Should the likes of Google, Apple and Facebook put their hands in their pockets to help pay for the huge investments needed to handle their bandwidth-heavy services?

The message coming out of Le Web conference in Paris from several European phone operators is that they should.

As more and more mobile and web firms upload videos, music and games to the internet, operators such as France Telecom, Telecom Italia and Vodafone Group want to see a deal that requires content providers such as Apple, Google and Facebook pay fees linked to usage.

Telefonica SA CEO Cesar Alierta said that companies such as Google and Yahoo! “use Telefonica’s networks for free, which is good news for them and a tragedy for us. That can’t continue.”

France Telecom Chief Executive Officer Stephane Richard said that while the explosion of data is good news, it’s “a challenge for carriers like us,” which “raises the question of the business model of mobile data.”

Hopefully any fees wouldn’t just be passed down to the end users. Data's expensive enough as it is.

Source: Bloomberg