As expected, Vodafone announced this morning that it will enhance its Live! consumer content offering by making it available over 3G. It will be immediately available in Germany and Portugal on the Samsung Z105, with other countries around Europe following in the coming months.
As well as taking advantage of the enhanced resolution and colours that are constantly evolving with each iteration of handsets released, the less than catching named “Vodafone live!TM with 3G” will speed the delivery of content and widely-enable the streaming of audio and video content. They, like rival operator 3, are hoping that high bandwidth video calling and messaging will grab the imagination of their users, bringing them far higher revenues that standard SMS text messaging currently do.
The number of Vodafone-approved handsets available will increase. Following the Z105 will be the Sony Ericsson Z1010, a clamshell-design with two displays and two cameras that was announced over a year ago. Availability of Nokia handsets was not mentioned.
Peter Bamford, Vodafone’s Chief Marketing Officer said “Extensive consumer trials of Vodafone live!TM with 3G indicate that early adopters are keen to try this technology and so we are giving them a taste of it prior to the full launch of enhanced services later in the year.” We suspect the trialist were not paying their own phone bills so were pretty liberal with usage, it remains to be seen if the bill-paying consumers are quite so free and easy in the months following their first video-enhanced bill.