'"Europe's telecoms operators are facing decreasing revenues ... compared with operators in the U.S. and Asia," said the GSM Association, an industry group for mobile phone companies. In a statement signed by director Anne Bouverot, the group said European laws are "impairing their ability to invest in the infrastructure required to put Europe back on the path to growth and jobs."'
TeliaSonera: 1.69 billion euros in profit out of a 2.99 billion euro revenue (2013)
I'm having trouble believing those numbers. I found a source that agrees with you [1] but Bloomberg charts show only a ~10% profit margin. [2] I wonder if the reporter in [1] confused annual revenue with quarterly revenue from this Bloomberg article. [3]
EDIT: The reporter in [1] isn't wrong, but people misreading the first paragraph is probably the source of the confusion spreading across the Internet. Read down a few paragraphs and they compare 4th quarter net profit to 4th quarter revenue, which is roughly 10%.
Also, here is the profit & loss statement from 2013. [4] Annual revenue is about 104 billion kronor, net income is about 15 billion kronor.
>"Europe's telecoms operators are facing decreasing revenues ... compared with operators in the U.S. and Asia,"
Because decisions on regulation should always have the goal of preserving the existing business models of middlemen:)
It's an important truth with a lot of implications for the wealth of nations that wages are sticky on the way down; should we devote as much study to the fact that modern governments don't believe that any regulation should be allowed to make the overall system more efficient?
The responsibility of the financial services are to allocate the utilization of resources between ventures that would produce more resources, and of course they as an industry find that 40% of that would be best allocated to themselves.
The responsibility of government is to facilitate interactions between people by providing rules, and guaranteeing that other actors that can facilitate that interaction be distributed efficiently within the system, and have to operate at a minimum quality standard. It has also taken on the duty of handing money to any rent-seeker whose actual facilitation function has become obsolete in the face of technology and other productivity gains.
This adds up to a situation where the financial industry and the state conspire to make sure that no productivity gains reach any individual either not in the financial services, or who doesn't represent a scarce resource required by rent seekers, i.e. mechanics of ways to obstruct interaction between individuals.
My only hope is that the inevitable slowdown in productivity that will come as the benefits of the Internet peter out (and by the repetition of identical siloed communication tools as a business model, that time is nigh) will force societies to eliminate these generalized inefficiencies just to keep up with population growth. We're seeing how that's going to play out right now in health care, education, and housing.
Sorry for typing this excerpt of my endless rant:)
Yes... because companies with high profits hire more people... not.
You only ever hire when you need more people and if you're making tonnes of money it means your network is OK compared to everyone else and you don't need to invest more.
I think they will be more motivated now that the roaming cash cow is gone.
I generally dislike telecom companies, but to be fair, the spokesperson said "decreasing revenues", not "paltry revenues", and said nothing about profit.
> mobile carrier industry body the GSMA said it “recognises the efforts of Rapporteur Pilar del Castillo to develop a constructive response to the Commission’s Connected Continent proposals but believes that the overall package fails to address the key challenge of stimulating growth and investment.”
I'll take that as a ringing endorsement and a strong sign that the net neutrality law is good for consumers. Good job on writing these amendments and getting them to pass, left-wing MEPs!
I think the EU is getting an amazing amount of work done, if you consider that it consists of 28 nation states which went to war with each other regularly for centuries up to a couple of decades ago...
Agreed. Problems are now more within the states, like in spain/basque/catalonia uk/scotland, belgium, etc. and the hongarian racists, and italy-greek state corruption.
The EU has only existed for a couple of decades. To suggest that the EU is a reason we haven't had any wars recently is ridiculous, yet it gets trotted out time and time again by pro europeans. It's as scientific as saying vaccinations probably cause autism.
Also, the EU is not getting much useful done considering the millions that pour into it daily. The level of waste and bureaucracy is staggering. Moving the entire parliament between locations, the amount of money wasted in translating every document into every language, and so on.
