London, February 5:

Some of the world’s biggest mobile phone networks will use a conference next week to discuss creating their own mobile phone search engine to rival services from Google and Yahoo! Big players including Telefonica-owned O2 and Vodafone will convene at 3GSM in Barcelona to consider the merits of a new service for the whole industry which can tap into nascent mobile advertising revenues.

One option would be to ask an existing search engine, possibly Google or Yahoo!, to power a service for all the networks. It is thought the businesses’s collective clout would secure a bigger po-rtion of advertising revenues in return for giving the engine’s operator and its advertisers a wider su-bscriber base. A source said, “The larger operators would need to be on board for it to be viable because that would make it a de facto standard, then you also have the benefit of economies of scale.” While bigger networks like Vodafone already have partnerships with Yahoo! and Google, such a collective deal wo-uld be particularly attractive to smaller networks keen to get their slice of mobile advertising market as it starts to grow.

Throughout the mobile phone industry, firms are exploring new ways to lock in users and create new revenue streams as tough competition drives down call charges. The number of UK mobile phone users accessing the Internet on their handsets has been growing steadily.