Distinctive Europe’s telcos want U.S. tech giants to assistance fund community costs

BRUSSELS, Nov 29 (Reuters) – U.S. tech giants need to bear some of the charges of acquiring Europe’s telecoms networks due to the fact they use them so seriously, chief executives of Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE), Vodafone (VOD.L) and 11 other important European telecoms businesses reported on Monday.

The get in touch with by the CEOs comes as the telecoms industry faces substantial investments for 5G, fibre and cable networks to cope with info and cloud providers offered by Netflix (NFLX.O) and Google’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube and Facebook (FB.O).

Investments in Europe’s telco sector rose to 52.5 billion euros ($59.4 billion) past year, a six-calendar year large.

“A large and escalating component of community visitors is created and monetized by large tech platforms, but it necessitates continuous, intensive community financial investment and scheduling by the telecommunications sector,” the CEOs claimed in a joint assertion found by Reuters.

“This product – which permits EU citizens to appreciate the fruits of the electronic transformation – can only be sustainable if this kind of major tech platforms also lead reasonably to community costs,” they mentioned.

The CEOs did not point out any tech firms by name, but Reuters understands that U.S.-detailed giants this sort of as Netflix and Fb are providers they have in intellect.

Signatories to the letter involve the CEOs of Telefonica (TEF.MC), Orange (ORAN.PA), KPN (KPN.AS), BT Team (BT.L), Telekom Austria (TELA.VI), Vivacom, Proximus (PROX.BR), Telenor (TEL.OL), Altice Portugal, Telia Company (TELIA.ST) and Swisscom (SCMN.S).

The CEOs also criticised large spectrum prices and auctions, applied by EU governments as dollars cows, expressing that these artificially pressure unsustainable entrants into the market place.

EU lawmakers’ attempts to scrap surcharges on intra-EU calls also acquired limited shrift from the CEOs who see this sector as a source of earnings from small business customers.

“We estimate that they would forcibly clear away over 2 billion euros revenues from the sector in a 4 yr time period, which…