apparently some EU telecoms are just as greedy and stupid as their US counterparts

It seems Telefónica, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom all think that somehow, they should get paid twice for the internet bandwidth they provide to their end-user customers.

An article in the Financial Times quotes leadership from those three companies saying that Google is getting a “free ride” pushing YouTube traffic to their respective customers “because they do not pay anything”.

This is not a new argument of course – SBC has claimed the same thing in the US way back in 2005. Other than generate a general disgust for SBC, not much has come from that claim.

Statements like these show these CEOs do not understand the basic principles of internet peering. Worse, they also indicate a basic dishonesty – they must realize that *their own customers* already pay for that bandwidth.

It’s time the big telcos realize that the world has changed. Their companies are not phone companies anymore, they are telecommunications companies trending towards pure data companies. They are in the business of providing internet access. That means ‘dumb pipes’.

If they do not like that, they should go find something else to do. Of course their government granted monopolies should then be taken away. And the lavish subsidies they received for network buildouts should be paid back and given to other organizations who *do* understand how the internet works.

Maybe then we wouldn’t see such ignorant and dishonest statements in the press.