In EU, Google Accused of YouTube "Free Ride"

An anonymous reader passes along a Financial Times piece that covers a push by EU telecoms to get Google to pay them directly — years after US ISPs began rattling that sword, to little effect thus far. "Some of Europe's leading telecoms groups are squaring up for a fight with Google over what they claim is the free ride enjoyed by the technology company's YouTube video-sharing service. Telefónica, France Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom all said Google should start paying them for carrying bandwidth-hungry content such as YouTube video over their networks.... Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes' because the internet search and advertising company pays the network operators little or nothing for carrying its content. Rick Whitt, a senior policy director at Google in Washington ... said Google was spending large amounts on its own data networks to carry its traffic to the point where it is handed over to telecoms companies round the world." Note that FT.com operates on a "first few per month free" paywall basis.

Comments

Dumb pipes, and the media lobby all over

[djkitsch]

1. As other commenters have said, they are dumb pipes - that's how they pitched themselves (when they were getting established) and that's how consumers see them. Now they're trying to renegotiate the tacit contract on which the "Internet age" was established. I call bullshit.
2. 2) This is the media lobby, with its broken business model all over again. Whilst it's understandable that execs are panicking over their capacity problems, that's the point: it's their capacity problem. Short-sightedness on the part of the network planners - one supposes - left them vastly underestimating the amount of data they'd need to carry, and they're trying to get the content providers to cover the costs of their mistakes. It's something akin to power companies demanding a cut of TV ad revenue, since if it wasn't for them, there'd be no TV at all!

It's the combination of these two points which makes it so noxious. We (as consumers) have been encouraged to treat broadband providers as another passive utility company, as fundamental to modern life as electricity and gas. Now they're trying to have it both ways, and suggest that at the same time, they're an active participant in content consumption and should be compensated at both ends.

So, which is it? Passive utility, to be taken for granted and paid monthly without a thought, or active content platform due recognition but with responsibility for quality of service? Something tells me that either way, consumers will not be the winners here.