Mobile Entertainment

Traditionally networks would do everything they could to avoid the fate of AOL, Freeserve et al in becoming just a gateway to a go-anywhere mobile internet. And you can see the logic, kind of. Your operator does have a closer relationship with you than your ISP – it sends you detailed itemised billing every month (if you have a contract), its logo stares at you every time you make a call or send a text.

So when the mobile internet emerged at the start of the noughties, the operators did all they could to control it. Vodafone built Vizzavi, T-Mobile created T-Motion to look after their data services. When that didn’t work they took them ‘in-house’ with Live and T-Zones respectively. What this achieved, if nothing else, was hiding the losses incurred by the devolved organisations (estimated at £150m a year according to one source).

After a five year run, is it possible we’re looking at the end of the portal era? The recent announcement by Vodafone of flat rate data plans and capped data charging, along with its Google partnership, indicates that something’s up. This week Jamba announced it would take The Simpsons mobile via D2C only in the States.

I chatted to a former operator insider who told me that the next iteration of the deck will be “a search box with a few ads and some hero products based around sponsorship properties”. Blimey. I thought there was supposed to be a half-way stage: a search box that skews towards preferred operator partners ahead of the open mobile internet. My source was dismissive.

If this new era does dawn, it won’t be overnight. Operators move at the speed of icebergs. What’s more, they are extremely nervous about the boost flat rate data would give to VoIP, which terrifies them. But they won’t be the only nervous ones. What about all those aggregators that have built businesses on operator relationships? Time for a new business plan.