Big tech wins in Europe

Hey there, it’s Jillian in Brussels. Broadband companies in Europe wanted to get paid. But first...Three things you need to know today:• Ama [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hey there, it’s Jillian in Brussels. Broadband companies in Europe wanted to get paid. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Amazon cut [jobs in its audio unit]( • Airbnb rolled out [AI tools in its app]( • Microsoft is [targeting deepfakes]( Fare-thee-well Early this year it looked as though Europe had a [good chance]( of tipping the scales in favor of local telecommunications companies and away from big tech. A concept promoted by telecoms called [fair share]( was gaining traction in the European Commission, and top officials had promised to introduce a law before their terms end in 2024. That is now off the table. Brussels [won’t publish]( a legislative proposal on fair share, which would have asked web companies to pay internet service providers. It’s going to be up to the next commission to decide after a new group takes over in 2025. The consolation prize will be a white paper written by the current commission and the hope that the next one will propose a Digital Networks Act, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has said. The changing political climate cast a cloud over a Brussels telecom conference this week. The chief executive officer of Deutsche Telekom AG, the most successful European telco thanks largely to its majority stake in T-Mobile in the US, rattled off a litany of grievances with the European market: too much competition, no consolidation, enormous bureaucracy — and no fair share. “I’m very pessimistic that Europe will play a significant role in the digital age,” said Timotheus Höttges, the CEO. The idea of fair share was [always controversial](. It created unusual bedfellows among [big tech companies]( and digital rights groups, which both opposed the policy for different reasons. They agree that it serves as a threat to net neutrality, something the telecoms dispute. Even commission officials who liked the idea in principle haven’t agreed on how to make it work in practice. And no one knew how to address the fact that fair share risked raising prices for consumers. This all came to a head at a meeting of national ministers in June in Luxembourg where many European countries came out against fair share. There, and increasingly since then, Breton has talked more about other issues limiting telecom companies’ growth than fair share. As much as telecos have promoted fair share over the last year, what they most want is to be able to buy one another. So the change in focus from Breton may actually be a good thing. The stat frequently repeated at this week’s conference is that there are four mobile operators in Luxembourg, a nation of around 650,000 people. The US has three. It’s uncertain what the next commission will actually do to change the picture. Christel Heydemann, the CEO of France’s Orange SA, said she didn’t want to wait two years for change. “How many operators will be acquired by foreign investors or be split?” she asked. “Time is of the essence.” The company is currently trying to get European approval for a closely watched merger in Spain. José María Álvarez-Pallete, the CEO of Spain’s Telefonica SA, has spent much of the last year touring Europe gathering support for fair share. He told investors Wednesday that he’s now “triggered” by the phrase. Then he shifted to a different policy priority. “We are asking for a total deregulation,” he said. “It makes no sense for us to be regulated in the same way as when we were a copper monopoly 30 years ago.” —[Jillian Deutsch](mailto:jdeutsch24@bloomberg.net), with Clara Hernanz Lizarraga The big story JetZero is a new aviation startup with Pentagon funding looking to [reimagine commercial air travel]( with a plane that looks like a manta ray. The design promises to cut jet fuel use in half. One to watch [Watch the Bloomberg Technology TV interview]( with Rivian’s CEO. Get fully charged Sirius XM is introducing a $10-a-month [music streaming service]( to take on Apple Music and Spotify. AI startup Anthropic agreed to use Google chips to help [power the language model]( Claude, further deepening their partnership. The Germany economy minister is the latest to pull out of Europe’s biggest tech conference after [controversial comments from the event’s founder]( regarding the Israel-Hamas war. 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