In a further development for 3G services, Telstra have completed a deal with Turner Broadcasting to bring rich content to their i-mode subscribers. Later this year, mobile users will be able to watch local and international news on their mobile phones, along with some choice cuts from The Cartoon Network.
In addition to news, the content will cover sports weather and entertainment news from CNN, as well as games and video based on the Cartoon Network’s popular intellectual properties like Tom and Jerry, Powerpuff Girls and Dexter’s Laboratory.
Holly Kramer, Telstra’s managing director for wireless and mobility products said: “In the months ahead we will be announcing some great content deals to provide i-mode subscribers with a premium wireless experience, delivered over a range of innovative, multifunctional handsets.”
3G phone adoption has been very slow since launch – hardly surprising since the first phones have been poor and there has been no content to speak off (comedy sock puppets don’t count as compelling content). With the increasing availability of content that subscribers might actually take an interest in, 3G services might finally take off.
Telstra
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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