A report commissioned by big tech's European lobbying arm warned upcoming legislation will make it easier for operators to charge network fees.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA Europe) took aim at the proposed Digital Networks Act (DNA) by saying a draft text pushes mandatory dispute resolution, giving telecom operators "a direct route to demand payments from online services ... [and] charge twice for the same internet traffic."

Specifically, a draft opinion of the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) published in June was said to bolster the "fair share" clause, which would see large traffic-generating platforms – such as CCIA members Amazon and Google – cover network infrastructure costs for European communication service providers (CSPs).

In a new study, CCIA Europe singled out four articles – Article 9.2, 191-193 – as stretching telecom-specific obligations "far beyond telecom operators" to include content delivery networks and private networks. It also warned of the vague nature of a proposed and voluntary "conciliation mechanism," citing a 36-month review clause would allow the European Commission (EC) to make it a mandatory one instead.

The body – which has long contested the fair share proposal – also claimed the DNA of overstating without providing evidence of the "broken" nature of the internet traffic exchange status quo. The CCIA has long argued cooperation exists between online service providers and telecom operators, rendering the arrangement redundant.

As an alternative, the tech lobby group proposed explicitly excluding content delivery networks (CDNs) and private networks from Article 9.2 and removing the conciliation mechanism outright. It added that any proposals for mandatory dispute resolution should be rejected outright, a stance it claimed was "widely shared" across the continent.

Maria Teresa Stecher, senior policy manager at CCIA Europe, commented: "Network fees were rejected repeatedly because they would hurt users and the open internet. Yet the Digital Networks Act text creates backdoors that bring them back through technical-sounding provisions most people will never read."

While U.S. tech giants may be biased toward the legislation, industry analysts such as Dean Bubley have dismissed the fair share clause as "ridiculous and ironically misnamed." Bubley made those comments when the clause appeared to have been dropped in January, only for it to appear again in the same month in another draft iteration of the act.

For European operators, the concept of an "internet traffic tax" may aid funding network expansion, efforts slowed by the industry hitting a peak in capex growth of $76 billion in 2022 following the end of 5G expansion.

Those same operators, though, have warned of European over-legislation, with Telefónica CEO Marc Murtra arguing at this year's Mobile World Congress event that Europe’s competitiveness hinges on regulatory frameworks that reward instead of "punish" calculated risk-taking.

Some experts claim legislation doesn't go far enough, especially when it comes to accountability for internet outages. Analyst John Strand argued that while Europe's CSPs face extensive regulation on reliability and public-interest duties, hyperscalers of the sort found in the CCIA operate with far less mandatory accountability, essentially giving the American giants a "free ride" on the continent.