Vodafone puts YouTube into mobile space

Stan Beer
Sunday, 11 February 2007 11:40

IT Industry - Strategy

Hot on the heels of a deals last week to bring MySpace and eBay to its UK mobile network, giant mobile carrier Vodafone has announced a similar deal to make YouTube available to mobile phone customers.

Like all mobile phone carriers, Vodafone is searching for new ways to boost revenue streams and differentiate itself from other carriers in a climate where increased competition has forced the cost of voice calls down.

However, despite the fact that 3G operators have attempted to entice mobile users with a wide variety of rich content from TV sporting events to selected web services, such as YouTube, the two most widely used applications by far are still ordinary voice calls and SMS messaging.

In addition, the increasing ubiquity of Wi-Fi hotspots coupled with the appearance of Wi-Fi capable mobile phones, such as Apple's upcoming iPhone, threatens to undercut the value of the relatively expensive 3G services by enabling users to access the wider Internet from their mobile devices.

In fact Wi-Fi enabled VoIP on mobile phones also has the potential to eat into carriers' voice and SMS revenue as well.

To date, carriers like Vodafone have resisted the idea of opening their networks and granting users unfettered access to the Internet at an affordable price. However, cracks are starting to appear in the walls of the walled garden and mobile carriers may well find that the only way they can keep customers is to give them what they want rather than what they think subscribers should have.