Telecommunications companies have done a poor job in the 'fair contribution' debate

Europe's telecommunications chiefs love to moan about the data deluge that has swamped their networks, demanding payment – a "fair contribution" or "fair share" – from the Internet giants they hold mainly responsible. Yet none has ever presented any hard data to support the claims. Metrics show many of them fail to cover their capital costs. But there is no proof they would be any better off were the flow of petabytes much thinner. Evidence is probably needed if they are to convince dubious watchdogs and politicians that Amazon, Netflix and other "large traffic generators" (LTGs), as they are described, should chip in. Lobbyists have implied there is a correlation between petabytes and costs, but the headline numbers show no such thing. While petabytes have swelled, total operating expenses have been falling. Financial data published by other big European operators does not support the argument that a surge in traffic equals a huge cost, either. Recent concise analysis carried out by William Webb, the Chief Technology Officer of Access Partnership, is further bad news. "Once an operator has installed a fiber, cable or other high-speed connection to the home, then their costs are almost completely insensitive to data volumes since these connections have near-infinite capacity and the increase in energy caused by higher data usage is small," said Webb. Webb concedes that operators would still have to invest in backbone and core network infrastructure to support a capacity increase, but he points out that spending on this equals a small fraction of what it costs to connect millions of homes to fiber.