Dutch Officials Warn That Big Telecom’s Plan To Tax ‘Big Tech’ Is A Dangerous Dud
from the the-net-neutrality-wars-will-never-die dept
For much of the last year, European telecom giants have been pushing for a tax on Big Tech company profits. They’ve tried desperately to dress it up as a reasonable adult policy proposal, but it’s effectively just the same thing we saw during the U.S. net neutrality wars: telecom monopolies demanding other people pay them an additional troll toll — for no coherent reason.
To sell captured lawmakers on the idea, telecom giants have falsely
claimed that Big Tech companies get a “free ride” on the Internet (just
as they did during the U.S. net neutrality wars).
To fix this problem they completely made up, Big Telecom argues Big
Tech should be forced to help pay for the kind of broadband
infrastructure upgrades the telecoms have routinely neglected for years. . .
Regulators worldwide are increasingly looking for ways to bridge the “digital divide” and shore up subsidy funding for broadband expansion.
✓ But they’re often not looking at the real problem. Both in the EU and North America, regulators routinely and mindlessly let telecom giants consolidate and monopolize an essential utility. Those monopolies then work tirelessly to drive up rates and crush competition. And, utilizing their lobbying power, they’ve also routinely gleaned billions in subsidies for networks they routinely half-complete.
Serious reform would involve embracing policies that challenge monopolization, and engage in meaningful subsidy reform — ensuring that the billions we give telecom giants first actually go toward meaningful network improvements. Once you’ve done that, you can focus on additional funding mechanisms if they actually make sense.
Instead, EU regulators have decided to embrace a plan that involves Big Tech giving Big Telecom billions of additional dollars for no coherent reason. . ."
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