Could this be the future of the mobile Internet? A Polish mobile virtual network operator, InMobile, is offering free bandwidth to its customers, provided they first watch advertising to pay for the cost of the data they consume.
The service, called FreeM and developed for InMobile by Belgium’s Effortel, is aimed at people between the ages of 15 and 25 who use their phones for social networking. This age group often doesn’t have much by way of disposal income to spend on mobile data and InMobile hopes the ad-funded service will help drive up usage.
Users get free access to social media and other mobile data services in return for watching short, full-screen advertisements. Effortel claims it’s the first ad-funded data access service.
When users watch an advertisement, there accounts are credited with 500KB of data, equivalent to 30 refreshes of the mobile version of social networking site Facebook.
At launch the free access applies to a range of social networking, Web and messaging services, including Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Windows Live Messenger and Google Talk. — Staff reporter, TechCentral
- Image: Ed Yourdon
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