France Telecom-Orange is looking at new ways of collaborating with Google and other internet players. The French operator's chairman and CEO, Stephane Richard, said during the group's investors' day on 31 May that Google co-founder Larry Page told him the US company had an open mind on the subject and was ready to enter talks. Reuters reports that it is likely this exchange took place during the recent e-G8 Forum, where several of the world's top internet executives were able to swap views. Richard thinks it will be possible to announce agreements within a few weeks. He spoke of an increased segmentation of telecom network access, with some users willing to pay more for a more stable, faster or priority internet connection, and France Telecom and Google sharing this additional revenue. Operators have been hit by an explosion in mobile data traffic linked to the popularity of smartphones and new uses such as online internet and video consumption driven by internet giants who benefit from rising advertising revenues, rather than infrastructure providers. Richard stated clearly that the big internet companies will not agree to pay to invest in network capacity, but they are ready to collaborate to develop more intelligent uses of operators' networks and to educate consumers. He also said that Google was studying how to include tools in its Android apps to enable people to monitor their data usage and to advise them on how to manage it. France Telecom and Google have agreed to set up joint study groups to see if there is a way for Google services to reduce their network consumption in the future.
