3 customers go surfing with Yahoo!

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 29 June 2006 18:45

Your IT - Home IT

Yahoo! has teamed with 3 to make its Internet services available on the mobile phones of 3 worldwide under a global agreement struck between the two companies that promises "to enable 3 customers to surf the entire world wide web from their handset for the first time."
They will work together to offer services such as Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mobile Web, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Go for Mobile on 3's networks around the world. They plan to make additional Yahoo! services available to 3 subscribers in the future.

Christian Salbaing, managing director Europe Telecommunications at 3 Group, said: "This relationship isn't just about us buying more content to put on our portal, its about a deep engagement between our two companies to bring some of the world's most popular Internet services and content to 3's networks.

The first services will launch in the UK this northern summer, to be followed by launches in major European and Asia-Pacific markets including Italy, Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Australia and on Hutchison Telecom International in Hong Kong and India. The companies will jointly market the services on the Yahoo! and 3 networks.

3 customers will have full access to Yahoo! Search. Country specific services will be made available in line with the phased roll out of the product portfolio.

3 Australia already has a relationship with Yahoo!7, the local joint venture between Yahoo! and the Seven Network. According to Scott Taylor, 3 Australia's general manager content and services, "We have already launched Yahoo! Messenger on 3 with good customer uptake and earlier this year partnered to deliver mobile video content from the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics to 3 customers."