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Free mobile phone service: Blyk

Submitted by Jean Hébert on November 2, 2006 - 7:30am.
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For mobile phone users, cost is often everything. In Canada and the U.S., owning and maintaining a mobile phone plan - while not nearly as expensive as it used to be - is still out of reach for critical market segments, notably teenagers (possibly the most important driving force of consumption trends in the mobile space, according to a recent industry report).  

That's why this story from the tech pages of International Herald Tribune is interesting. A Finnish company called Blyk is rolling out a free (ad-supported) mobile phone service next summer aimed at 16- to 24-year-olds, initially in Britain and then elsewhere in Europe. 

"The free mobile phone model is so obvious and attractive that we have been surprised that nobody else tried it before us," said Pekka Ala-Pietila, co-founder of the company and a former president of Nokia. "We are just extending the advertising revenue model to phones." 

One of the most interesting features of Blyk's model is that the advertising will be targeted based on user profiles generated through a signup survey. According to the news release, new subscribers fill out a questionnaire on the Internet that includes personal details and interests and then receive a SIM card offering an as yet unspecified number of voice minutes and text messages per month. Advertisements sent to the phone would be based on the answers.

Submitted by Florence Chee on November 2, 2006 - 5:26pm.
I suppose it changes the old saying of, "ask, and ye shall receive" to "answer (a survey?), and ye shall receive..."
Submitted by Richard Smith on November 4, 2006 - 8:09pm.
It comes to this, then. I have read, however, that people are surprisingly tolerant of this sort of thing, and when you think of it, this is exactly the model for the most popular information technology service in the world - web search. You get a "free" service in exchange for the work you do watching the advertising that accompanies it. And, for that matter, this is what television and free email is based on, too. So why should anyone pay to use a mobile phone?
Submitted by Richard Smith on November 5, 2006 - 12:49pm.
More on the blyk service on the mobhappy blog:

http://mobhappy.com/blog1/2006/11/03/free-calls-for-ads-with-blyk/

...r