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Telia internet dispute: ‘No end in sight’

Internet traffic between Sweden’s TeliaSonera and US-based Cogent Communications has been cut off for more than ten days and both sides point fingers at one another while customers continue to suffer.

Telia internet dispute: 'No end in sight'

“It’s an unfortunate situation which we hope we can resolve, both for the sake of our customers and those of Telia,” said Cogent CEO Dave Schaffer to The Local.

Facts are hard to come by in the dispute, with both internet providers offering starkly different versions of why the relationship went sour.

Citing emails from “someone high up in Telia”, Schaffer claims that TeliaSonera “made a conscious decision” to ignore warnings from Cogent that it was failing to provide adequate connectivity points for the exchange of information between the two companies’ customers.

As a result, said Schaffer, internet traffic between Cogent’s European customers was often re-routed all the way to the US and back, causing delays and disrupting customers’ ability to access certain websites.

His company decided to cut off internet communications with TeliaSonera on March 13th rather than continue to provide Cogent customers with a “degraded” internet experience.

But the move caught TeliaSonera and its customers off guard.

“It was quite a surprise to us,” said TeliaSonera spokesperson Maria Hillborg to The Local.

As a result of the move, many of TeliaSonera’s customers in the Nordic region have limited or no connectivity to websites hosted by Cogent, such as YouTube.

Hillborg had no clear answers as to what TeliaSonera may have done to upset Cogent, explaining instead that Cogent unilaterally cut off access in the middle of ongoing discussions between the two companies about “the future terms and conditions governing our relationship.”

“We are still in discussions about are future relationship, but I’d prefer that the details remain between us and Cogent,” she said.

Schaffer contends, however, that no “substantive” discussions have taken place since the cut off, and he sees no reason to believe that the situation will be resolved anytime soon.

“The decision of whether or not to move forward is up to TeliaSonera,” he said.

“We are willing and ready to honour the contract that was in place.”

Following Cogent’s decision, TeliaSonera released a statement to customers explaining why they were having trouble connecting to certain sites and blaming Cogent for escalating the dispute.

“Prior to Cogent’s abrupt decision to sever connectivity, TeliaSonera had rejected Cogent’s alleged breach of contract claim and explained TeliaSonera’s belief that Cogent had failed to satisfy certain contractual requirements. Cogent, in turn, responded to this impasse by disconnecting all connectivity with TeliaSonera,” said the statement.

But Cogent’s CEO insists that TeliaSonera consciously refused to honour the terms of an agreement between the two companies as a response to Cogent’s decision to expand into markets TeliaSonera considers its own.

“I firmly believe they’re attempting to keep us out of the Nordics and eastern Europe,” said Schaffer, noting that the troubles began shortly after Cogent announced expansions into markets TeliaSonera considered its home turf.

While the dispute has resulted in many TeliaSonera customers being left with an inferior internet experience, Schaffer claims that customers in some of TeliaSonera’s markets are happy to see Cogent take on Sweden’s formerly state-owned telecom operator.

“I got an email from a Telia customer in eastern Europe who said he was thrilled that the Telia mafia was finally on its way to being broken,” he said.

INTERNET

EU greenlights €200M for Spain to bring super fast internet speeds to rural areas

Brussels has approved a plan which will bring high-speed broadband internet to the almost 1 in 10 people in Spain who live in underpopulated rural areas with poor connections, a way of also encouraging remote workers to move to dying villages. 

EU greenlights €200M for Spain to bring super fast internet speeds to rural areas
The medieval village of Banduxo in Asturias. Photo: Guillermo Alvarez/Pixabay

The European Commission has given Spain the green light to use €200 million of the funds allocated to the country through the Next Generation recovery plan to offer internet speeds of up to 300 Mbps (scalable to 1Gb per second) to rural areas with slow internet connections. 

According to Brussels, this measure will help guarantee download speeds of more than 100 Mbps for 100 percent of the Spanish population in 2025.

Around 8 percent of Spain’s population live in areas where speeds above 100Mbs are not available, mostly in the 6,800 countryside villages in Spain that have fewer than 5,000 inhabitants.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to travel to Madrid on Wednesday June 16th to hand over to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez the approved reform plan for Spain. 

Back in April, Spain outlined its Recovery and Resilience plan aimed at revitalising and modernising the Spanish economy following the coronavirus crisis, with €72 billion in EU grants over the next two years.

This includes green investments in energy transition and housing, boosting science and technology education and digital projects such as the fast-speed internet project which aims to avoid depopulation in rural areas. 

It’s worth noting that these plans set out €4.3 billion for broadband internet and 5G mobile network projects in rural areas in Spain, so this initial investment should be the first of many.

Over the past 50 years, Spain’s countryside has lost 28 percent of its population as Spaniards left to find jobs in the big cities. 

The gap has been widening ever since, local services and connections with the developed cities have worsened, and there are thousands of villages which have either been completely abandoned or are at risk of dying out. 

READ MORE:

How Spaniards are helping to save the country’s 4,200 villages at risk of extinction

rural depopulation spain

The pandemic has seen a considerable number of city dwellers in Spain move or consider a move to the countryside to gain space, peace and quiet and enjoy a less stressful life, especially as the advent of remote working in Spain can allow for this. 

Addressing the issue of poor internet connections is one of the best incentives for digital workers to move to the countryside, bringing with them their families, more business and a new lease of life for Spain’s villages.

READ ALSO:

Nine things you should know before moving to rural Spain

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