The UK's communications watchdog has called for a probe into Microsoft and Amazon's dominance of the country's cloud computing market in the latest challenge to the tech giants from global regulators. From a report: Ofcom said on Wednesday it was "particularly concerned" by the practices of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, which together control between 60 and 70 per cent of the UK cloud market. It has proposed referring the sector to the Competition and Markets Authority for further investigation. Cloud computing is dominated by Amazon and Microsoft, and has become a crucial driver of revenue at the tech giants. But growth in demand for these services has slowed this year and customers have sought to cut costs, with some complaining of rising prices and the difficulty of moving between cloud providers. Ofcom's move comes amid growing global scrutiny over the cloud market. Last year, Microsoft changed its cloud licensing policies in Europe in an effort to head off potential antitrust action from regulators in Brussels. The tech companies are already the targets of competition watchdogs in the US, UK and EU on multiple fronts, with investigations into Microsoft's $75bn acquisition of video games maker Activision and Amazon's deal to buy Roomba-maker iRobot. Ofcom said it was concerned that, if unchecked, the concentration of cloud computing supply in the hands of a small number of large US companies could lead to British customers paying more and smaller groups being squeezed out of the market.

Wired pays a visit to a half-finished Microsoft data center that rises out of the flat North Holland farmland — where the security guard tells a local councillor he's not allowed to visit the site, and "Within minutes, the argument has escalated, and the guard has his hand around Ruiter's throat." The security guard lets go of Ruiter within a few seconds, and the councillor escapes with a red mark across his neck. Back in his car, Ruiter insists he's fine. But his hands shake when he tries to change gears. He says the altercation — which he will later report to the police — shows the fog of secrecy that surrounds the Netherlands' expanding data center business.

"We regret an interaction that took place outside our data center campus, apparently involving one of Microsoft's subcontractors," says Craig Cincotta, general manager at Microsoft, adding that the company would cooperate with the authorities.

The heated exchange between Ruiter and Microsoft's security guard shows how contentious Big Tech's data centers have become in rural parts of the Netherlands. As the Dutch government sets strict environmental targets to cut emissions, industries are being forced to compete for space on Dutch farmland — pitting big tech against the increasingly political population of Dutch farmers.

There are around 200 data centers in the Netherlands, most of them renting out server space to several different companies. But since 2015, the country has also witnessed the arrival of enormous "hyperscalers," buildings that generally span at least 10,000 square feet and are set up to service a single (usually American) tech giant. Lured here by the convergence of European internet cables, temperate climates, and an abundance of green energy, Microsoft and Google have built hyperscalers; Meta has tried and failed.

Against the backdrop of an intensifying Dutch nitrogen crisis, building these hyperscalers is becoming more controversial. Nitrogen, produced by cars, agriculture, and heavy machinery used in construction, can be a dangerous pollutant, damaging ecosystems and endangering people's health. The Netherlands produces four times more nitrogen than the average across the EU. The Dutch government has pledged to halve emissions by 2030, partly by persuading farmers to reduce their livestock herds or leave the industry altogether. Farmers have responded with protests, blockading roads with tractors and manure and dumping slurry outside the nature minister's home.
Farmers object that Microsoft is building its data center before it's even received government permits certifying that it won't worsen the nitrogen problem, according to the article. In response the Farmer Citizen Movement has sprung up, and last month it became the joint-largest party in the Dutch Senate. One party leader tells Wired, "It is a waste of fertile soil to put the data centers boxes here."

