Carlo at Mobhappy has drawn my attention to a recent change made by Vodafone to the way Vodafone subscribers apparently access the mobile Internet.

The major change seems to be that Vodafone's mobile Internet gateways now intercept all requests to third party sites, making the requests themselves and then processing the data that is returned into an 'optimised' form for display on mobile handsets.

From The Register:

In most cases that's fine, but where the receiving server is expecting a direct connection to the phone (such as many mCommerce sites, or sites that like to do their own handset optimisation), everything stops working.

As a mobile site developer, this is a nightmare scenario, as it means that all the effort I have put into handset detection and optimisation now goes flying out the window. And since I also try and be device and user friendly by detecting what sort of device my visitors are using, and then delivering content that is already optimised for that device, what this means is that anyone accessing one of my sites using Vodafone will now receive a 'Vodafone Optimised' version of the Web version, rather than the device-specific version I've spent so long developing since Vodafone's gateway presents the request as if it was coming from a PC, not a mobile.

The Vodafone gateway also apparently inserts a header and footer, co-incidentally giving Vodafone some extra ad space they can sell on other people's mobile sites, and it also apparently strips out existing ads. Which means that Vodafone gets to sell ads on a 'mobile-converted version of my Web site, whilst my own ads (which happen to pay for the site) get Stripped, and the user has a poorer experience than what I designed. As The Guardian puts it:

But its partners are not getting any of the £7.50 a month that Vodafone gets from its customers, even though it is their content that is attracting users in the first place.

Of course, I could ask Vodafone to whitelist my sites - but as a small developer, I have no contacts at Vodafone, and I'm certainly not large enough to be able to make enough noise to get the attention of the right people anyway.