Large Telecom Operators. In the Other, Everybody Else

The cost-sharing debate is heating up, especially now that the European Commission has launched a public consultation. What’s at stake—and which stakeholders are supporting these proposals?

Let’s start with how we got here. The three European institutions (Commission, Parliament, and Council) have taken the political decision—as formally agreed on the European Declaration of Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade—to develop “adequate frameworks so that all market actors benefiting from the digital transformation assume their social responsibilities and make a fair and proportionate contribution to the costs of public goods, services and infrastructures, for the benefit of all people living in the EU.”

This paragraph has been exploited by the largest European telecom operators. They’re reviving an old debate and requesting new regulations that would require the largest non-European content and application providers (CAPs) to make monetary contributions in exchange for traffic flows. These new regulations would be in direct conflict with the open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy Internet. They would also violate net neutrality provisions and fragment the Internet, hurting European consumers and economies.