And Wired adds that opposition to datacenter development is also growing elsewhere in Europe.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Like in other parts of the world, Canada is working out what the right to repair means for its people. The federal government said in its 2023 budget released Tuesday that it will bring the right to repair to Canada. At the same time, it's considering a universal charging port mandate like the European Union (EU) is implementing with USB-C. The Canadian federal government's 2023 budget introduces the right to repair under the chapter "Making Life More Affordable and Supporting the Middle Class." It says that the "government will work to implement a right to repair, with the aim of introducing a targeted framework for home appliances and electronics in 2024." The government plans to hold consultations on the matter and claimed it will "work closely with provinces and territories" to implement the right to repair in Canada:

"When it comes to broken appliances or devices, high repair fees and a lack of access to specific parts often mean Canadians are pushed to buy new products rather than repairing the ones they have. This is expensive for people and creates harmful waste. Devices and appliances should be easy to repair, spare parts should be readily accessible, and companies should not be able to prevent repairs with complex programming or hard-to-obtain bespoke parts. By cutting down on the number of devices and appliances that are thrown out, we will be able to make life more affordable for Canadians and protect our environment."

The budget also insinuates that right-to-repair legislation can make third-party repairs cheaper than getting a phone, for example, repaired by the manufacturer, where it could cost "far more than it should." Canada's 2023 budget also revealed the government's interest in introducing a standard charging port for electronics. The budget says the government "will work with international partners and other stakeholders to explore implementing a standard charging port in Canada." It says a universal charging port could help residents save money and e-waste. "Every time Canadians purchase new devices, they need to buy new chargers to go along with them, which drives up costs and increases electronic waste," the budget says.

Meta announced that starting next Wednesday, some Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union will for the first time be able to opt out of sharing first-party data used to serve highly personalized ads, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move marks a big change from Meta's current business model, where every video and piece of content clicked on its platforms provides a data point for its online advertisers. Ars Technica reports: People "familiar with the matter" told the Journal that Facebook and Instagram users will soon be able to access a form that can be submitted to Meta to object to sweeping data collection. If those requests are approved, those users will only allow Meta to target ads based on broader categories of data collection, like age range or general location. This is different from efforts by other major tech companies like Apple and Google, which prompt users to opt in or out of highly personalized ads with the click of a button. Instead, Meta will review objection forms to evaluate reasons provided by individual users to end such data collection before it will approve any opt-outs. It's unclear what cause Meta may have to deny requests.

A Meta spokesperson told Ars that Meta is not sharing the objection form publicly at this time but that it will be available to EU users in its Help Center starting on April 5. That's the deadline Meta was given to comply with an Irish regulator's rulings that it was illegal in the EU for Meta to force Facebook and Instagram users to give consent to data collection when they signed contracts to use the platforms. Meta still plans to appeal those Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) rulings, believing that its prior contract's legal basis complies with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In the meantime, though, the company must change the legal basis for data collection. Meta announced in a blog post today that it will now argue that it does not need to directly obtain user consent because it has a "legitimate interest" to collect data to operate its social platforms. "We believe that our previous approach was compliant under GDPR, and our appeal on both the substance of the rulings and the fines continues," Meta's blog said. "However, this change ensures that we comply with the DPC's decision."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: European Union countries gave final approval on Tuesday to a landmark law to end sales of new CO2-emitting cars in 2035, after Germany won an exemption for cars running on e-fuels. The approval from EU countries' energy ministers means Europe's main climate policy for cars can now enter into force -- after weeks of delay caused by last-minute opposition from Germany. The EU law will require all new cars sold to have zero CO2 emissions from 2035, and 55% lower CO2 emissions from 2030, versus 2021 levels. The targets are designed to drive the rapid decarbonization of new car fleets in Europe.

"The direction of travel is clear: in 2035, new cars and vans must have zero emissions," EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans said. E-fuels are considered carbon neutral because they are made using captured CO2 emissions -- which proponents say balances out the CO2 released when the fuel is combusted in an engine. The Commission will, in autumn 2023, propose how sales of e-fuel-only cars can continue after 2035. Such cars will have to use technology to prevent them from starting when filled with petrol or diesel.

