Enlarge / Google’s Matt Brittin, president of EMEA Business and Operations, speaks at the Web Summit on November 9, 2017, in Lisbon, Portugal. (credit: Getty Images | Horacio Villalobos )
Big Tech companies shouldn’t have to pay for Internet service providers’ network-upgrade costs, a Google executive said today amid a push in Europe to have tech companies pay for broadband expansions and improvements.
“Introducing a sender-pays principle is not a new idea, and would upend many of the principles of the open Internet. These arguments are similar to those we heard 10 or more years ago and we have not seen new data that changes the situation,” said Matt Brittin, president of Google’s EMEA business and operations.
Brittin spoke today in a keynote panel at the Tech and Politics Forum presented by Financial Times and telecom lobby group ETNO. Google provided Ars with a copy of his prepared remarks.