German Telco: Google Better Pay Up

It's not just U.S. telcos that are trying to extort money from Google and others for adequate bandwidth. Now the German telco Deutsche Telekom wants in on the action, saying that Google, eBay, Amazon and others should pay up. Reuters reports that Deutsche Telekom chief Kai-Uwe Ricke said of Google and other Web sites, "These companies need infrastructure. It cannot be that infrastructure providers like Telekom continue to invest, while others profit from it."

In other words, if Google and others don't pay for bandwidth, Deutsche Telekom will deny it to them.

The German company is merely following in the footsteps of AT&T, Verizon, and other U.S. telcos wanting to extort money from Web sites if those sites want adequate bandwidth.

The U.S. telcos are certainly arrogant, but Deutsche Telekom displays even more amazing chutzpah. In essence, Deutsche Telekom gets a kind of monopoly protection from the German government, and yet they still want to grab money from Web sites like Google.

In the U.S. the telcos have Congress in their back pocket, and may force through laws allowing cyberextortion. It sounds as if Germany will follow suit.