Belgium's intelligence service is scrutinizing the operations of technology giant Huawei as fears of Chinese espionage grow around the EU and NATO headquarters in Brussels, according to confidential documents seen by POLITICO and three people familiar with the matter. From the report: In recent months, Belgium's State Security Service (VSSE) has requested interviews with former employees of the company's lobbying operation in the heart of Brussels' European district. The intelligence gathering is part of security officials' activities to scrutinize how China may be using non-state actors -- including senior lobbyists in Huawei's Brussels office -- to advance the interests of the Chinese state and its Communist party in Europe, said the people, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. The scrutiny of Huawei's EU activities comes as Western security agencies are sounding the alarm over companies with links to China. British, Dutch, Belgian, Czech and Nordic officials -- as well as EU functionaries -- have all been told to stay off TikTok on work phones over concerns similar to those surrounding Huawei, namely that Chinese security legislation forces Chinese tech firms to hand over data. The scrutiny also comes amid growing evidence of foreign states' influence on EU decision-making -- a phenomenon starkly exposed by the recent Qatargate scandal, where the Gulf state sought to influence Brussels through bribes and gifts via intermediary organizations. The Belgian security services are tasked with overseeing operations led by foreign actors around the EU institutions.

EU police force Europol on Monday warned about the potential misuse of artificial intelligence-powered chatbot ChatGPT in phishing attempts, disinformation and cybercrime, adding to the chorus of concerns ranging from legal to ethical issues. From a report: "As the capabilities of LLMs (large language models) such as ChatGPT are actively being improved, the potential exploitation of these types of AI systems by criminals provide a grim outlook," Europol said as it presented its first tech report starting with the chatbot. It singled out the harmful use of ChatGPT in three areas of crime. "ChatGPT's ability to draft highly realistic text makes it a useful tool for phishing purposes," Europol said. With its ability to reproduce language patterns to impersonate the style of speech of specific individuals or groups, the chatbot could be used by criminals to target victims, the EU enforcement agency said.

CNN reports: When EU lawmakers voted to ban the sale of new combustion engine cars in the bloc by 2035, it was a landmark victory for climate. In February, the European Parliament approved the law. All that was needed was a rubber stamp from the bloc's political leaders.

Then Germany changed its mind.

In a reversal that stunned many EU insiders, the German government decided to push for a loophole that would allow the sale of combustion engine cars beyond the 2035 deadline — as long as they run on synthetic fuels. It's an exception that could put the European Union's green credentials at risk. The bloc is legally obliged to become carbon-neutral by 2050. With cars and vans responsible for around 15% of its total greenhouse gas emissions, a phase-out of polluting vehicles is a key part of EU climate policy....

Other European countries, including Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic, have joined Germany in demanding the exception.
The case for synthetic fuels: they're made from hydrogen and carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere, so burning them only releases air pollutants that have already been offset. CNN got this quote from the transport minister of the liberal FDP (part of Germany's current governing coalition).

"The goal is climate neutrality, which is also an opportunity for new technologies. We need to be open to different solutions."

The island nation of Greenland — population 56,000 — has "sprung forward" for the very last time, reports Bloomberg: On March 25, Greenland will move its clocks forward one hour to UTC -2 time zone for the summer, just as it has done in the past. Except starting this year, it will stay in that time zone for good. No more suffering through twice-yearly clock changes; come October, Greenland won't roll back to standard time like they will in the rest of Europe and the US....

For residents in areas of the island that are below the Arctic Circle, it will mean one hour of light later in the day — although as a tourist you're not likely to notice the difference given the seasonal extremes of sunrise and sunset. The capital city, Nuuk, may see up to 20 hours of sunlight in summer, but only gets about four hours of sunlight in the winter, for instance....The main argument in Greenland in favor of the change: It's a chance to be closer to European business hours, which would benefit the economy, explains Tanny Por, head of international relations at Visit Greenland.

