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French Telecom Claims To Have Forced Google To Pay For Traffic
Dupple writes "The head of French telecoms operator Orange said on Wednesday it had been able to impose a deal on Google to compensate it for the vast amounts of traffic sent across its networks. Orange CEO Stephane Richard said on France's BFM Business TV that with 230 million clients and areas where Google could not get around its network, it had been able to reach a 'balance of forces' with the Internet search giant. Richard declined to cite the figure Google had paid Orange, but said the situation showed the importance of reaching a critical size in business. Network operators have been fuming for years that Google, with its search engine and YouTube video service, generates huge amounts of traffic but does not compensate them for using their networks. An editorial piece at GigaOm says Google is abandoning its principles and giving Orange 'the incentive to demand the same from other content providers.'"
The Internet IS DATA. I don't get ISPs. They provide low quality service at exorbitant prices, and then complain about clients using their services.
"Network operators have been fuming for years that Google, with its search engine and YouTube video service, generates huge amounts of traffic but does not compensate them for using their networks."
Are these the same operators who make users pay for the bandwidth consumed by the YT videos the users view as part of their ISP contracts? So they want to be paid twice for the traffic, or what?
Ezekiel 23:20
That better not be true.
Congratulations, French internet users; pretty soon you should see your internet bill lowered!
Atleast... I'm assuming Orange isn't going to charge twice for the same traffic.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Google gives us stuff for free. It is a public good. These telecoms who claim to be doing so much "work" for Google are really doing work for their clients/customers -- the real beneficiaries of the internet in general, and the people who are presumably paying fees to use the net.
David C. Baird theunspokenyes.com
It's crap like this that I bet is pushing Google to roll out their own fiber. With crap like this and the entrenched nature of ISPs and media companies, I look forward to the day Google's vast walled garden pushes out players like this. I'd rather be in a Google Garden than a Comcast, Orange, or worse. Too bad competition isn't fostered taking one turd for another.
The users pay their ISP to get data, so the ISP should pay Google for the data, not the other way around.
I paid for my bandwidth and they paid for theirs. Why the fuck should Google be forced to pay them again cause I "a paying customer" requested their data. They already paid on their end to deliver it.
Google, I think you need to expand your internet beyond Kansas at breakneck speed. This is complete bullshit double dipping.
Network operators have been fuming for years that Google, with its search engine and YouTube video service, generates huge amounts of traffic but does not compensate them for using their networks.
Isn't it the ISP's *customers* that are using Google and YouTube? Don't those customers pay the ISPs, who, if not one-in-the-same, pay the network operators and any (negotiated) inter-connection fees? Seems the ISP/network operators just want in on a little double-dipping. Perhaps I'm naive, but aren't they greedy enough?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
> The head of French telecoms operator Orange said
Yes, let's just go and believe everything this CEO says. After all, such important people never lie, right?
If I were Google, I'd prefer to pull the plug on all of France rather than agreeing to push the first rock which would be almost certain to start a landslide that even I wouldn't survive...
Network operators have been fuming for years that Google, with its search engine and YouTube video service, generates huge amounts of traffic but does not compensate them for using their networks.
I remember when the US government turned over the internet backbone to the telecos. The deal was they would get the infrastructure in exchange for upgrading the network and the telecos were all about that deal, for a few years. Then AT&T started making noise about places like Google not paying for "their" pipe.
If it's that unprofitable, give it back to the government or sell it. Get out of the network business if it's that hard. Notice that idea never comes up.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Shame on Google if it is true. I pay my ISP for the traffic that I use (and with AT&T even my land line is capped). Google should have said "fine, we will not let your customers access our data" and then waited to see how the French ISPs paying customers reacted. After all, the users are going to use some form of search engine, it really doesn't affect the ISPs traffic if they use Google or Ask or Yahoo or the more evil bing. They just saw Google as a company who depends on providing a free service to the ISPs users to generate revenue and decided that they could bully them.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Users pay for the bandwidth already. Orange should just charge all content providers to send data across their network and see how many users they can hold on to.
Is it just in France, all of Europe, or is the whole world becoming money-grabbers? It seems the Europeans like to sue the successful companies (unfair business practices) and now "surcharge" them by proxy.
The CEO of Orange is full of shit. There is no way that Google or any other provider would pay a carrier a "fee", since if they did, EVERYONE would start charging Google.
Google is not dumb, they know when they pay out the first carrier, they will be paying out a lot of other carriers. I am really sure that Google would cut off France (or whom ever Orange carrier for) rather than give in. Google not only would have the users on their side (You know, they PAY for Internet), but also the local governments and every other business out there. Orange is just blowing smoke up people's asses on this one.
Linux O Muerte!