The EU is obsessed with micromanaging every little detail of our lives. From regulations on fruit to banning things like light bulbs and vacuum cleaners. And the less said about the absolutely ridiculous nightmare that is "cookie law" the better. No one should be creating laws on what websites are allowed to do with cookies.
Thankfully the UK will not be part of the EU for too much longer. I give it 5 years at the most. (See the landslide win by UKIP in the debates this week).
If that doesn't happen, you can be pretty sure there will be wars in europe. Unchecked mass immigration tends to end up badly.
These are great news, I am a big supporter for net neutrality, however I am a bit concerned about one small detail:
>“Net neutrality” means the principle according to which all internet traffic is treated equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independently of its sender, recipient, type, content, device, service or application.
I wonder how this will work in case of malicious attacks, ddos, disruptive requests and packets/connections with the sole purpose of disrupting the normal usage of the net. Blocking these at isp level is not a bad idea, but how deep does this rabbit hole go?
It was a close call... Neelie Kroes didn't want this. But against expectations, democracy won.. That doesn't happen much in the world (Eg. What Karel De Gucht tried / did ).
All with all, i'm very glad this happened! It gave me some faith again in Europe as a regulator (i'm from Belgium ).
(still dissappointed in Neelie Kroes though, she has some very good ideas... Opposing net neutrality was definetly a bad idea)
- Transforming libraries in hackerspaces (this is one of the best ideas i ever came accross)
- Removing roaming (expensive cell phone calls in foreign countries, but in Europe, we are all different countries. 9000 € for checking your mail and etc... was not an exception). Some people who regulary stay in foreign countries (work, business, long vacation, .. get a mobile subscription in that country, so they would have 2 phone numbers). But this should be fixed in 2016 (still a long time though)
I wouldn't give too much on this just yet. From the information in the article I can't tell if the word "strong" is correct for what was passed today.
If anything, an indicator that Neelie Kroes is happy with the result might point to a weak law that won't help net neutrality at all. We might not have the "Specialised services" part in there anymore. Yet, let's wait until the dust settles and some people have read the complete text before we celebrate.
Also, as we speak, the text that didn't make it might already have been inserted in the US-EU trade agreement that is discussed behind closed doors at the moment. Wouldn't be the first time that the same words were dismissed first and than added in a different law. ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) was dismissed and then added to a treaty between the EU and Canada.
> If anything, an indicator that Neelie Kroes is happy with the result might point to a weak law that won't help net neutrality at all.
At this point she has no choice. She can't lament the passing of a law she initiated herself. I wouldn't put too much stock into it.
> Also, as we speak, the text that didn't make it might already have been inserted in the US-EU trade agreement that is discussed behind closed doors at the moment.
Obviously, the industry is not going to give up without a fight. The price of net neutrality is eternal vigilance and all that.
Would you elaborate on your final paragraph, please? I wasn't aware of either a closed-door US-EU trade agreement in the works, or any back room ACTA-style deal in a Canada-EU treaty.
Well then, finally a point to prove to anti-EU activists (UK: UKIP, DE: AfD, etc.) why having the European Union actually is important and the European Parliament isn't just a paper tiger regulating the population to death.
(Granted, most European laws ARE regulation to death, but this is a good starting point...)
I'm so happy how Andersdotter/@teirdes has arrived in Brussels. She is already "e-communications" spokesperson for the Greens/EFA group in the EP: http://www.greens-efa.eu/electronic-communications-12163.htm... and I believe that they have a very powerful collaboration on privacy and other pirate issues
I think this can also be taken as good news in the US. Passing these laws makes Europe a very attractive place to put an internet service.
It may be wishful thinking, but my hope is that this form of international competition motivates US legislators to pass similar net-neutrality laws to keep from losing start-ups and tech companies to Europe.
Roaming charges: I predict the telecomms will be increasing their general charges to make good losses on roaming.
"Infrastructure and spectrum are expensive, and these costs need to be recouped somehow. Right now, the mobile operators are a bit stuck into low domestic data prices. So the money has to be clawed back from roaming customers instead".
The reversal of this policy will mean that the non-traveling public will subsidize travelers. Great for those voting and attending the EU Parliament among others. Not so hot for the rest.