Proposals to pay for broadband networks by imposing new fees on Big Tech companies "are built on a false premise," Meta executives wrote in a blog post today. From a report: "Network fee proposals do not recognize that our investments in content drive the business model of telecom operators," Meta executives Kevin Salvadori and Bruno Cendon Martin wrote. Meta's comments came a few weeks after Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters spoke out against the proposal being reviewed by European regulators. Meta executives said telecom operators and content application providers (CAPs) "are symbiotic businesses, occupying different but complementary roles in the digital ecosystem. Every year, Meta invests tens of billions of euros in our apps and platforms -- such as Facebook, Instagram, and Quest -- to facilitate the hosting of content. Billions of people go online every day to access this content, creating the demand that allows telecom operators to charge people for Internet access. Our investment in content literally drives the revenue and business model of telecom operators."

Internet service providers in the EU argue that Big Tech companies should pay a "fair share" toward network-building costs. In the US, Federal Communications Commission Republican Brendan Carr claims that "Big Tech has been enjoying a free ride on our Internet infrastructure while skipping out on the billions of dollars in costs needed to maintain and build that network." Big Tech companies don't actually get free access to the Internet, though. Anyone distributing content over the Internet pays their own providers, builds their own network infrastructure, or does some combination of the two. For extremely large companies like Netflix and Meta, investments include building their own content-delivery networks. "Over the last decade, CAPs have collectively invested over $880 billion in global digital infrastructure, including approximately $120 billion a year from 2018 to 2021," Meta's blog post today said. "These infrastructure contributions made by technology companies save telecom operators around $6 billion per year."

France's AI-powered array of surveillance cameras for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics cleared a final legislative hurdle on Thursday. From a report: The French government wants to experiment with large-scale, real-time camera systems supported by an algorithm to spot suspicious behavior, including unsupervised luggage and triggering alarms to warn of crowd movements like stampedes, for the mega-sports event next year. In a sparsely-attended chamber, French members of parliament approved the controversial bill after more than seven hours of heated debate. The text can still be challenged before the country's top constitutional court. Last week, a group of about 40 European lawmakers -- mainly left-wing -- asked their French counterparts to vote against the text. They warned in a letter that "France would set a surveillance precedent of the kind never before seen in Europe, using the pretext of the [2024 Paris Summer] Olympic games."

In the past few months, the plan was also met with intense pushback from digital rights NGOs, including France's La Quadrature du Net, as well as international groups such as Amnesty International and Access Now. Besides privacy concerns, they pointed out a potential conflict with the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act, which is currently under discussion in Brussels and could limit biometric surveillance. The government argues that algorithmic surveillance cameras are necessary to ensure the safety of the millions of tourists expected to visit Paris next year. During the debates Wednesday evening, lawmakers from President Emmanuel Macron's party claimed AI-powered cameras could have prevented the 2016 Nice terror attack by spotting the truck before it could drive into the crowd. They also said it could have helped avoid the security fiasco at the football Champions League final last summer.

Thirteen million diesel cars producing "extreme" levels of toxic air pollution are still on the roads in Europe and the UK, according to a report, seven years after the Dieselgate scandal first exploded. From a report: The non-profit research group, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), revealed in 2015 that many diesel cars were highly polluting, emitting far more nitrogen oxides on the road than in official testing. The scandal led to a more rigorous test being introduced in the EU in 2019. However, based on extensive testing evidence, the ICCT has now revealed that about 13m highly polluting diesel vehicles sold from 2009 to 2019 remain on the roads. A further 6m diesels have "suspicious" levels of emissions, the ICCT said. The cars span 200 different models produced by all the major manufacturers. The ICCT said the bestselling models from 2009-2019 in the EU27 and UK with "extreme" emissions are Euro 5 versions of the VW Passat and Tiguan, Renault Clio, Ford Focus and Nissan Qashqai.

