The heads of Europe’s largest telecommunications companies are arguing that tech giants should help pay for new internet infrastructure, the Financial Times reported today.

The executives reportedly expressed their view in a joint letter addressed to members of the European Parliament. A copy will also be shared with the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch. The letter reportedly makes the case that the EU should compel tech giants to share the cost of internet infrastructure upgrades. 

The letter is signed by the chief executive officers of Orange SA, Deutsche Telekom AG, Telecom Italia SpA, Telefónica SA and BT Group plc. The five companies are the largest internet providers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K., respectively. More than a dozen other telecommunications CEOs have reportedly signed the letter as well.

Those other signatories are said to include the CEO of Vodafone Group plc, the U.K.’s second largest internet provider after BT. Later this year, Vodafone is expected to surpass BT as the U.K.’s top carrier thanks to a forthcoming merger with a competitor.

In their joint letter to EU lawmakers, the CEOs reportedly stated that the amount of data traffic flowing through their companies’ networks is increasing by 20% to 30% annually. They expect bandwidth usage to continue increasing for the foreseeable future. This traffic growth, the letter continued, is driven primarily by a handful of large tech firms.

The tech giants in question pay “almost nothing for data transport in our networks,” the CEOs wrote. The letter goes on to argue that the EU should create a mechanism through which additional fees can be collected from tech giants. The signatories say those fees are necessary to facilitate future investments in internet infrastructure. 

“Future investments are under serious pressure and regulatory action is needed to secure them,” the letter states. “A fair and proportionate contribution from the largest traffic generators towards the costs of network infrastructure should form the basis of a new approach.”

The letter comes eight months after the European Commission launched a consultation to explore the future of bloc’s internet infrastructure. The EU has set a goal of making gigabit connectivity, or internet packages that offer speeds of at least 1 gigabit per second, available to every household and business by 2030. In the same time frame, officials hope to make 5G wireless connectivity broadly available to users.

The EU estimates that reaching those goals will require about €200 billion in investments. Worldwide, internet providers have already spent more than $100 billion to deploy 5G infrastructure. 

Tech industry group CCIA Europe has pushed back against the telecommunications CEOs’ letter. Daniel Friedlaender, the head of the group, told the Financial Times that carriers in the EU have “grown thanks to exciting content and services developed by creative and tech firm.”

According to the publication, industry groups previously argued that tech giants are already investing in internet infrastructure. They pointed out the subsea internet cables that Google LLC and Meta Platforms Inc. have built over the past few years. Microsoft Corp. has also made investments in this area.

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