Possible, but I would say it will rather create a much fiercer competition: Differences between domestic rates and non-domestic rates are what kept the European Telecoms market from becoming truly European. As a German, the only viable option if I am spending most my time within Germany was to go with a German carrier. Now with the removal of roaming charges, the EU becomes the domestic market and in principle I could shop around other EU countries to find the best deal. Austria for example has some really good deals, so maybe I will go with a carrier from there. And with SEPA even billing should not be an issue.
The other (intended) thing this will spur is further consolidation of the EU Telecoms market as there will suddenly be a much larger number of competing players on the market. As I said, in principle Austrian Telecoms are now for the first time directly competing for customers with Spanish Telecoms in Germany, so I guess we'll see a lot more mergers in the close future. Which might turn out to be anticompetitive in the long run, mind.
> The reversal of this policy will mean that the non-traveling public will subsidize travelers. Great for those voting and attending the EU Parliament among others. Not so hot for the rest.
Am... not really. It just means that the travelling public won't subsidize the locals, i.e. that everybody will pay as much as they use.
Also, I don't believe that infrastructure is expensive (once it is set up), and in any case, if either the infrastructure or the spectrum become too expensive, the governments can nationalize the infrastructure and offer it for rent to multiple carriers (so that competing carriers don't need to build their own infrastructure - some countries already do that), and/or reduce the spectrum prices.
A couple of popular acts emanating from the EU parliament just recently.
Couldn't be anything to do with the European parliament elections coming up this summer could it?
Our local MEP was on radio claiming credit for the smartphone recharger harmonization measure just recently. When queried about loopholes in the act that effectively allow manufacturers to sidestep the issue she revealed herself to be clueless.
Well, based on that quote they can throttle what they want - but they have to do it equally across all similar applications. So for example they can't throttle Youtube and not throttle Netflix - they have to throttle both (or neither).
Why do I get the feeling that most of these comments are basically pointing out faults in EU instead of the news itself which is of great relevancy to all of us.
I understand the audience here is mostly American but shouldn't we really by cheering this achievement and try to convince US senators to follow the lead?
US is the one who is behind right now. Neutrally speaking.
If we didn't already have such a shoddy history with national telecoms (and other infrastructure company), I would be in favor of them.
It's so unsatisfying to think that this ugly government in bed with big oligopolies, regulators, lobbying and nonsense could be the optimal solution. yuck.
[+] [-] johansch|12 years ago|reply
'"Europe's telecoms operators are facing decreasing revenues ... compared with operators in the U.S. and Asia," said the GSM Association, an industry group for mobile phone companies. In a statement signed by director Anne Bouverot, the group said European laws are "impairing their ability to invest in the infrastructure required to put Europe back on the path to growth and jobs."'
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/european-parliame...
One example of these "poor companies":
TeliaSonera: 1.69 billion euros in profit out of a 2.99 billion euro revenue (2013)
Edit: Sorry, yearly revenue was about 11.6 billion euro.
[+] [-] danielweber|12 years ago|reply
I'm having trouble believing those numbers. I found a source that agrees with you [1] but Bloomberg charts show only a ~10% profit margin. [2] I wonder if the reporter in [1] confused annual revenue with quarterly revenue from this Bloomberg article. [3]
EDIT: The reporter in [1] isn't wrong, but people misreading the first paragraph is probably the source of the confusion spreading across the Internet. Read down a few paragraphs and they compare 4th quarter net profit to 4th quarter revenue, which is roughly 10%.
Also, here is the profit & loss statement from 2013. [4] Annual revenue is about 104 billion kronor, net income is about 15 billion kronor.
[1] http://www.thelocal.se/20140130/beleaguered-teliasonera-took...
[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/TLSN:SS
[3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-30/teliasonera-profit-...
[4] http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Financials...
[+] [-] pessimizer|12 years ago|reply
Because decisions on regulation should always have the goal of preserving the existing business models of middlemen:)
It's an important truth with a lot of implications for the wealth of nations that wages are sticky on the way down; should we devote as much study to the fact that modern governments don't believe that any regulation should be allowed to make the overall system more efficient?
