France Telecom's (NYSE: FTE) partnership discussion with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) reflects the French incumbent's move to think outside of the telecom growth box.
Coming on the heels of its plan to increase network spending and achieve stable growth through 2013, the incumbent provider did not specify an official plan with Google.
However, company CEO Stephane Richard said during an investor day gathering Tuesday that he has had discussions with Google's founder Larry Page about how to better segment power users from the everyday Web surfers. Users that want a higher quality service, or higher speeds, would be required to pay a higher price for service.
If France Telecom did develop such a plan with Google, the two companies would engage in a revenue share through different service and quality tiers.
In addition to Google, Richard said that the service provider would make a number of partnership announcements with Silicon Valley-based companies as early as a few weeks.
One of the common realities that all wireline and converged wireless/wireline service providers like France Telecom share is that while consumer and business use and bandwidth demands of wireless and wireline-based services has continued to rise, new revenue has been slow to follow. France Telecom's exploration of new partnerships with new web-based companies like Google is all about revenue.
For more:
- Reuters has this article
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