French Telecom Claims To Have Forced Google To Pay For Traffic

Dupple writes "The head of French telecoms operator Orange said on Wednesday it had been able to impose a deal on Google to compensate it for the vast amounts of traffic sent across its networks. Orange CEO Stephane Richard said on France's BFM Business TV that with 230 million clients and areas where Google could not get around its network, it had been able to reach a 'balance of forces' with the Internet search giant. Richard declined to cite the figure Google had paid Orange, but said the situation showed the importance of reaching a critical size in business. Network operators have been fuming for years that Google, with its search engine and YouTube video service, generates huge amounts of traffic but does not compensate them for using their networks. An editorial piece at GigaOm says Google is abandoning its principles and giving Orange 'the incentive to demand the same from other content providers.'"

Re:Makes no sense.

[AK Marc]

As a user, I pay for my cap that includes up and down. When they charge my cap on up only, then they can charge Google for their upload. Though, the terms are pretty light. Perhaps the issue is that Google isn't paying for data, but Orange is lying and Google is paying for space and power for caches (something they do do, though they prefer to not pay, as it benefits the carrier as well as Google). Without both sides talking or other more impartial description of the situation, it may be an exaggeration by one side.

Or maybe not. PR is all about the worst lies you can get away with. The only question is, how bad are they?

Re:Great investigative reporting, there...

[alostpacket]

If I were Google, I'd prefer to pull the plug on all of France rather than agreeing to push the first rock which would be almost certain to start a landslide that even I wouldn't survive...

I was wondering this as well. I would imagine the ISP would reverse course in a matter of nanoseconds if their users started seeing a page like

"Your ISP has blocked Google from providing you Gmail. They are demanding we pay for your use of the internet, something which you already pay for. Here's their contact info:...."

It always strikes me as funny too since Cable is the other way around. I'm pretty sure Cable providers pay television stations. And even if a station doesn't have enough clout there is a law (in the US) they can use called "must carry" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry [wikipedia.org]

I'm surprised this analogy isn't used much.

Re:Full of shit

[Dan667]

the orange ceo may be trying to start and argument about it, because the decisions becomes what you argue about. He may be lying on purpose to try and eventually really get paid by Google.

Re:It's a peering dispute.

[mysticalreaper]

Mod up please. This is much more reliable that the shrill /. summary, and the poorly informed article.

A peering dispute is totally conceivable, it's happened many times in the past between ISPs. Google paying a consumer network fees to carry traffic has *never* happenend. The former is much more likely.

Re:Makes no sense.

[fgouget]

From the article:

... areas where Google could not get around its network ..

This is clearer in the French interview [universfreebox.com]. What Stephane Richard said is that they leveraged the fact that Orange is a major player in many countries, particularly in African countries, where Google has been looking for some kind of deal with them. So they made clear to Google that it wouldn't get those deal if they couldn't also come to some kind of agreement on the YouTube issue.