Google’s YouTube has revealed it is in talks with mobile operators and handset vendors over plans to ease network congestion caused by the world’s most popular video-streaming site. “We’re in the middle of the process,” Andrey Doronichev, the executive responsible for the company’s mobile offering, told Bloomberg. He declined to name any specific operators or manufacturers. However, it is known that major European operators such as France Telecom and Telefonica are currently in discussions with Internet giants such as Google over a deal that could see the content providers either share the cost of content delivery or contribute to network investment. The specific France Telecom/Google deal will “likely lead to a pact to jointly develop network technology,” two people familiar with the situation said yesterday.
According to Bloomberg, even though the operators’ first choice is direct payments by content providers, some stop gap measures are being considered, including storing more content on mobile devices (rather than sending it over the network), and finding segments of radio spectrum that are underused by current equipment. The report notes that Deutsche Telekom also plans to introduce various levels of connection quality to manage the surge in data traffic and enable high-bandwidth services such as video conferences and telemedicine. The number of mobile data connections in Western Europe will rise by an average of 15 percent a year to 270 million in 2014, according to recent research by IDC. A survey last year found that 75 percent of YouTube users used mobile devices as their primary way of accessing the service.
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