European Carriers Claim Apple Should Pay for Network Infrastructure

[PaulCJr]

make them pay for the roads!

Up next, charging GM and Ford for road maintenance because their SUVs and trucks are putting more stress on roads than other companies! We should really go after the semi manufacturers too!

That's exactly what we did with the old trolley companies that use to run trolleys in this country. They had to pay for their right of way and that included keeping roads in good shape. We still make trains pay their way when it comes to using tracks. Cars and trucks pay nothing.

 

[thogs_cave]

Nope, no sympathy here.

I just can't feel sorry for any cell carriers. Period. As others have mentioned, they didn't feel the need to share when they raked in the profits, and instead of following common sense and updating their infrastructure, they obviously used it for something else.

You can't tell me that anyone in the business with half a firing neuron couldn't see this coming way down the pipe. It's been obvious for a decade now that the mobile space was going to be the next wave for data consumption, and yet most carriers laid back and just waited.

And gee, they are happy enough to sell the devices and keep customers tied to restrictive contracts.

Nope, not feeling sorry for them. Instead of whining, spend the money, be aggressive, and capture the market with good service, Man, what a radical idea!

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

HMMMMM! China does this and will be empowered to try more. Bullsh@#$$T!

 

[MrWillie]

Would be nice to have someone pay for infrastructure upgrades. Considering how parts of Europe have 100 up/100 down fiber for consumers while in the USA, a superpower, still has maybe 50 up/12 down. The USA basically is a superpower with the infrastructure of a 3rd world country practically. [/hyperbole]

Would be nice if everyone had 1 gig up & down. Then Apple could finally deliver 1080p video at a good (IE BluRay or better) quality.

Well, Ma Bell spent billions running copper wire to every home in the US, for free. Didn't matter if you live 10 miles from nowhere on a mountain peak. The wire was there. You told them you wanted service, and for a monthly fee, plus long distance usage, you could call anyone in the US / world that had telephone service. You didn't have to get service, but the wire was there if you wanted it.
Along comes the federal government and decides to break up Ma Bell, and tell them they have to lease their lines (that they payed for), to other companies at rates so low they can undercut them. These companies didn't risk billions laying out the infrastucture, they just took profits.

Now, who in the hell is going to lay out the money to run fiber to everyones home, and then have another company come in and use your network to compete against you ????

As far as the network eating phones, all the carriers have to do is block high bandwidth media streaming services such as Netflix. Want to watch a movie on your phone? Rip a disk, like I do for my iPad and put it on before I go. No bandwidth required. Besides, streaming services have been closing down the video rental stores, and they always hired tight jean wearing hot college girls. (Sorry didnt mean to drop that)

 

[Blue Fox]

LOL. This cracks me up. They want APPLE who make a product for their network, which they willingly offer, to pay to improve their weak infrastructure because the iPhone is "data intensive"?

That's like telling a car company to pay for road construction because their cars are being driven a lot.

WTF?

 

[sinsin07]

Apple should simply tell them:

No iPhone for you

Steve Jobs

Sent from my Iphone

 

[archipellago]

Apple should simply tell them:

No iPhone for you

Steve Jobs

Sent from my Iphone

in the UK, all the carriers have the iPhone so together they could back Apple into a corner.

Apple needs a network, or it goes back to £500 a handset and by comparison with now they sell ZERO phones.

 

[3282868]

Besides, streaming services have been closing down the video rental stores, and they always hired tight jean wearing hot college girls. (Sorry didnt mean to drop that)

Reading this last sentence first would have saved me 5 minutes

 

[res1233]

Oh dear...

I just had a thought. I'm wondering if apple is willing to sacrifice all their European customers because of this. Honestly, Apple is sometimes idealistic. They wont like being backed into a corner like this, and may try to make a point for Europe in general. I would, in all honesty... Europe has gotten really bad with expecting other people to give them free stuff, it would do them good. Maybe it would teach our president that he shouldn't try the same stuff here that was tried over there and failed.

