Europe telcos: tech giants should fund 5G rollout
13 of Europe's top telecoms companies sent a firm message to U.S. tech giants on Monday (November 29).
They said Silicon Valley leaders should pay some of the costs of developing Europe's telecoms networks because they use it so heavily.
CEOs from Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and 11 others were among those who made the call.
It comes as the industry faces massive investments for 5G, fiber and cable networks.
That to cope with data and cloud services provided by the likes of Netflix and Google's YouTube.
Investment in Europe's telecoms sector rose to a six year high of just under $60 billion last year.
The firms argued a large part of network traffic is monetized by big tech platforms and needs constant large investment.
That, they said, is only sustainable if big tech firms make a fair contribution to network costs.
No company was mentioned by name in the letter, but Reuters understands Netflix and Facebook are two tech giants they have in mind.
Other CEOs to sign the letter came from major European telcos like Orange, Telefonica and BT Group.