It's Orange's customers. Surely Orange could to block them from Google. That would reduce Orange's traffic, would it not?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Google does not generate traffic!
ISP's customers generate traffic!
And they pay for it!
What's the difference wheather they use YouTube, Vimeo or their friend's private FTP server?
Wtf is wrong with some people's brains? Wtf is wrong with France?
For a less clueless article, see "France Telecom and Google entangled in peering fight".
Perhaps the actual agreement was for big G to colocate some servers so that the isp doesn't need to use external pipes for some requests. gstatic would be most appropriate and beneficial to both companies. I wrote a small app that does exactly that for end users (I'm not targeting isps for net neutrality ethics)
Google doesn't generate traffic, people visiting Google generate traffic! They clearly have the wrong perspective.
If a provider doesnt allow me to get to google, gmail and whatever anytime, I will change providers...
Since we are denied any real details other than what some ceo is spewing for public consumption it seems pointless to draw any conclusions at this point.
On the more general problem of service provider entitlements from those who give their customers what they want this seems to me to be all about lack of effective competition, rise of the mega ISP and total ownage of the last mile.
Allowing ISPs to get big, fat and lazy leads to inflated sense of entitlement and piss poor value for consumers.
The french and many others other need to get their shit together and open up the last mile and beyond to effective competition.
If I were google I'd send Orange a bill for twice whatever they are billed for bandwhich for providing access to Orange's customers. I mean they are giving services to Oranges customers for free, that hardly seems fair.
What is sending data over the network? There is no sending. It is not like google is holding me at gunpoint to download cat video's, or that they push it in any other way. I, as a client, request the cat video, and google supplies it. The whole internet is client-server based, and the client almost always initiates the data transfer.
France Telecom's customers will soon let the greedy parasites know what they think.
Why do these people expect to be paid twice? Don't their customers already pay them to provide a service? Why should content providers also pay? Greedy scum.
This story is absurd any way you look at it.
First of all, the telecom's customers already paid them for the traffic. The telecom should shut up and deliver their product already (with the promised bandwidth).
Second, Google should just ignore them. What will the telecom do? Block Google? Good luck with that. I would be surprised if they'd have any customers left by the end of the month.
Third, if Google pays up, suddenly all telecoms around the globe will come asking for money. Nobody in their right mind would succumb to such an absurd demand from some telecom.
Isn't the reason to connect to the Internet and to put up with demands of ISP is precisely because there are services like Google, Netflix and others? What next, ISP advertising internet without access to Google?
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
Peering dispute? Why? Just blackhole the packets! FT is presumably in control of their routers -- they do not need to allow pass-thru.
Of course customers will scream, and loud, but that is the choice -- charge for the traffic or live with the losses. The french probably don't want to, and think they can lean on GOOG who can and should give 'em the run-around. FT probably has the only fiber to Corsica and the Quai d'Orsay (English Whitehall, American Foggy Bottom) don't want to upset the natives. So an unfortunate attempt to treat business as power-politics.
Raving /.ers are right even at a deeper level. Do not mistake analysis for correctness, nor emotion for error.
Google (among other content providers), is the reason why anyone even gets Internet access. Imagine if Cable companies' TV service worked that way, and they attempted to charge the cable channels for access to their US households. How fast would their service fall apart? The Internet pipe I get from a telecom is WORTHLESS without Google, YouTube, Netflix and all those other services. They should be glad Google doesn't charge THEM for access to Google.
Far more likely Orange is selling a proxy cache or something similar to speed up Google's access.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They should get their compensation from their own customers for a service of getting those customer to the internet Customers using more bandwidth? Make those customers pay more. Problem solved.
And so they can understand:
Ils devraient recevoir leur rémunération de leurs propres clients pour un service à la clientèle de se ceux à l'internet. Les clients qui utilisent plus de bande passante? Rendre ces clients paient plus. Le problème est résolu.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The customer pays for data and that is all the ISP is for. We don't need them to give us "free" things like email, search, VOIP, hosting, filtering or anything else we can get for free or as much as we want to pay. All they need to give us is a router with a working external IP address. If people want a "one stop shop" they can tell the ISP and they can pay extra. So instead, they charge for stuff I don't want, give a poor connection, try to control my browsing and want to charge websites for what I have already paid for?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Free (which is another French ISP) asked for the same a while ago. Google refused.
Free decided to block Google ads automatically for all its customers in retaliation.
This has led politics to question the issue and to consider enacting laws. Unfortunately, politicians are clueless about technology, and all they see is making the big American company pay the French companies.
This is the end of Google, and any other '3rd party' content provider.
