Spanish Minister agrees search companies should pay for network use

Spain''s Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian on Monday backed a proposal by the president of Telefonica, who had said the telecoms operator was considering charging Internet search companies, like Google and Yahoo, for network use.

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Spanish minister said that "it was a possibility".

In comments earlier this month from a press conference in the northern city of Bilbao, President Cesar Alierta said companies like Google use a lot of network bandwidth for free, something which was good for them but not for Telefonica.

Alierta says his company, which operates in Spain and across Latin America, provides the network, product sale, customer care, installation and maintenance to search engine companies that profit from using them.

He said things had to change. Telefonica spokesman Miguel Angel Garzon told The Associated Press on Monday the ideas expressed by Alierta were not new and had been talked about by many network service providers around the world.