from the robbing-peter-to-pay-paul dept
Last year we noted how FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had launched a bad faith effort suggesting that “big tech” gets a “free ride” on the internet, and should be forced to fund broadband expansion. This argument, that tech giants like Google and Netflix somehow get a free ride (they don’t) and should “pay their fair share” to fund broadband expansion is a fifteen year old AT&T lobbyist talking point.
It’s basically just a lobbying effort by telecom giants to exploit growing (and often valid) animosity at “big tech” to pad big telecom’s coffers. And despite being violently stupid, it’s contagious and spreading.
As the EU contemplates its digital policy trajectory for the next decade, the idea that “big tech” should pay “big telecom” for no coherent reason has also managed to unsurprisingly surface. Originally a fall 2022 project, the fight over taxing big tech in Europe looks like it’s going to be punted into 2023:
The European Union’s executive body will launch a consultation early next year on whether tech giants should bear some of the costs of Europe’s telecoms network, EU industry chief Thierry Breton said on Friday.
Europe’s telecoms operators have long lobbied for a financial contribution from U.S. tech firm’s such as Alphabet’s Google, Meta’s Facebook and Netflix, saying that they use a huge part of the internet traffic.
Again, it’s super easy for telecom giants to capitalize on both the animosity toward big tech, and the political fixation with “bridging the digital divide” to cement this idea in the heads of captured politicians. The rhetoric is always the same; namely that Google and Netflix (who spend billions on cloud storage, CDNs, transit lines, fiber) are somehow getting a “free ride” and/or aren’t paying their “fair share:”
Breton said that this particular issue, or so-called potential “fair share” of U.S. tech companies in the financing of the European telecoms and internet infrastructure, will be part of a wide consultation that will entail metaverse — the shared virtual world environments which people can access via the internet.
The often captured politicians who’ve had their brains polluted with this gibberish often try to pretend that the discussion about this plan to “tax big tech” is being based on widespread consultation with experts and the public, and is motivated exclusively by their noble interest in bridging the digital divide. But said consultation usually involves meeting with some telecom lobbyists over lattes:
I’m looking forward to seeing what this consultation will look like & how inclusive it will be. Just to be clear: the “consultation “ between the Commission and telcos started long ago so let’s not make this sound as if the Commission is about to do something extraordinary! pic.twitter.com/S52Swc3dXj
— Konstantinos Komaitis/Κωνσταντίνος Κωμαϊτης, PhD (@kkomaitis) September 12, 2022
There’s an easy “tell” for which politicians and regulators are operating in good faith on this subject or not. Here in the States, regulators like Carr will be quick to propose a “tax on big tech” to address shortfalls in broadband subsidies. But they’ll almost never acknowledge the untold billions we throw at regional telecom monopolies for fiber networks they routinely only half deliver.
They never support real reform if the reform in any way inconveniences the nation’s biggest telecom giants.
If you want to address the digital divide, the very first step should be reform of existing telecom subsidy programs so that you ensure existing funds aren’t wasted. These guys with a head full of telecom lobbyist chatter don’t do that; they instead immediately turn to the idea of taxing giant tech companies, throwing that money in the laps of a telecom industry with a fifty year history of outright fraud.
Maybe there’s a world where tech giants could help subsidize broadband to the poor. But right now, most of these pushes aren’t being proposed in good faith. They’re being proposed by captured policymakers with a pocket full of telecom campaign cash, looking to capitalize on big tech animosity to throw billions of additional dollars at an industry that’s arguably worse.
Filed Under: big tech, big tech tax, big telecom, eu, european union, fcc, subsidies, telecom, troll toll
Source by www.techdirt.com
