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

Makes no sense.

[CurunirAran]

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.

Re:Makes no sense.

[cob666]

I was under the impression that end users were paying for bandwidth they're using. Now ISPs want usage paid for by the user AND the content provider? Nice business model.

Re:Makes no sense.

[sumdumass]

Maybe this will work out in our favor. Perhaps it will lead me to forcing best buy to pay me for buying their products or something.

Sarcasm aside, I completely agree. Unless Google is using some sort of peering agreement and just going through their network, all the bandwidth and everything is already paid for by the customer who requests it. There is absolutely no reason to have it paid for twice.

Re:Makes no sense.

[Austerity Empowers]

Like many whores, they charge extra to get it in both ends.

Re:Makes no sense.

[AK Marc]

As a user, I pay for my cap that includes up and down. When they charge my cap on up only, then they can charge Google for their upload. Though, the terms are pretty light. Perhaps the issue is that Google isn't paying for data, but Orange is lying and Google is paying for space and power for caches (something they do do, though they prefer to not pay, as it benefits the carrier as well as Google). Without both sides talking or other more impartial description of the situation, it may be an exaggeration by one side.

Or maybe not. PR is all about the worst lies you can get away with. The only question is, how bad are they?

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.

Re:Makes no sense.

[Samantha Wright]

Then shouldn't Orange have a contract with that 'other provider' to act as either (a) a customer or (b) a push-pull arrangement, like big top-tier American companies do?

Re:Makes no sense.

[jbo5112]

Google is changing it by coming an ISP. As soon as they offer service in a reasonable share of the market, they can refuse to pay anyone. If the ISP doesn't comply, they can't offer Google to their customers. Orange gets Internet lite. This gives me yet another reason to dislike France.

Google is probably running traffic straight from their networks to Orange, so charging the smaller, connecting network an interconnect fee isn't out of line. However, with two large netowks, they usually just call it even. Google's customer facing network is the 2nd largest in the world, without even counting the new Kansas City service, so it would actually make more sense for Google to charge them.

If I were Google, during negotiations I would have run ads to Orange customers on the main page about Orange wanting to charge Google for bandwidth customers paid for, and point out that additional fees would make it more difficult to run a free service, possibly shutting down access. It would give Google more leverage to just say no to fees, especially if Orange is getting 100,000's of complaints. Option 2 is to charge the customers for each youtube video and explain why. If running Internet search is lucrative, then why is no one else making money on it? Microsoft is losing $1 billion or so per year, and Yahoo nearly went bankrupt.

Re:Makes no sense.

[Psyborgue]

That was Free, NOT Orange. Different ISP.

Re:Makes no sense.

[davester666]

Hell, what if they just refused to pay right now, and instead of sending regular traffic to that network, send a "You are being held hostage by your ISP, which is demanding that we pay them so you can access our services, even though you have already paid them to access the internet. Please complain to your ISP and/or government."

Re:Makes no sense.

[fgouget]

From the article:

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

This is clearer in the French interview. What Stephane Richard said is that they leveraged the fact that Orange is a major player in many countries, particularly in African countries, where Google has been looking for some kind of deal with them. So they made clear to Google that it wouldn't get those deal if they couldn't also come to some kind of agreement on the YouTube issue.

Re:Makes no sense.

[arkhan_jg]

It's actually a peering fight between cogent and france telecom; cogent being google's carrier, with google being the hostage and orange being france telecom's consumer arm.

Basically youtube (and streaming tf1, a popular french tv channel) are getting throttled because there's not enough capacity on the peering links between FT and cogent. Since much more traffic goes from cogent to FT, FT want more money to carry it. Note, this is not unusual in the peering world. Where they agree to carry each others traffic (because it's roughly equal) then they do it for free i.e. peering. When one party sends much more traffic, then sender pays for transit is common - after all, the receiving party is the one that has to pay for more equipment to carry the traffic, often including more 'last mile' infrastructure for that data to actually go to, or big pipes to other networks the transiting party needs access to.

In this case, FT is saying they want more money from cogent for transit, i.e. for all the google traffic - not money from google directly, but from their carrier; and because they have exclusive access to many households because they own and maintain the physical phone lines and exchange infrastructure, cogent can't just peer with someone else and route round FT (many french ISP's have to pay to use the FT infrastructure even though they're competitors to orange, in a similar way that a lot of British ISP's use BT lines and exchanges for DSL). If Cogent don't cough up more cash for transit to, then google traffic will continue to get throttled along with other cogent traffic at the boundary to FT's network.

The reporting on this has been woeful though, confusing the 'receiver pays' model of end users, the 'sender pays' model of big transit networks, and of course google with cogent, and France Telecom with orange.

What?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"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?

Hurray for French internet users!

[mwvdlee]

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.

Google Fiber

[areusche]

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.

Re:Google is a free service, it is a public good

[Anonymous Coward]

the worlds largest tax evading commercial advertising data miner is NOT for the public good, however well their services are technically, forgive me if i dont gush praise on them.

How quickly things change

[HangingChad]

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.

Re:Great investigative reporting, there...

[alostpacket]

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...

I was wondering this as well. I would imagine the ISP would reverse course in a matter of nanoseconds if their users started seeing a page like

"Your ISP has blocked Google from providing you Gmail. They are demanding we pay for your use of the internet, something which you already pay for. Here's their contact info:...."

It always strikes me as funny too since Cable is the other way around. I'm pretty sure Cable providers pay television stations. And even if a station doesn't have enough clout there is a law (in the US) they can use called "must carry" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry

I'm surprised this analogy isn't used much.

Full of shit

[Mullen]

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.

Re:Full of shit

[Dan667]

the orange ceo may be trying to start and argument about it, because the decisions becomes what you argue about. He may be lying on purpose to try and eventually really get paid by Google.

It's a peering dispute.

[Animats]

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

Re:It's a peering dispute.

[mysticalreaper]

Mod up please. This is much more reliable that the shrill /. summary, and the poorly informed article.

A peering dispute is totally conceivable, it's happened many times in the past between ISPs. Google paying a consumer network fees to carry traffic has *never* happenend. The former is much more likely.

absurd

[excelsior_gr]

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.