How do they expect apple to compete if they have to pay for the network infrastructure? It's unreasonable. I wouldn't blame them if they DID pull out of Europe, or at least all the carriers that are trying to force this out of them.

 

[nylonsteel]

What are these European carriers smoking - I may want some of it

 

[sinsin07]

in the UK, all the carriers have the iPhone so together they could back Apple into a corner.

Apple needs a network, or it goes back to £500 a handset and by comparison with now they sell ZERO phones.

No, Apple can simply say "No iPhone for you". Look at how they handle the music industry. Apple will survive without UK sales. It's just an island and not that relevant to iPhone success. Shoot, with the coffers Apple has they can buy the UK Is it for sale?. Apple may want to expand it's data center coverage overseas and the UK is just about the right size. Let me know and I'll drop Steve a line.

Now if it's China you're talking about, Apple can't afford to mess around there, to much potential. Europe, meh...

Case in point: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1061632/

 

[Strawbis]

I still don't think you guys get the gist of what the EU carriers are doing! All they want is more money, and they'll accept it from wherever they can get it - however they can get it.

much like the Oil Co's tell us there's an oil shortage so they'll have to charge more at the pumps ...the carriers are trying the same trick by capping data limits and charging for excess usage.

There is no bandwidth shortage - they just want everyone to think there is so they can charge more.

If these third world countries can't handle the traffic why are the offering smartphones?

all of your best Scientists & Inventors are\were either African or European.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

...and the French are taking water from the great lakes to send to china and sell back to us. The EU should pay the several trillion we need for the U.S infrastructure.

 

[fortunecookie]

Yeah! Bring back the tigh-jeaned college girls! Lol! Honestly its not apple's problem if the network engineers of some carriers do not know how to properly manage their network.

 

[CFreymarc]

If you can't cope with the contracts you have signed, don't do deals with Apple and HTC to offer their handsets.

Sounds like someone is trying a lame attempt to sandbag Apple. My guess is that some EU / European academic types are trying to cook up a competitor OS that will have the classic euro-sterility and as much flavor as cardboard. This is not going to work.

Can't take the iPhone on your network, others will. It is only a matter of a decade or so for economic cell phones working off orbital satellites and cell towers go they way of land lines. Why you think the analog TV channel frequencies were freed up?

 

[firewood]

Just another attempt from organizations with political connections trying to extract money from other companies with deeper pockets. Make up some bogus justification and then try to brib^H^H^H/influence the politicians. Nothing else to see. Move along.

 

[macintoshtoffy]

I can't believe there are people whining about tiered internet - for me I've got it on my ADSL and mobile broadband and quite honest I'd sooner have that which enables me to pay for what I use rather than being charged a flat rate no matter how much (or little) I utilise it. Sure I moan about it on occasions but that has to do with the tiers not being high enough rather than a protest against the concept of tiered internet per-say.

As for the data vampires out there, there is a limited about of space on the spectrum, there is no such thing as a free lunch so either you're going have your service throttled or you're going to have to pay per megabyte. I tend to find that those who do cry about 'flat rate' don't either have a clue about business or how technology operates - that some how if you wave a dead chicken about the equipment then all laws of physics suddenly disappoint and 'teh fasty' comes rushing down the frequency.

 

[AzN1337c0d3r]

Does anyone notice that this story carries a striking similarity between the spat between Comcast and Level3 not too long ago?

http://www.level3.com/index.cfm?pageID=491&PR=962

TLDR:

Comcast (a Tier 2 network) wants to charge Level3 (a Tier 1 network, which by definition, does not pay for peering) money to transfer data across its networks even though it is Comcast's customers that requested that content in the first place.

 

[r-m]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8B117)

Isn't this like asking Samsung to pay for tv broadcasts because of the amount of content displayed on their panels in a wide range of TVs by other brands?

 

[OllyW]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8B117)

Isn't this like asking Samsung to pay for tv broadcasts because of the amount of content displayed on their panels in a wide range of TVs by other brands?

