Europe Considers Making Big Tech Pay for Building the Internet
- Telcos want data-hungry streaming sites to pay ‘fair share’
- Tech companies say they already invest in infrastructure
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When binge-watching TV became a universal pastime at the height of the pandemic, one of Europe’s top officials called the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Netflix Inc. and told him to make his product worse.
Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton wanted Netflix to reduce the quality of its videos to free up bandwidth, fearing that Europe’s networks were under strain. Reed Hastings complied, cutting data output by about 25% for a month. So did YouTube.