Your average news bulletin may say something about Corporation X partnering with sites Y and Z, and your average response may be a shrug – X, Y, and Z often represent companies you’ve never heard of. But in this case, Vodafone has sealed a deal with Google, YouTube, eBay, and MySpace.
All five are hugely important entities, yet many shrugs may still be justified – the development has taken place in Ireland and will only affect mobile users. MobileCrunch’s Peter Suciu describes it as “an effort to provide a more enhanced and robust service with those sites.”
He then continues, “Vodafone mobile Internet users will access compressed and rearranged content of these and other Web sites to make it more mobile-friendly. The debate continues to wage on what is the best method for displaying Web sites on a mobile phone, but Vodafone is taking the route of compressing the content for its specific phones.”
Another interesting point is Vodafone’s selection of MySpace over competing social networks; as proven by Hitwise’s Heather Hopkins, Bebo is more popular (in the UK), and Facebook is growing faster.
In any event, the cost of these improvements isn’t too high. Marie Boran of SiliconRepublic.com reports, “With a new pricing system of 99c per-day web surfing, or a monthly plan of €9.99, any Vodafone customer with a 2.5G or 3G handset can avail of this.”
