Dor several months, incumbent telecom operators have been actively calling for the introduction of a European “digital toll”. They want to be able to tax the big content providers for transmitting their data over telecommunications networks.
They are notably supported by the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, who has proposed new legislation aimed at making content industries pay for the financing of network infrastructures, by forcing them to enter into financial agreements with network operators. .
The Association of Alternative Telecom Operators (AOTA) denounces this desire to put up barriers to access the network. It is a blow to free competition, because new entrants will be slowed down, even blocked, whereas, in the digital sector, that is where innovation and the competitive animation of the market come from.
This subject goes far beyond a financial negotiation between major digital players. If this legislation were put in place, it would cause a multi-speed Internet, undermining Net neutrality, and therefore potentially public freedoms, and would destabilize all of the economic balances in the sector. AOTA is very committed to maintaining the principles of non-discrimination in network access and data routing. There cannot be a functional Internet for those who pay and a second-class Internet, which functions as it can, for the others.
The implementation of the digital toll would be a deleterious measure for the survival of small and medium-sized digital companies, which do not have the means, human and financial, to deal with these new obligations. This new system would require public regulation, and therefore an administrative and bureaucratic cost, and could require technical changes, again costly and of no direct use to Internet users. Alternative operators would have the disadvantages of the device without the advantages, because they are not able to negotiate access to their networks, and would be imposed almost free.
A locked market
It is not at all certain that the sums recovered by incumbent operators from content providers actually go to investment in the networks. The establishment of situational rents has never made progress in innovation, quite the contrary!
We are not the only ones to doubt the interest of this proposal. The European grouping of telecom regulators [Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, Berec] recently published a preliminary assessment of the proposal taking into account the evolution of the market in recent years and the investments made by the various stakeholders.
You have 21.36% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.