Should Google pay for using the telephone system for its searches? The boss of Vodafone, Vittorio Colao, said Yes at MWC 2010 in Barcelona, while the boss of Google, Eric Schmidt, said No.
Colao echoed Cesar Alierta, head of Telefonica, owner of O2, who has said that O2 is looking at charging search engines. "Search engines use our networks without paying us anything," complained Alierta.
Colao went further, saying that not only should the search engines be charged, but that businesses should pay more for priority treatment on the networks.
Colao envisages a multi-tier system of access to the mobile networks where the more you pay means the better the service. A justification for this, said Colao, is the high levels of data traffic clogging the networks.
Colao reckons that business data traffic should be charged more, and get higher priority access to the network, than song downloads.
Google's Schmidt argued that the principle of 'net neutrality' should prevent an operator favouring one user over another.
"If you have a content category like video", said Schmidt, "we want to make sure that the operator does not favour one video over another because that would then allow the operator to pick winners in the category,"
Colao's solution was to call in the regulators in the US and Europe to examine the whole value chain (network operators, content owners and application owners)
and establish rules to 'enable competition at all levels'.
Schmidt acknowledged that the wireless operators had high infrastructure costs, but added that the operators could try and get revenue from the content providers.
Schmidt pointed out: "Most of the operators are telling us that we, Google, should build applications that will help them sell their new higher speed services they are spending so much money on."
Colao also called for regulators to look into Google's 80% share of the mobile search market and at RIM, the manufacturers of Blackberries.
So will Google start providing its own links? After all the company has been testing broadband technologies and was sniffing around the spectrum auctions in the US. But Schmidt said No - Google would not build a network.