Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 10 April 2007 12:24
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Over in Europe a mobile virtual network operator called Blyk is planning to offer a free mobile phone service funded by advertising. It is a concept that deserves to be taken very seriously.
Blyk (
www.blyk.com) plans to launch in the UK in mid 2007 and then to expand into other European countries. And if you are tempted to dismiss it as a crackpot with little chance of getting of the ground, think again.
The concept is not entirely new,
as I wrote back in 2005, commenting on the launch of just such a service for fixed line phone calls, from
Communitel it was tried in Australia in the early nineties. However the investment and the scale of Blyk's planned operation is of an entirely different order. As is the potential for two way dialogue between advertiser and target that SMS and today's web-enabled phones offer.
Blyk has already signed up an impressive range of global brands as its foundation advertisers. Ones that would be familiar to Australian are Buena Vista entertainment, Coca-Cola and L'Oreal Paris. There is also I-play Mobile Gaming, StepStone and Yell.com (European equivalent of Telstra's Yellow Pages).
Last week Blyk signed a deal with UK mobile operator Orange to use the Orange network to underpin its MVNO offering. This week Nokia Siemens Networks was named as the supplier of the core network that will underpin Blyk. Nokia Siemens Networks will host the entire operation of Blyk's3 core network, allowing Blyk to avoid infrastructure investments of its own. So Nokia Siemens must have faith in the venture. And with good reason: one of the founders of Blyk, is Pekka Ala-Pietilä: who was president of Nokia Corporation from(1999-2005 and president of Nokia Mobile Phones from 1992-1998.
Orange, too, clearly believes the idea has legs. Commenting on his company's deal with Blyk, Keith Greenfield, director of wholesale for Orange UK, said: "Orange became the first operator to launch advertising on the mobile last year and feedback from our customers has been overwhelmingly positive. That makes Blyk's approach even more exciting and we shall be watching their progress with interest."
