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.'"

Comments

Re:Makes no sense.

[Zero__Kelvin]

". They provide low quality service at exorbitant prices, and then complain about clients using their services."

From the article:

... areas where Google could not get around its network ..

It sounds like they are not talking about traffic that goes from Google to their customers, but rather traffic that passes through their network on its way to a customer of another provider. If this is the case, then the situation is a little bit different than the "their customers already paid them for the bandwidth" argument. I'm not saying that Orange is in the right; merely that without more information I don't think anyone could make that determination.

Re:Makes no sense.

[Cyberax]

Looks like Google is simply paying for transit to another networks. Nothing to see here, move along.

It's a peering dispute.

[Animats]

For a less clueless article, see "France Telecom and Google entangled in peering fight".