Orange CEO Christel Heydemann said Big Tech has been “forcing” phone companies to invest more in boosting network qualities while not helping to meet the cost, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Heydemann, speaking at the Rencontres Economiques conferences in Aix-en-Provence, France, said network traffic will be three to five times higher in the next six years.
She said the big growth has been “essentially captured by a few players, the big content providers, five players that force us to invest,” she said.
While she didn’t name big companies like Netflix, Amazon, Meta or Google, she did say the big challenge in the future would be working with tech companies that have been “forcing” behavior on their users.
Orange CFO Ramon Fernandez said recently that tech giants have barely participated in the development of the infrastructure that has been required. This is troubling because there will be around 15 billion euros ($15.3 billion) more invested to absorb the traffic growth.
The Big Tech firms have been in the news for some time, mostly because of how they interact with governments and how they may be regulated.
In recent news, PYMNTS wrote that a new antitrust bill, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, might end up stuck in the Senate if it doesn’t pass before the summer recess.
Read more: Senate May Delay Antitrust Bill Aimed at Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta
The legislation would go after the companies’ abilities to favor their own services over those of competitors.
The act was sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and it might be sidelined in favor of a reconciliation package that was waylaid before and is now getting more attention.
The specifics of what might happen next are in debate — the bill currently has 60 votes it needs to pass, according to Klobuchar. But the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that the bill is still trying to get the right level of support.
The report notes that the decision for a floor vote could come down to whether Schumer will put his weight behind it or not.
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