Google rejects the idea of co-funding network costs

Alphabet's Google responded categorically Monday to an attempt by European telcos to get the company to co-fund network costs. Company’s comments mentioned the idea originated a decade ago and the organization is already investing millions in Internet infrastructure.

The comments by Matt Brittin, Google's president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, came after the European Commission said it would seek feedback on the issue from companies operating in the telecommunications and technology industries in the next few months before making any legislative proposals.

Major operators such as Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telefonica have long said that technology competitors freely use their networks, so they need to pay to use a huge portion of Internet traffic.

According to Brittin, this idea, put forward more than 10 years ago, could disrupt Europe's network neutrality.

He added that a similar principle limiting the openness of the Internet was tried 10 years ago or more. Since then, no new arguments supporting the initiative or new data have emerged that could change the current situation.

Brittin, mentioning a report by the pan-European consumer group BEUC, expressed concern that the introduction of such a principle could impact negatively on consumers, especially now that prices are rising.

He also mentioned in his speech that Google, the owner of YouTube, has contributed to the efficiency of carriers by carrying traffic 99 percent of the way and investing millions of euros to do so. In 2021 alone, the company invested more than 23 billion euros in capital spending, much of it on infrastructure.

The infrastructure includes large data centers in Europe, two dozen submarine cables located around the world, as well as caches for storing digital content on local networks in 20 Europe locations.