Gossip

So, which operator provides "Mr Men" when subscribers want World Cup footie?

"Frankly, a bunch of Board Directors of a mobile network making plans for selling mobile data is as relevant to their future as a bunch of sailors on a supertanker arguing about what DVD to watch."

If ever you wanted proof of that, the report from Argogroup about the utter failure of World Cup promotions by network operators illustrates it wonderfully.

The report was transmitted to the world's press today by "3" - the Hutchison owned 3G operator, which sees itself as the "winner" of the World Cup football promotion.

That's not quite how Argogroup sees it! "Least worst" is the kindest plaudit David Frodsham, Argogroup's CEO, will give "3" for this.

"We study this from the user's angle," said Frodsham. "From a technical perspective, we asked: 'does this service work on your handset that you're trying to use?' and from a non tech angle: 'is it good and relevant?' and 'is it priced sensibly?' and they failed pretty much all of those areas."

And what did Argogroup think of Vodafone's Mr Men promotion? Because that's what Vodafone subscribers got when they tried to find the World Cup promotion.

"Well; nothing technically wrong, but it's 'inappropriate content' if you're trying to encourage users to access World Cup content," commented Frosham today.

It all comes down to billing. If the networks had billing systems that could do proper data charging, some of these games the directors are playing would be more than window-dressing.

When a company can launch a major football promotion, and fail even to flag that promotion on their own WAP portal, it tells you all you need to know about how viable the promotion is as a mobile data exercise. And if it's not even working as a sales promotion exercise, it's just a game.