Tech roundup: Battle over traffic costs a threat to Brazil’s net neutrality?

When internet coverage reached nearly 90 percent of Brazilian households in 2021, data consumption surged. The latest Ericsson Mobility Report found that mobile traffic in Brazil grew by 33 percent between Q2 2022 and Q2 2023. But Big Tech companies and telecom companies now debate who will bear the cost of expanding the infrastructure needed to support all of this traffic.

State of play. At the opening of Futurecom, one of Brazil’s premier technology events, earlier this month, telecom operators and tech companies decided to do their dirty laundry in public.

The fight. Telecom companies argued they need higher profits to offset investments in expanding network capacity. On the other hand, Big Tech firms accused of causing data overload say they shouldn’t be blamed for the way consumers behave.

• Telecom operators insist on charging Big Tech for the excessive data traffic caused by these companies, which make up over 50 percent of all network traffic in Brazil.

State of play. Big Tech companies, including Netflix, Google, Meta, and Amazon, are primarily...