I had to check it wasn't April Fool's Day: Vodafone have announced the ability for content providers to cover the cost of data transfer charges for mobile content as part of the revenue outpayment. Historically, carriers have charged customers for data transmission charges across mobile services, such as WAP and content downloads. The revenues earned from this data charging have never been available, even as a aprtial revenue share, to content providers, leading to a lack of interest in delivering rich content services to mobile users.

Whilst Vodafone have supported zero-rated (i.e no data transmission charges to the end user) downloads through their own portal (leading to claims by some of market distortion), this is the first time a carrier has provided the same ability to third party content providers.

"Rich media, such as audio and video, will be the next fillip for the mobile content market," said Vodafone head of commercial partnerships Jeremy Flynn. "But a lot of current data tariffs are not 3G-centric. We're introducing an 0800 data model that'll be free to consumers and reverse-charged to content providers."

Vodafone said it already had live services trialling. The service works by Vodafone zero-rating a URL so that consumers don't pay to access content. If content providers have a fixed-size product, that's always 1Mb, say, then Vodafone takes a cut of the revenue share. The alternative is for the operator to charge per megabyte.

This will likely change the landscape for mobile content, and may even increase the number of content services available, especially as content providers can now guarantee the total cost of access to a particular piece of content.

Thanks to New Media Age.