Computerworld is reporting that the CEO of Deutsche Telekom has indicated in a German magazine that he would be willing to consider a surcharge for high-bandwidth users of network service, including Google and Yahoo. Somebody needs to pay, Kai-Uwe Ricke suggested, for the upkeep and modernization of high-speed services ; and in a fair world, it should be those who use it most.

"Customers should not be the only ones to pay for this new world," CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke said in an interview published Thursday in the German weekly business magazine WirtschaftsWoche. "Web companies that use this infrastructure for their business should also make a contribution."

He warned that "if customers aren’t willing to pay and Google and [others] aren’t willing to pay, there won’t be any high-speed data highways."

(Computerworld)