Amy Thomson and Rodrigo Orihuela London
VODAFONE Group Plc and Telefónica SA used a technology conference in Spain yesterday to call for the EU to focus less on new rules for phone companies and more on Facebook and Google to reduce their dominance.
The carriers are battling so-called network neutrality proposals, championed by internet companies, that they say will hurt business and discourage new products such as driverless cars. The proposals are meant to prevent carriers from blocking access to some websites or slowing web traffic.
“Network neutrality was invented by those who don’t want neutrality,” said Telefónica chief executive César Alierta. “All we request is a level playing field for the whole sector, not only for telcos.”
Internet companies have generally favoured stricter rules protecting the free flow of traffic on the web. Google, Facebook and more than 100 other online companies wrote to the US Federal Communications Commission in May urging the agency to protect the industry against service providers who discriminate against traffic.
These internet companies have become too dominant, giving them the power to control what applications are developed and used by consumers, the carriers said.
“They’re so obsessed with us not having a market share of 40 percent in countries like Ireland, countries with 3 million inhabitants, but they’re not concerned about a well-known company having 90 percent of the market in search engines,” Alierta said.
Google didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment today. A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment.
Vodafone closed down 0.02 percent at 206.70 pence in London trading. It has declined 30 percent this year. Telefónica, up 2.1 percent this year, was down 0.08 percent to e12.06 in Madrid.
Vodafone chief Vittorio Colao said that the proposed rules could require carriers to treat all data flowing through their network the same, which would hurt the development of new services and applications that require a guaranteed service quality. “Driverless cars, health solution services, this will require a lot of bandwidth and a lot of speed and no delay. You don’t want to be in a driverless car getting to a traffic light and the network is congested.”
The carriers emphasised the importance of being allowed to merge into fewer, larger companies in Europe where competition has spurred price wars and cut into profits. Colao said that the conditions on acquisitions in Germany and Ireland, where regulators required carriers to open their networks to allow the creation of competing services, will prevent the industry from recovering.
Last year, the European Commission presented a package of reforms that were meant to unify the continent’s networks. The European Parliament presented its own amendments in April. That’s where the phone company says the laws became unreasonable.
The European Council will hold a digital summit on October 23. The group of heads of state of EU nations will have considered the proposals and come up with its own. The three versions will be reconciled before the council adopts it into law. – Bloomberg