The responsibility of the financial services are to allocate the utilization of resources between ventures that would produce more resources, and of course they as an industry find that 40% of that would be best allocated to themselves.
The responsibility of government is to facilitate interactions between people by providing rules, and guaranteeing that other actors that can facilitate that interaction be distributed efficiently within the system, and have to operate at a minimum quality standard. It has also taken on the duty of handing money to any rent-seeker whose actual facilitation function has become obsolete in the face of technology and other productivity gains.
This adds up to a situation where the financial industry and the state conspire to make sure that no productivity gains reach any individual either not in the financial services, or who doesn't represent a scarce resource required by rent seekers, i.e. mechanics of ways to obstruct interaction between individuals.
My only hope is that the inevitable slowdown in productivity that will come as the benefits of the Internet peter out (and by the repetition of identical siloed communication tools as a business model, that time is nigh) will force societies to eliminate these generalized inefficiencies just to keep up with population growth. We're seeing how that's going to play out right now in health care, education, and housing.
Sorry for typing this excerpt of my endless rant:)
[+] [-] Fuxy|12 years ago|reply
You only ever hire when you need more people and if you're making tonnes of money it means your network is OK compared to everyone else and you don't need to invest more.
I think they will be more motivated now that the roaming cash cow is gone.
[+] [-] Nux|12 years ago|reply
I guess we need even more competition to drive these dinosaurs a bit out of business.
It's the USA and ASIA that should follow Europe, not the other way around.
[+] [-] briandh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mercurial|12 years ago|reply
I'll take that as a ringing endorsement and a strong sign that the net neutrality law is good for consumers. Good job on writing these amendments and getting them to pass, left-wing MEPs!
[+] [-] timthorn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bayesianhorse|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Systemic33|12 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark%E2%80%93Sweden_relation...
[+] [-] Ihmahr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bananas|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmanser|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voicereasonish|12 years ago|reply
Also, the EU is not getting much useful done considering the millions that pour into it daily. The level of waste and bureaucracy is staggering. Moving the entire parliament between locations, the amount of money wasted in translating every document into every language, and so on.
The EU is obsessed with micromanaging every little detail of our lives. From regulations on fruit to banning things like light bulbs and vacuum cleaners. And the less said about the absolutely ridiculous nightmare that is "cookie law" the better. No one should be creating laws on what websites are allowed to do with cookies.
Thankfully the UK will not be part of the EU for too much longer. I give it 5 years at the most. (See the landslide win by UKIP in the debates this week).
If that doesn't happen, you can be pretty sure there will be wars in europe. Unchecked mass immigration tends to end up badly.
[+] [-] Morgawr|12 years ago|reply
>“Net neutrality” means the principle according to which all internet traffic is treated equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independently of its sender, recipient, type, content, device, service or application.
I wonder how this will work in case of malicious attacks, ddos, disruptive requests and packets/connections with the sole purpose of disrupting the normal usage of the net. Blocking these at isp level is not a bad idea, but how deep does this rabbit hole go?
[+] [-] belorn|12 years ago|reply
a) implement a court order;
b) preserve the integrity and security of the network, services provided via this network, and the end-users' terminals;
- http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...
[+] [-] MatthewWilkes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NicoJuicy|12 years ago|reply
All with all, i'm very glad this happened! It gave me some faith again in Europe as a regulator (i'm from Belgium ).
(still dissappointed in Neelie Kroes though, she has some very good ideas... Opposing net neutrality was definetly a bad idea)
[+] [-] NicoJuicy|12 years ago|reply
- Transforming libraries in hackerspaces (this is one of the best ideas i ever came accross)
- Removing roaming (expensive cell phone calls in foreign countries, but in Europe, we are all different countries. 9000 € for checking your mail and etc... was not an exception). Some people who regulary stay in foreign countries (work, business, long vacation, .. get a mobile subscription in that country, so they would have 2 phone numbers). But this should be fixed in 2016 (still a long time though)
- PRO net neutrality (some years ago, currently she changed her opinion for an unknown reason : http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/kroes/en/blog/netne... )
[+] [-] hendrik-xdest|12 years ago|reply
If anything, an indicator that Neelie Kroes is happy with the result might point to a weak law that won't help net neutrality at all. We might not have the "Specialised services" part in there anymore. Yet, let's wait until the dust settles and some people have read the complete text before we celebrate.
