Exactly
If Telefonica cost vs revenue model does not fit the way the world turns they should either try to change their revenue model, their network/capacity model or both instead of try to spin the world the other way around or flatten it.
On a grander scale this is the 3GPP chickins coming home to roost and having diarrhea.
Both Internet Multimedia Subsystem from Rel5 onwards and LTE have their service model built around "giving" content providers service reservations and paying on a per service reservation basis.
This passes "your village just called, they are missing you" test on more than one account:
1. It makes all services which the provider considers as premium to look like circuit emulations. Anything that is not circuit oriented does not fit the bill so it has to be forcefully shoehorned into this shape. As a result you build a super duper next gen network which is pretty much geared towards voice alone and has no clue on how to work with next gen services which are all variable bandwidth coming from more than one source. This means that the entire billing model, economic model, etc do not fit what the user perceives as premium service. It is not the fact that Google and co are using the network which bothers Telefonica and co. It is the fact that they categorically refuse to shackle their services with IMS.
2. The fixed reservation guaranteed service model which Telefonica and Co consider essential and keep voting for in 3GPP, ETSI and the like does not fit the realities of economics. It guarantees that a service fails to be adopted. Guaranteed service is for the masses and only once the legislator has made it into a universal service obligation. Early adopters could not care less about the "guaranteed" bit. They want the service to be "the best possible" so it is "shiny, shiny" and they can show off with the latest toy or gadget.
A classic example here is 3G video calling vs Facetime. The telcos have been peddling 3G video calling as a killer feature for what? 10 years or so now? Has it been widely adopted. Hell no. Has it ever gotten raving reviews? Hell no. Did Facetime when released cause a w*nkfest on par with the iOS passing the Turing Test? Hell yes. There is a reason for that. 3G video calling fails the "early adopter" test because some idiot decided to make it a "guaranteed" service. As a result it is is guaranteed to be sufficiently _MEDIOCRE_ to never be looked upon by the early adopter.
It is the same story with any other IMS or next gen telco service. Rinse, pepper with some IMS and policy vendor voodoo, FAIL, repeat. That repeated FAIL costs. A lot. A hell of a lot. And then more some, because everything in the network starting from topology and ending up with OSS has been specifically designed around the idea that all premium money will come from IMS.
Apple and Google _REFUSE_ to implement it not just for any of their own services, but for any service running on their platform (IMS support in iOS anyone?). This means that the entire network economics for people like Telefonica go out of the window. I am not surprised they are throwing toys out of the pram.
However, instead of blaming Google and Apple for what is their _OWN_ failing, Telefonica and Co should actually take the people they themselves employed to rig the 3GPP standards and reference designs into such an idiotic state and deal with them appropriately.