Pay to use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger? The operators welcome the idea of Italy
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The controversy is served and like everything that surrounds telephone operators and messaging services, once again it has a great impact. Can you imagine having to pay for using your mobile's messaging services? Well get ready, there's still more.
To put ourselves in the background we are going to take as a reference the idea that emerged in Italy and seen with good eyes in Spain. So much so that Spanish telephone operators have welcomed the idea of their Italian counterparts.
It has been Agcom, the body in charge of regulating in Italy everything that has to do with the operators that has thought: let's modify the laws so that the companies behind applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber and similar services from Apple (FaceTime), Facebook (Messenger) and Google (Hangouts) have to pay for the use they make of the networks offered by the operators .
An idea very much in the style of Cesar Alierta that is based on the criteria that these operators do not receive money from OTT services (_over the top_) and that therefore these companies should pay to use their networks. A topic that gives rise to a heated discussion, especially if we see his arguments:
This is what they think about it in Italy, which would bother us directly if it weren't because when seeing this position in Spain the operators have gone into ecstasy. Could we copy the Italian idea?
Imagine we all pay to send messages via WhatsApp, Telegram, FaceTime, Facebook Messenger, Hangouts…
Once all this has been seen, the operators that are most interested in joining to this idea are the ones expected by all. The big three, that is, Telefónica, Vodafone and Orange, which had this in mind for a long time. And now with the idea of Agcom, the old speech of the Spanish operators now acquires new validity. Two examples, one graphic on video, with a note of humor and the other in the form of some statements by José María Álvarez-Pallete, Chairman of Telefónica:
This is important, since a significant tar measure would have a necessary and forceful impact on users. The fact of
Debunking the myth
And the fact is that nothing ensures that this obligatory payment will guarantee a better service on the part of the operators. Basically, it is a question of remunerating the holders of the infrastructures and the owners of mobile numbering for the use of resources by third-party companies that have nothing to do with it and that, according to the operators, benefit from their million-dollar investments.
You just have to see how the operators have made an investment that is not at all consistent in their physical infrastructures depending on the growth experienced by the services telephony and internet, despite the fact that the data supply continues to grow. Network outages, the worst price-quality ratios in all of Europe, a fiber that reaches cities with a dropper, a 4G network that... well, why go on. And yet they want to charge more.
And is that the payment of these fees was going to compensate the source of income that comes directly from the users if they plummet when these services begin to be charged? Let's think that a hypothetical fee translates into a monthly fee for WhatsApp or Facebook MessengerI am sure that a good handful of users would unsubscribe or alternative options would appear that did not have to go through the box (I hope that email did not enter that package).
It would be like going back to prehistory and feeling that we are being deceived again, taken advantage of again, as was the case with SMS, a whole goose that laid the golden eggs for the operators that finally had its end. The truth is that this is only a possibility, but a weighty one, given the importance of the actors involved in it. A measure that, if true, affects you whether you use Windows Phone, Android or iOS, and that can cause a whole tsunami of information that we will have to be attentive to.
Via | The Economist
