Telefonica CEO: "Google and Yahoo! use networks for free, which is good news for them and a tragedy for us"

 

A story in Bloomberg by Matthew Campbell and Jonathan Browning describes how the fight between the largest European carriers and content providers escalates.

See "Apple, Google Asked to Pay Up as Mobile Operators Face Data Flood" - here and previous quotes from DT,  Vodafone, Telefonica, Swisscom, Kabel Deutschland .

• France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard (picture): “Service providers are flooding networks with no incentive to cut costs.. the explosion of data is good news .. it is, however, a challenge for carriers like us .. raises the question of the business model of mobile data .. We are progressively going to switch from the unlimited approach that has been the trademark of our industry to something which is more sophisticated”
   
• Telefonica SA CEO Cesar Alierta: "Companies such as Google and Yahoo! Inc. “use Telefonica’s networks for free, which is good news for them and a tragedy for us"

• Telecom Italia CEO Franco Bernabe: (picture)"The mismatch between investments and revenue is set to compromise the economic sustainability of the current business model for telecom companies”
   

And from the other side: “Currently about 40 percent of our expenses go to networks anyway -- servers, peering, our content delivery network, and other resources,” said Giuseppe de Martino, the legal and 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.”