According to a new Bloomberg report, European phone operators - like France Telecom SA, Telecom Italia SpA, and Vodafone Group Plc - are pushing for a new deal to get bigwig content providers, such as Google and Apple, to pay for their usage.

Noting that companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook should pitch in to contribute to the billions of dollars of network investments required for bandwidth-hogging services, the European carriers are ruing that the costs involved in building out their networks, for handling the ever-increasing rise in data traffic, is notably more than their data revenues - a situation that slices their return on investment.

Saying that the disparity between investments and revenue "is set to compromise the economic sustainability of the current business model for telecom companies," France Telecom's CEO Stephane Richard Bernabe said that the cost of building even bigger networks may further outstrip the wireless operators' revenue growth.

Drawing attention to the fact that, in order to slash costs, "service providers are flooding networks with no incentive," France Telecom's CEO Stephane Richard said in a last-month statement: "It's necessary to put in place a system of payments by service providers as a function of their use."

Addressing the issue again at the "Le Web" conference in Paris on Wednesday, Richard joined forces with Telecom Italia CEO Franco Bernabe and Telefonica CEO Cesar Alierta in what may turn into a full-fledged scuffle with Web companies; with the operators essentially looking for ways to win revenue from data-hogging customers.