Overseas telephone companies: Make Big Tech pay more for bandwidth

Overseas telecom providers, increasingly frustrated with American tech firms whose apps are gobbling up bandwidth, are pushing them to pay more for it. Any effort to reslice the "cost of internet bandwidth" pie could shake up the entire industry, make new winners and losers, and put new pressure on US tech giants. Chief executives of more than a dozen of Europe's major telecom companies, including Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom, said that US tech firms should "bear some of the costs of developing Europe's telecoms networks because they use them so heavily," according to Reuters. Tech giants already have a target on their backs with foreign governments over privacy and anti-competitive practice concerns, and telecom companies calling them out adds fuel to that fire. Broadband industry trade group USTelecom says tech companies have grown thanks to the investment of broadband providers, and should contribute to the fund. The Internet Association, which represents big tech companies, has opposed efforts to make its members pay into the broadband fund.