In this posting, below, Animats points to an article that says it's really a peering fight between Orange and Cogent, an ISP that Google uses for transit. More detail in techdirt. At least 90% of the time, if you see an article about "ISP Peering Fight", Cogent is one of the players. They're really big, they're really cheap, and they sell lots of bandwidth to content providers. They're pretty much the bottom of Tier 1 - they'd like to get free peering from all the other Tier 1 providers, but that doesn't always happen, and occasionally somebody decides not to peer with them.
Content providers and Eyeball providers each think that the other side should pay them money. After all, content's worthless if nobody can see it. But consumer eyeballs only buy your broadband service if there's something to see. And the transport-oriented networks get squeezed by both sides, which is one reason they usually end up buying or being bought by consumer broadband networks.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's the local ISP which would have to block Google.
Companies should only be paid more for sucking less.
Peering dispute? Why?
Peering is a game of mutual benefit. Two companies agree to exchange traffic because despite being rivals they believe the exchange will benefit both sides. If either side belives they are not benefiting from the agreement then the peering arrangement may be terminated.
Due to the way internet routing works the receiving peer tends to bear most of the cost of moving data around geograpically. As such many networks are reluctant to free-peer with "outbound-heavy" networks. It sounds like cogent is very conent-heavy (because they provide an upstream to sites like google) and france telecom thinks that cogent are getting more benefit from the peering agreement than they are and as such France Telecom wants cogent to pay for upgrades to the peering link.
Just blackhole the packets!
Advertising a route for packets and then deliberately black holing them is a breach of the trust on which internet routing is based and is going to make you really unpopular really fast. If you aren't prepared to provide someone with a route for packets to a given prefix you dpn't advertise it to them.
P.S. what always surprises me is that a network built on largely ad-hoc agreements between competitors works as well as it does.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Everybody who connects to the Internet already pays for their bandwidth to the ISP, effectively in proportion to what they use. If there is a lot of traffic coming from Google, then both Orange's customers pay for their individual usage, and Google pays wherever they hook up to the Internet. At some level, Orange has a peering arrangement, and if there are traffic imbalances, they negotiate with their partners, who then pass on the cost to Google and their customers. Trying to extort additional payments from specific large companies just because ISPs can should not be permitted. They're effectively saying "nice business you have built there, wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to it".
I suppose one shouldn't feel too unhappy about it. Although it is unfair and should be criminal, it sort of balances out the world a little by compensating for barriers to entry created by large companies (e.g., patent portfolios and cross licensing, etc.).
It's the users who are generating the traffic, not Google. Instead of offering to let them double-dip I would have blocked all of their users with a static page that explained why they were being blocked and a suggesting to try another ISP. It's not like Google needs to kiss this ISPs ass to stay in business.
Second option I would make use of Google Wallet to make the users pay for Google use with an explanation yes, only the users on that ISP have to pay for what's free to everyone else, if they don't like it talk to the ISP but we're passing the costs back to you.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
The only thing Google has to do is to make sure that content to French Telecom's customer has to go through TLMC cache servers inside FT network.
the last mile cache
What they want is a quasi-nationalized scheme like 70% of of the business in France where they can dole out specific industries to politically connected unions. They did this with rail, autos, electrical power, nuclear and others.
Generally the problem the ISPs are facing is not data transferred to their customers, but when the only route available to a different Isp's customers route through Orange's network.
So Google has it's service. Internet ISP A has the only connection that leads to internet provider B. Internet provider B's customers pay only internet provider B. So internet ISP A's service could also be used "freely" so to speak.
It's still a bit confusing if they have such a deal, as usually ISP's pay other ISP's based on traffic they send over other networks.
Big lesson. It is going to collapse because of corporate greed.And something much smaller and free will take its place.
I dont completely understand the mobile network business. But I do understand wired internet. In our country there are generally two ways to get hi speed internet. Cable modem or ADSL through the phone company. That means there are only two players to compete for the hi-speed market. Data shows that the price of bandwidth is decreasing at 50% every 2 years. This means that over time, I should see a reduction in price for the same service or an increase in total bandwidth for the same price. I am not seeing this. I am seeing slow increase in price every year and a moderate increase in bandwidth to match it. This means that the profit margins for these companies are increase at the rate of the difference. It would be great if these companies competed for my business by offering true service at the cost they are paying. Of course this isnt happening. Instead I see the pricing is matched between each service and long 3 year contracts are pushed with a short term insentive to switch from one to the other. In my country the ISPs are sucking back the profits by holding bandwidth growth in check.
The value of the Internet increases every day. But this has nothing to do with my ISP. The ISP would like you to believe that they are an important factor in this value. In reality they are a great hinderance to what the Internet could provide to you at the cost they are charging.
I do hope at some point the ISP can be bipassed. For example, large numbers of wireless routers could be strung together in populated areas to provide great bandwidth that does not require the usage of an ISP services. I hope someone comes out with such a router system soon.