Network fee not the fix for European telecoms financial problems, Meta says

Meta Platforms on Thursday voiced its strongest criticism to date of a push by EU telecoms operators to get Big Tech to foot additional network costs, saying this would not solve their financial problems and also ignores tech companies’ hefty investments.

Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, Telecom Italia and other operators have lobbied for two decades for U.S. tech giants to contribute to 5G and broadband roll-out.

The operators say that given they account for more than half of data internet traffic, Alphabet’s Google, Apple, Meta, Netflix, Amazon and Microsoft should contribute to the billions of euros in infrastructure costs.