Internet Traffic Tax or (un)Fair Share Contributions debunked

Dear telco CEO, mr/mrs. .....

Let me see if I get this straight. So, there is Big Tech developing all these wonderful applications and content, ranging from Facebook to Netflix and beyond. Meta, by the way, intends to spend $10b on a new globe-spanning subsea cable. And Netflix spends $17b each year on content.

They place their content and services on servers in the cloud, sometimes in close proximity to end users. Netflix's CDN for instance is a free service for telcos, providing servers in telco PoPs. Consumers and businesses really love these applications and content and generate a lot of traffic, streaming and downloading. Big Tech benefits from this through subscriptions, transactions and advertising.

In others words, the producers and consumers of content and applications cause a lot of internet traffic. In fact, it is probably the large majority of all traffic. This extends to access networks, that you control and that you end up charging for. So, they make sure there is traffic and you get to charge consumers and businesses for it? Without Big Tech, there would hardly be an internet at all.

And now you want Big Tech to contribute to the cost of access networks? Do you have increased costs because of increased traffic? (hardly). Why not raise end-user tariffs? (go ahead).

Explain to me please why Big Tech needs to contribute to your costs, while you are charging users? Explain to me also why you shouldn't contribute to Big Tech's costs for developing content and applications, as well as internet backbones, datacenters, CDNs etc.

Best regards,

Communications Breakdown