By Tiernan Ray
Interesting piece by Matthew Campbell and Jonathan Browning over at Bloomberg this morning, who write that European telecoms are demanding that Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Facebook and their ilk must help the phone companies pay for the “billions” needed for network upgrades to support the flood of traffic their goods and services are driving.
The authors cite comments by representatives from France Telecom and other outfits who insist that Apple, et al. are getting a free ride by moving tons of traffic over phone networks. The article doesn’t detail what form that payment would or should take on the part of the software and online companies, and the remarks are obviously more along the lines of a general gripe, not a formal request.
Without wading into the myriad of issues here, I would note that the operators face the prospect that Apple and others could become virtual operators at some point, buying wholesale traffic to resell to customers of their devices, software and services. That could end up being either a boon for the operators, or a nightmare for them if they are reduced to essentially wholesaling their traffic with no relationship to the end user.
Article via Bloomberg
