Wish of several countries and telecoms of the European Union, including Orange and France, the tax on the financing of networks by the Tech giants is falling into the water.
Several months ago, the European Union put on the table the idea of pushing large companies in the new technology sector, such as Amazon, Netflix, Google, Apple, Meta and Microsoft, to finance telecommunications networks of the area, the latter companies generating the largest data consumption on the Web. Except that a majority of EU countries refuse to apply this so-called “network” tax, for reasons, among others, of net neutrality.
18 EU countries do not want a network tax imposed on Tech giants, France does!
The discussions accelerated Thursday in Luxembourg during a meeting between Thierry Breton and the Ministers of Digital and Telecoms of the European Union. Representatives of 18 countries have informed the European Commissioner for the Internal Market that it was not prudent to impose a new tax on Google, Amazon or even Netflix to finance broadband networks and 5G on the territory of the EU. EU.
This request was made by a consortium of several European telecom giants, including Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Telecom Italia, for which the Tech giants must assume part of the network costs. The operators advance the argument of the impact of Big Tech, whose content and data weigh for a large part of the network traffic.
The ministers of the 18 refractory countries today reject the network tax proposed by the operators, and demand that an in-depth study be carried out, to have a precise idea of the impact of such a measure. Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium are among these countries. France, Italy and Spain continue, for their part, to support this idea.
A tax that could challenge web neutrality
Several risks are raised by European telecom ministers. First, we still do not know the effects that this tax could have on the network. Then there is the fear that the Tech giants will pass on the additional cost generated by such a tax to consumers, for example by increasing the price of subscriptions, deliveries, increasing the distribution of advertising content, etc. The companies concerned have also made it known that they are opposed to this potential levy, explaining that they are already investing in the ecosystem.
We should obviously not underestimate either the impact that the measure would have on the neutrality of the Web, one of the founding principles of the Internet which advocates freedom of access to sharing and knowledge, which can be the same for all citizens of the European Union.
However, a network tax could call into question this question of neutrality, by creating obstacles to innovation or a multi-speed Internet plagued by a handful of companies (which would be the only ones to have access to the infrastructures), creating passage of a dependence of telecoms on them.
Source : Reuters
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