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.

[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.

[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.

[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: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.

It's a peering dispute.

[Animats]

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