Airtel asks Google, Facebook to share revenues

Bharti Airtel wants leading internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook to share revenues with telecom operators. India's largest telecom service provider believes that the telecom regulators should levy interconnection charges for data services; this charge is already levied for voice calls. 

Traffic from sites like Facebook, Twitter andGoogle is responsible for approximately 40% of the total data traffic for Airtel. 

A senior official of the company recently told a media publication that these companies are benefiting at the cost of the network operators, since they invest in the infrastructure. He said that setting up the requisite network needs a huge investment and the telecom players have to pay for the spectrum as well. 

The official said that it's actually an unfair game, since internet giants like Google and Facebook have to invest just a few billion dollars and reap ten times the benefits as compared to a telecom operator. 

Companies like Google have supported network neutrality for long, saying that the internet is free and, therefore, should not be subjected to regulation. On the other hand, telecom operators are facing difficulties in upgrading the network in accordance with increasing data demands. Across the world, telecom players have repeatedly asked regulators to resolve the matter.