Meta hit with €30M fine over DT network dispute

A German court has ordered Meta subsidiary Edge Network Services to pay Deutsche Telekom about €30 million for using the operator’s network without a valid contract. The ruling covers traffic from Meta services including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram between March 2021 and August 2024, and follows a long-running clash over whether a binding agreement was in place.

Deutsche Telekom said Edge kept sending heavy traffic across its infrastructure after a previous contract expired instead of signing a new paid deal. Edge argued the companies were operating under a settlement-free peering arrangement, where neither side normally pays. The court blocked Edge from appealing at the lower level, though it can seek review by Germany’s federal court of justice within a month. The dispute comes as European operators, including Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone, lobby EU policymakers to make large tech platforms shoulder more of the cost of running broadband networks.