The European Commission has adopted a new set of right to repair rules (PDF) that, among other things, will add electronic devices like smartphones and tablets to a list of goods that must be built with repairability in mind. The Register reports: The new rules will need to be need to be negotiated between the European Parliament and member states before they can be turned into law. If they are, a lot more than just repairability requirements will change. One provision will require companies selling consumer goods in the EU to offer repairs (as opposed to just replacing a damaged device) free of charge within a legal guarantee period unless it would be cheaper to replace a damaged item. Beyond that, the directive also adds a set of rights for device repairability outside of legal guarantee periods that the EC said will help make repair a better option than simply tossing a damaged product away.

Under the new post-guarantee period rule, companies that produce goods the EU defines as subject to repairability requirements (eg, appliances, commercial computer hardware, and soon cellphones and tablets) are obliged to repair such items for five to 10 years after purchase if a customer demands so, and the repair is possible. OEMs will also need to inform consumers about which products they are liable to repair, and consumers will be able to request a new Repair Information Form from anyone doing a repair that makes pricing and fees more transparent. The post-guarantee period repair rule also establishes the creation of an online "repair matchmaking platform" for EU consumers, and calls for the creation of a European repair standard that will "help consumers identify repairers who commit to a higher quality."

"Repair is key to ending the model of 'take, make, break, and throw away' that is so harmful to our planet, our health and our economy," said Frans Timmermans, EVP for the European Green Deal, which aims to make the whole of EU carbon neutral by 2050. On that note, the EC proposed a set of anti-greenwashing laws alongside passing its right to repair rule yesterday that would make it illegal to make any green claims about a product without evidence. Citing the fact that 94 percent of Europeans believe protecting the environment is important, the EC said its proposal covers any explicit, voluntarily-made claims "which relate to the environmental impact, aspect, or performance of a product or the trader itself." Any such claims, like a laptop being made from recycled plastic, would need to be independently verified and proven with scientific evidence, the EC said.

Microsoft is preparing to launch a new app store for games on iPhones and Android smartphones as soon as next year if its $75bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard is cleared by regulators, according to the head of its Xbox business. From a report: New rules requiring Apple and Google to open up their mobile platforms to app stores owned and operated by other companies are expected to come into force from March 2024 under the EU's Digital Markets Act. "We want to be in a position to offer Xbox and content from both us and our third-party partners across any screen where somebody would want to play," said Phil Spencer, chief executive of Microsoft Gaming, in an interview ahead of this week's annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. "Today, we can't do that on mobile devices but we want to build towards a world that we think will be coming where those devices are opened up."

Microsoft is fighting with regulators in the US, Europe and UK, which have all raised concerns about the potential impact on competition from the owner of the Xbox console buying the developer of Call of Duty, one of the world's most popular games franchises. PlayStation maker Sony has been a vocal opponent of the deal. However, Spencer argues the deal can boost competition in what he called the "largest platform people play on" -- smartphones -- where Apple and Google currently operate what some antitrust authorities have called a "duopoly" over distribution of games and other apps. [...] While acknowledging it was hard to predict exactly when Microsoft will be able to launch its own store, Spencer said it would be "pretty trivial" for Microsoft to adapt its Xbox and Game Pass apps to sell games and subscriptions on mobile devices. Microsoft's current lack of mobile games was an "obvious hole in our capability" that it needed Activision Blizzard to fill, he added.

RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) writes: A recent paper on ArXiv reports new spectroscopic analyses of the surfaces of 42 asteroids. The main result for space enthusiasts is that there is not one "M" class asteroid (metal-rich) surface in the collection.

The imagery that (many) people grow up with from Hollywood and TV "science" "documentaries" is that the Solar system is full of asteroids which are made of metal ready for mining to produce solid ingots of precious metals. That's Hollywood, not reality. This result is about what you'd expect from the proportion of metallic asteroids — otherwise estimated at about 0.5% of the population.

