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Is that your cellphone in your pocket...?
Adult content from Telus
Siri Agrell, National Post
Published: Friday, January 26, 2007
The telecommunications company Telus Corp. began offering adult content to its Canadian cellphone customers this month.
Available on a "pay-per-download" basis, the service introduced on Jan. 8 will allow cellphone users to download pornographic photographs and videos, charging them an average of $3 to $4 for each item.
Jim Johannsson, a Telus spokesman, said yesterday that pornographic material was already widely available on mobile phones equipped with Internet browsers.
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Mr. Johannsson said the company can track what its customers are searching for via Internet connections on their cellphones and noticed a definite interest in some of the Web's more provocative sites.
"We can't see at an individual level, but we can tell on an aggregate level if they're going to Google or Canoe, and we could see they were heading to adult-oriented Web sites," he said. "There is a segment of the population that is interested in that content."
Telus is not the first company to make this observation.
In 2005, Reuters reported that North American mobile phone users spent US$400-million on adult photos and video during the previous year.
Last month, the magazine Charged featured an article about the quiet promotion of adult content on cellphones, saying that Playboy TV has been marketing itself to telecommunications companies and that content specifically geared to the technology is already being produced.
Taanta Gubta, a spokeswoman for Rogers Communications, said it does not currently offer a similar service, but that it would not "comment about anything ahead of time."
Paolo Pasquini, a spokesman for Bell Canada, also said its cellphones do not offer adult content services.
"Obviously, we continually review a range of potential services," he added. "You can rest assured that we'll always remain competitive in our markets."
Mr. Johannsson said he does not know what other companies are contemplating adult content, because it's "not the kind of thing people advertise.
"But we're fairly certain that if our competitors in Canada haven't launched it, they will soon. Same in the U.S.," he said.
Mark Goldberg, a Toronto telecommunications consultant, said the move is not unlike Pay- Per-View TV, and will be subject to the same protections.
"A huge amount of that is adult programming, and we don't seem to have concerns about our ability to block children from accessing that," he said. "Frankly, their mobile screen is probably more private than aTV or computer screen. They can keep it in their pocket."