The doom scenario for mobile operators is illustrated by the faillure of internet providers in competing with search portals. Provider portals have become worthless now that their customers are using independent search engines such as Google and Yahoo. They have been reduced to a provider of network connections.

"We are keen to avoid being reduced to a dump pipe," explained Matt Dacey, head of Content for O2.

The O2 manager pointed out that in Germany and Austria T-Mobile has already given up the battle against Google, where the engine has become the default search provider on T-Mobile's network.

Google's mobile search technology either works by sending a text message to the search engine with a query, or by visiting a specially formatted version of the engine on the Google website.

Vodaphone's Ferguson however argued that Google Mobile for now is mainly a marketing offensive. "Google is very aggressive, but they don't have a product."