
Italy wants Whatsapp to pay for operators' lost revenue - kimi
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=it&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.repubblica.it%2Feconomia%2F2016%2F06%2F28%2Fnews%2Fagcom_whatsapp_e_le_app_di_messaggistica_paghino_l_uso_della_rete_telefonica_-142965748%2F%3Fref%3DHREC1-2&edit-text=
======
MrBra
The subject wanting this is "Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni"
(Authority for Communications Guarantees) which is the regulator and
competition authority for the communication industries in Italy.

They say:

> To compensate the TLC companies, the TLC companies could be allowed to
> collect money from the customers wallet (phone credit). [...] Or maybe
> (those messaging apps) should just avoid the Italian market.

This is just primitive and retrograde, I can't believe I am reading this.

All they are doing is making the interest of TLC companies which in Italy have
a long and repeating history of charging the users with unjustified costs.

In Italy, not so long ago, there was just one national (country ran) TLC
company (SIP) which at the time had almost prohibitive costs for connecting to
the Internet and using it in a continuative way.

After the market became private, competitors arose and prices started to fall
but they never got as cheap as the most developed countries because one of
companies (the once country ran one called SIP then renamed Telecom) is still
the only one responsible for the country-wide cabling and all the new
competitors have to pay for the renting of the cabling, so they all together
form a pole of interest that keep leveraging on the long-instilled mentality
in the consumers that they had to be subject to higher fees.

This sucks and it's just a "modern" attempt of re-balancing those TLC
companies profits on this same principle again after the coming of messaging
apps that had for once brought back a sane competition in the market.

~~~
kimi
It is interesting that you (as a customer) _pay_ for the privilege of having a
number assigned and for your data plan. They seem to forget this.

~~~
MrBra
Exactly, you are paying already for the data plan, but because this is getting
them less revenue compared to what they'd get if you didn't have a data plan,
they want to balance out by charging for the use of messaging apps. Crazy BS!