The asteroid mining fraternity dream of taking apart an M-type asteroid like Psyche, which is fair enough as a dream. Even as a dream for "asteroid mining" metal market speculators. But they are relatively rare asteroids. A realistic "ISRU" (In-Situ Resource Utilisation) plan is going to have to expect to digest around 200 silicate mineral (and clay ("phyllosilicate"), and ice) asteroids for every metallic one they digest.
Here's the home page for the project.

Amazon's efforts to minimize its taxes in the European Union were given a code-name evocative of a spy thriller with British agent 007, according to an EU lawyer, who claimed the arrangements broke the bloc's state-aid rules. From a report: "Project Goldcrest -- it sounds like the title of a James Bond movie, but it is not," it's the name "Amazon gave to a complex tax construction by which it fundamentally reorganized its global business," European Commission attorney Paul-John Loewenthal told a hearing at the EU's top court on Thursday.

"In 2006, that project had one purpose to ensure that Amazon would avoid paying tax on its European profits." Under that plan, "Luxembourg provided a measure to Amazon by which Amazon could exempt the vast majority of its European profit from taxation in return for investments in Luxembourg, thus affecting intra EU trade and distorting competition," he said. "That is the very definition of fiscal state aid." The EU's executive arm is appealing a painful defeat inflicted by a lower court, which overturned a decision to force the ecommerce firm to pay back $265 million of tax breaks regulators deemed to be an unfair subsidy.

On March 1st, a European Union regulation went into effect that effectively bans 8K TVs. This is because they exceed the new lower Energy Efficiency Index (EEI) limit that set the maximum power consumption level for all TVs at 90W, which is significantly lower than the 190W that new 8K TVs can consume. According to Tom's Guide, Samsung "seems to have already developed a workaround for this 8K TV ban." From the report: The ban is specifically based on the EEI power consumption numbers, so if you can manufacture an 8K TV that consumes less than 90W then you are in the clear. Because of this loophole, Samsung has decided to ship its 8K TVs with low-powered default settings. According to AV Magazine, the new Samsung 8K TVs will come out of the box with a "brightness-limiting eco mode" as the default brightness setting. This will allow the TVs to still meet the EEI limit while maintaining their 8K resolution.

But does this mean that Europeans will be limited to low brightness settings if they want 8K resolution? Turns out, the answer to that is, no. The E.U. regulation requires that the TVs be energy efficient out of the box, but once users have them set up, they can change to a higher brightness setting and watch to their heart's content, even though their 8K TV will now consume more power than the 90W limit set by the EEI. Other manufacturers will likely find workarounds for the E.U. regulations if Samsung's workaround is successful [...].

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The Dutch government confirmed for the first time Wednesday it will impose new export controls on microchips manufacturing equipment, bowing to U.S. pressure to block the sale of some of its prized chips printing machines to China. The U.S. and the Netherlands reached an agreement to introduce new export restrictions on advanced chip technology to China at the end of January, but until now, the Dutch government hadn't commented publicly on it. The deal, which also included Japan, involves the only three countries that are home to manufacturers of advanced machines to print microchips. It is a U.S.-led initiative to choke off the supply of cutting-edge chips to China.

"Given the technological developments and geopolitical context, the government has concluded that it is necessary for the (inter)national security to expand the existing export controls on specific manufacturing equipment for semiconductors," Foreign Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher wrote in a letter to Dutch lawmakers published Wednesday evening. The Dutch government wants to prevent Dutch technology from being used in military systems or weapons of mass destruction, Schreinemacher wrote — echoing the U.S. reasoning when it imposed its own export controls in October. The Netherlands also wants to avoid losing its pole position in producing cutting-edge chip manufacturing tools: Schreinemacher said the government wants to uphold "Dutch technological leadership." While China is not explicitly named in Schreinemacher's letter, the new policy is targeted at Chinese efforts to overtake the U.S. and others like Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and leading European countries in the global microchips supply chain.

