May 10, 2023
Cloudflare has spoken out against the European Union’s (EU) planned network use levies, claiming that they will lead to discrimination and negatively impact customers’ overall internet experience. The EU’s plan calls for Content and Application Providers (CAPs) such as Netflix and YouTube to pay to the cost of network infrastructure, which telecom firms maintain is solely their responsibility.
Cloudflare claims that it already pays for critical network infrastructure, such as underwater cables. According to the business, Europe’s leading telecom operators do not conduct open peering, which is free connectivity between networks, but instead prefer to pay transit networks for data transmission across networks.
The fear is that the EU’s plan would essentially establish a price for transit, perhaps leading to higher charges for interconnection with CAPs. As a result, smaller networks and organizations that lack the resources of the larger CAPs will suffer.
They say that such ideas would give huge technology corporations preferential treatment, allowing their traffic to obtain better service than others. This contradicts the EU’s purpose of increasing connectivity. Cloudflare supports settlement-free peering because it believes it will reduce congestion and provide a better internet experience for consumers and small businesses.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheRegister.
