Streaming and Tech Innovation
Competition policies make the streaming and cloud revolution possible. Main street businesses are migrating to the cloud in record numbers, and the streaming industry is investing billions into new, creative content—this is competition. INCOMPAS supports proposals that help strengthen the competition and innovation that is driving online demand and new broadband network builds.
INCOMPAS is also a leading voice for consumer access to the content and services of their choice. Strong net neutrality policies have brought more choice, faster speeds, and lower prices to consumers, and our members support an open internet based on these principles.
Countries around the world are looking at proposals to mandate new fees on streaming and online companies, which would require tech innovators to subsidize foreign internet service providers in order for end users to access the streaming, gaming, cloud, and other online content that they already pay their ISPs to access. New fees would harm upend the current flow of internet traffic, investment, and increase customer costs—harming the global internet ecosystem as we know it.
Tech companies are also investing billions of dollars every year in global internet infrastructure and services, which reduces network strain and costs for BIAS providers. An Analysys Mason Report found the following:
- Tech companies spent $883 billion on global internet infrastructure from 2011-2021. This is in addition to their investments in innovative content and applications.
- From 2018-2021, tech companies invested more than $120 billion annually, increasing their digital infrastructure investment over 50%.
- These investments bring traffic closer to end users, improve the quality of service, and save ISPs $5 billion to $6.4 billion annually.
- While traffic volumes have grown significantly, costs for ISPs have remained stable over time. As such, bandwidth usage does not increase costs for ISPs.
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