Apple, Google and Facebook asked to pay up

As data traffic continues to soar, European mobile operators are demanding financial assistance from content providers

European mobile operators want to see service providers such as Apple, Google and Facebook contribute towards the cost of network investments required to deal with the increase of data traffic according to news wire Bloomberg.

France Telecom, Telecom Italia and Vodafone Group argue that as service providers continue to upload videos, music, games and apps, some of the cost required to enhance networks to cope with this should also fall with them.

European mobile networks currently operate on a 3G HSPA structure, and deployment of the higher speed 4G LTE networks is expected over the next few years.

"The mismatch between investment and revenue is set to compromise the economic stability of the current business model for telecoms companies," said Franco Bernabe, Telecom Italia CEO.

As more consumers access content on their mobile devices, the cost to mobile operators of building bigger networks may outstrip revenue growth, slicing their return on investment.

"Service providers are flooding networks with no incentive to cut costs," said France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard.

France Telecom's CEO Cesar Alierta agrees and insists things need to change.

"Companies such as Google and Yahoo! Inc. use Telefonica's networks for free, which is good news for them and a tragedy for us. It can't continue," Alierta said to Bloomberg.

Despite these claims, it seems service providers already believe that they are contributing their fair share.

"Currently about 40 per cent of our expenses go to networks anyway - for servers, peering, our content delivery network, and other resources," said Giuseppe de Martino, the legal regulatory director of Paris based online video provider Dailymotion SA.

"If telecom operators want us to share in their expenses, perhaps we should talk about sharing subscription revenues as well".