Mobile porn to pay for European licenses?

13 Nov 2001 at 16:07 GMT Jos Schuurmans

Wired News reports that at least one of the European mobile operators, Hutchison 3G, is looking into the lucrative porn industry to collect revenues. According to the online magazine, Hutchison, who were not reached for a comment, plans to offer wireless pornography over third-generation mobile phones. An employee of Hutchison has said to the Financial Times that the phone company has recently appointed an executive to oversee mobile porn. The source said Hutchison is unlikely to produce or edit porn, but may form partnerships with porn producers and take a cut of revenue.

The third-generation wireless phones will, at some point, enable users to view short video clips. Wired News writes that the lucrative porn industy might appeal to the mobile carriers when looking for ways to recoup the billions they paid for spectrum licenses. The Internet porn industry is already worth about a billion dollars a year, according to Forrester Research.

In his comment to Wired News, Daniel Miller, an analyst with market research firm Kelsey Group, questioned whether people would want to access porn all the time. "It crosses lines between public and private," he said. However, Miller said he isn't surprised that a carrier is mulling such services. "Phone sex is as old as the pay-per-call marketplace and it thrived," Miller said.

Neither would a Nokia spokesman Keith Nowak be surprised if mobile porn would emerge. "It's conceivable that whatever content people are interested in accessing on the fixed-line Internet, can potentially be accessed on the wireless Internet as well," he told Wired News.