The new export restrictions deal a blow to ASML, the global leader in producing advanced microchips printing machines based in Veldhoven, in southern Netherlands. In the letter, Schreinemacher said the new export control measures include the most advanced deep ultraviolet (DUV) machines, which are part of ASML's advanced chips printers portfolio. The Dutch firm, which is the highest-valued tech company in Europe, already did not receive export licenses for selling its most advanced machines using extreme ultraviolet light (EUV) technology to China since 2019. ASML in a statement confirmed it will now "need to apply for export licenses for shipment of the most advanced immersion DUV systems," but it noted it has not yet received more details about what "most advanced" means.

Meta Platforms' WhatsApp has agreed to be more transparent about changes to its privacy policy introduced in 2021, the European Commission said on Monday, following complaints from consumer bodies across Europe. From a report: The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and the European Network of consumer authorities told WhatsApp last year that it had not clarified the changes in plain and intelligible language, violating the bloc's laws. EU members' national regulators can sanction companies for breaches. WhatsApp has now agreed to explain changes to EU users' contracts and how these could affect their rights, and has agreed to display prominently the possibility for users to accept or reject the changes and ensure that users can easily close pop-up notifications on updates. The company also confirmed that users' personal data is not shared with third parties or other Meta companies, including Facebook, for advertising purposes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters spoke out against a European proposal to make streaming providers and other online firms pay for ISPs' network upgrades. "Some of our ISP partners have proposed taxing entertainment companies to subsidize their network infrastructure," Peters said in a speech Tuesday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (transcript). The "tax would have an adverse effect, reducing investment in content -- hurting the creative community, hurting the attractiveness of higher-priced broadband packages, and ultimately hurting consumers," he argued. [...] "ISPs claim that these taxes would only apply to Netflix. But this will inevitably change over time as broadcasters shift from linear to streaming," Peters said at MWC. Sandvine data suggests that nearly half of global Internet traffic is sent by Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, Netflix, and Microsoft. Online video accounts for 65 percent of all traffic, and Netflix recently passed YouTube as the top video-traffic generator.

Peters cited Nielsen data showing that "Netflix accounts for under 10 percent of total TV time" in the US and UK while "traditional local broadcasters account for over half of all TV time." Live sports account for much of that. "As broadcasters continue the shift away from linear to streaming, they will start to generate significant amounts of Internet traffic too -- even more than streamers today based on the current scope and scale of their audiences," Peters said. "Broadband customers, who drive this increased usage, already pay for the development of the network through their subscription fees. Requiring entertainment companies -- both streamers and broadcasters -- to pay more on top would mean ISPs effectively charging twice for the same infrastructure." Telcos that receive new payments wouldn't be expected to lower the prices charged to home Internet users, Peters said. "As the consumer group BEUC has pointed out, there is no suggestion these levies would be passed onto consumers in the form of 'lower prices or better infrastructure,'" he said.

Peters said Netflix's "operating margins are significantly lower than either British Telecom or Deutsche Telekom. So we could just as easily argue that network operators should compensate entertainment companies for the cost of our content -- exactly as happened under the old pay-TV model." While telcos claim companies like Netflix don't pay their "fair share," Peters pointed out that Netflix has spent a lot building its own network that reduces the amount of data sent over traditional telecom networks. "We've spent over $1 billion on Open Connect, our own content delivery network, which we offer for free to ISPs," he said. "This includes 18,000 servers with Netflix content distributed across 6,000 locations and 175 countries. So when our members press play, instead of the film or TV show being streamed from halfway around the world, it's streamed from around the corner -- increasing efficiency for operators while also ensuring a high-quality, no-lag experience for consumers." Peters also touted Netflix's encoding technology that cut bit rates in half between 2015 and 2020. While Internet traffic has increased about 30 percent a year, "ISPs have managed this increased consumer usage efficiently while their costs have remained stable," Peters said. "Regulators have highlighted this, too, calling out that infrastructure costs are not sensitive to traffic and that growing consumption will be offset by efficiency gains."