| Vodafone accused of hindering use of streamed mobile video |
| Tuesday, 22 March 2005 | |
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New Media Age - Media owners and brands wishing to cash in on the growing popularity of mobile video are being held back from launching services due to a policy by Vodafone of blocking video streaming from outside its Vodafone Live! portal. The BBC was the latest to be affected by the issue, which prevented it from launching mobile video streaming content around the recent ' Comic Relief Does Fame Academy'."Downloading is better quality but some things you want to stream," said Angel Gambino, BBC controller of business development and emerging platforms. "But Vodafone prevents consumers from accessing the streaming media part of the WAP site." The policy is preventing companies from launching video streaming services for fear of not being able to run them across all networks. "It's blocking ports so you can't do off-portal streaming," said Flytxt co-founder Pamir Gelenbe. "Vodafone should open up to get the traffic revenue, as streaming uses a lot of data." Russell Tarr, UK country manager at Mobile365, which has also come across this issue for clients, said, "We're seeing all operators focusing more on off-portal payment solutions, so Vodafone will have to move to open up to all types of content delivery." A Vodafone spokesman said the reason for the situation was twofold: that most sites weren't rendered in 3GPP standards, and that, as off-portal content was chargeable, it wanted to avoid 'bill shock' for its customers. However, the operator assured the industry the situation was under review as part of its assessment of its entire off-portal strategy. With video streaming, the operator is likely to introduce a different charging scheme for off-portal content. "Circuit-switched charging is easier for customers to understand because it's per minute rather than per megabyte," said the spokesman. © Copyright Flytxt Ltd 2006. Unauthorized use of any content constitutes a material breach. |
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