2026-10-31 · Source：Tom's Hardware
The traffic-based amendment remains early in the legislative process, with officials flagging unresolved questions over how consumption would be measured and who ultimately bears the cost among smaller providers.
A fraction of a euro per gigabyte is poised to become one of the most consequential numbers in European digital policy. French lawmakers have approved an amendment that would impose a €0.055 levy — roughly $0.06 — on every gigabyte of digital content delivered to internet subscribers in France.
The arithmetic compounds quickly. At that rate, the measure is projected to yield an estimated €10 billion in annual revenue — about $11.2 billion — drawn overwhelmingly from the traffic-heavy platforms that dominate content delivery into French homes: Google, Meta and Netflix, with TikTok potentially drawn into scope as well.
The design is what sets this proposal apart from the digital services taxes most governments have favored to date. Those levies typically attach to revenue earned within a jurisdiction. France's amendment attaches to volume — raw data moved to end users. The bill for any platform therefore scales with bits delivered rather than income booked, meaning a subscriber consuming high-bandwidth video generates a far larger charge than one browsing lightweight content. Whether that burden is absorbed by the platforms, pushed onto local operators, or surfaced in subscriber pricing is precisely the question the legislative process has yet to settle.
It is not law yet. The amendment still faces further parliamentary scrutiny before it can advance.
Government officials have already flagged friction points. Implementation looms largest: metering per-gigabyte consumption across networks raises technical and administrative questions the amendment does not answer, and officials have singled out measurement requirements as a particular concern. Smaller providers, they warn, could feel a disproportionate impact — even though the levy explicitly targets US-headquartered giants like Google and Meta.
For anyone tracking European content-delivery economics, the per-gigabyte structure is the detail to watch. A €10 billion annual extraction resets the cost base of streaming and social distribution in one of Europe's largest markets — and if the volume-based model survives parliamentary review, it hands other governments a template that conventional revenue taxes never offered.
Tags: Google · Meta · Netflix · TikTok · Digital Services Tax · France
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