breton in the spring of 2022. “It is now time to reorganize the fair remuneration of the networks. After the DSA & DMA, it is now one of the main projects in our digital space”, he said on Twitter last May. To be continued.



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