(Bloomberg) — Germany’s Minister for Transport and Digital Affairs Volker Wissing pushed back on calls for Big Tech companies to contribute to the costs of Europe’s network expansion.
“The free and open internet is a valuable asset that needs to be protected,” Wissing said in an interview with Welt am Sonntag. “We are therefore opposed to market intervention and complicated participation models.”
Wissing, a member of the liberal Free Democrats, expressed his opposition to proposals to make technology companies that use the most bandwidth, like Netflix Inc. and Alphabet Inc., help pay for the next generation of internet infrastructure.
The European Commission has been holding a consultation on the issue, hearing different positions on whether the largest tech companies should be making contributions to the telecoms companies that provide digital infrastructure.
Telecoms companies have lobbied for years for so-called “fair share,” that would force data-hungry big tech players and streaming platforms to pay toward improving connectivity. But Wissing, among other lawmakers, have warned this could risk the principle of “net neutrality” — that all users should have equal access to the internet not restricted by slower speeds or blocked content from some service providers.
The biggest European phone and broadband companies in line to benefit from such a plan include Vodafone Group Plc, Orange SA, Telefonica SA and Deutsche Telekom AG.
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