No, they aren't asking the handset manufacturers to pay because their devices are receiving data, they are asking the content providers to pay for delivering their data.

It's not the same.

 

[macintoshtoffy]

No, they aren't asking the handset manufacturers to pay because their devices are receiving data, they are asking the content providers to pay for delivering their data.

It's not the same.

The content providers are already paying for the delivery; they pay for a connection to the internet and the company they pay money to pay for the upstream connections, and those upstream organisations pay other upstream organisations. It is a giant money go round and the content providers have well and truly paid for the cost of their date to be delivered.

Using your nobel prizing winning rocket science logic people should be charged 5 cents per email.

 

[OllyW]

The content providers are already paying for the delivery; they pay for a connection to the internet and the company they pay money to pay for the upstream connections, and those upstream organisations pay other upstream organisations. It is a giant money go round and the content providers have well and truly paid for the cost of their date to be delivered.

Using your nobel prizing winning rocket science logic people should be charged 5 cents per email.

No need for the snarky comments. I actually bothered to read the Bloomberg article and I was just stating what they said. As often happens here, the MacRumors headline piece isn't an accurate representation of the article they have linked to.

As mobile and Web companies add videos, music and games, operators including France Telecom SA, Telecom Italia SpA and Vodafone Group Plc want a new deal that would require content providers like Apple and Google to pay fees linked to usage.

And I made no comments saying I agreed with their demands. I was just saying it was nothing like charging a TV set manufacturer for receiving TV broadcasts.

 

[chris975d]

This would be roughly tantamount to a demand that Burger King pay for my angioplasty.

You KNEW the phone was going to be high traffic. If you don't want to put the strain on your network, don't offer the phone. Hell the iphone 4 is the easiest of all: don't create micro sims for it, period.

You can't have your cake and eat it too: you want the most popular phones in the world on your network, then you better have the network to back it up. If you're unwilling to build up your network to meet the needs of smartphone users, then just continue to offer the motorola razor and add the jitterbug to your list of available devices.

Exactly! Good post bighabeeb (and the others who've said the same thing). The carriers CHOSE to offer the iPhone, and should have at least anticipated the traffic it'd bring. Hell...afterall, it's a desirable handset, or else the carrier wouldn't be wanting to offer it in the first place. Also, The carriers chose the prices they are charging customers for data, if that wasn't enough sustain and improve their network, then why in the hell did they decide on that price? None of this has anything to do with Apple/Google, etc. It's all due to the fat cats at the heads of these carriers not having enough insight into where mobile tech is going and how to successfully run a profitable company.

To me, it sounds like the solution for the carriers would be to just offer a reasonable "pay as you go" data plan and that's it. Like many have said, similar to electricity usage. But the fee needs to be REASONABLE. Sure the subscribers would bitch at first, but it's going to have to go this way eventually. I think the biggest problem is that no carrier wants to be the first to go to it, because all other carriers would hold out on doing it at that point, hoping to steal customers away from said "first company to switch to the new plans" as their customers balk at the new pricing.

 

[orfeas0]

i say google should pay a fee on ISPs because of their youtube service, so much traffic .
ill be so glad if a good torrent application hit the shelves of appstore (at least cydia) or android store. then spam those networks of vodafone and att

 

[goosnarrggh]

Apple allowed tethering starting iOS 4.0. This means Apple purposely disabled tethering before iOS 4.0. On the other hand, Google Android OS never disabled tethering.

Irrelevant. Neither Apple nor Google should be responsible for subsidizing the carriers' unsustainable business practices.

The carriers should charge their customers the true cost of providing service. It's as simple as that.

Furthermore, if the network has truly oversold its capacity, then customers whose usage is more taxing on the network should pay more than customers whose usage is less taxing -- If a resource is scarce, and customer A uses more of that resource than customer B, then A should pay more than B.

It really doesn't matter what methods customer A is using to rack up all their data usage -- be it tethering, streaming HD movies, or whatever else -- the bottom line is, it's the customer who's choosing to consume more, so it's the customer who should be responsible for paying more.