Mobile operators get social networks

Mobile operators have long suspected that their future is the provision of Internet access services, that is, stupid provider business. However, they persist in looking for ways to add value. For example, the hit application for mobile phones, as you know , should be social networks. Therefore, the largest cellular companies in Europe and the United States are beginning to offer appropriate services for their subscribers, as well as enter into alliances with Internet companies.

March 28, the British operator Orange announced that from the summer of 2007 it will begin to provide its subscribers with exclusive access to the social network Bebo, this is the most popular social network in the UK.

A month before that, in February, the world's largest mobile operator Vodafone concluded a similar exclusive agreement with the sites MySpace and YouTube, and also began pre-installing the YouTube widget on some models of mobile phones.

The audience of social networks in the past year has grown to 403.3 million users, and this figure is growing by 30% per year. Experts have long said that going on mobiles will allow social networks to increase the usability and reach of the audience by an order of magnitude. This is also evidenced by user surveys - about 35% of mobile phone owners in the United States said that they are extremely interested in this service. 3G infrastructure is ready for increased traffic. Things are easy - to implement convenient widgets on mobile devices.
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The main and necessary condition for the distribution of the mobile web is the availability of inexpensive unlimited tariffs for wireless data transmission. But even in this case, according to analysts, the process will not go very quickly. Social networks on mobile phones will become commonplace only after three or four years, but technical difficulties and glitches will not disappear by that time.

via BusinessWeek