Also, as we speak, the text that didn't make it might already have been inserted in the US-EU trade agreement that is discussed behind closed doors at the moment. Wouldn't be the first time that the same words were dismissed first and than added in a different law. ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) was dismissed and then added to a treaty between the EU and Canada.
[+] [-] mercurial|12 years ago|reply
At this point she has no choice. She can't lament the passing of a law she initiated herself. I wouldn't put too much stock into it.
> Also, as we speak, the text that didn't make it might already have been inserted in the US-EU trade agreement that is discussed behind closed doors at the moment.
Obviously, the industry is not going to give up without a fight. The price of net neutrality is eternal vigilance and all that.
[+] [-] Silhouette|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschuster91|12 years ago|reply
(Granted, most European laws ARE regulation to death, but this is a good starting point...)
[+] [-] kzrdude|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mercurial|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcfrei|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thisiswrong|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abvdasker|12 years ago|reply
It may be wishful thinking, but my hope is that this form of international competition motivates US legislators to pass similar net-neutrality laws to keep from losing start-ups and tech companies to Europe.
[+] [-] vixen99|12 years ago|reply
"Infrastructure and spectrum are expensive, and these costs need to be recouped somehow. Right now, the mobile operators are a bit stuck into low domestic data prices. So the money has to be clawed back from roaming customers instead".
The reversal of this policy will mean that the non-traveling public will subsidize travelers. Great for those voting and attending the EU Parliament among others. Not so hot for the rest.
[+] [-] sveme|12 years ago|reply
The other (intended) thing this will spur is further consolidation of the EU Telecoms market as there will suddenly be a much larger number of competing players on the market. As I said, in principle Austrian Telecoms are now for the first time directly competing for customers with Spanish Telecoms in Germany, so I guess we'll see a lot more mergers in the close future. Which might turn out to be anticompetitive in the long run, mind.
[+] [-] tomp|12 years ago|reply
Am... not really. It just means that the travelling public won't subsidize the locals, i.e. that everybody will pay as much as they use.
Also, I don't believe that infrastructure is expensive (once it is set up), and in any case, if either the infrastructure or the spectrum become too expensive, the governments can nationalize the infrastructure and offer it for rent to multiple carriers (so that competing carriers don't need to build their own infrastructure - some countries already do that), and/or reduce the spectrum prices.
[+] [-] barking|12 years ago|reply
Couldn't be anything to do with the European parliament elections coming up this summer could it?
Our local MEP was on radio claiming credit for the smartphone recharger harmonization measure just recently. When queried about loopholes in the act that effectively allow manufacturers to sidestep the issue she revealed herself to be clueless.
[+] [-] thomasahle|12 years ago|reply
This means they can still throttle torrents, right?
[+] [-] belorn|12 years ago|reply
a) Reasonable,
b) transparent,
c) non-discriminatory of that traffic type,
d) there is temporary and exceptional network congestion,
e) measure is not be maintained longer than necessary.
If all those are true they may throttle torrents. A key word here is transparent, since few ISP even admit that they throttle traffic.
[+] [-] Bulk70|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpeel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _asciiker_|12 years ago|reply
I understand the audience here is mostly American but shouldn't we really by cheering this achievement and try to convince US senators to follow the lead?
US is the one who is behind right now. Neutrally speaking.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] netcan|12 years ago|reply
It's so unsatisfying to think that this ugly government in bed with big oligopolies, regulators, lobbying and nonsense could be the optimal solution. yuck.
[+] [-] contulluipeste|12 years ago|reply
...anyway, I'm just glad and thankful to be born in Europe!
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stcredzero|12 years ago|reply