Ad-funded Mobile Operator Announces Euro Plans

Mobile operator Blyk will launch its ad-supported free phone service in Germany, Spain and Belgium next year, it said Wednesday. The company offers U.K. subscribers free telephony and messaging (up to a point) in exchange for receiving ads on their phone.

Blyk has already announced plans to expand its service to the Netherlands in the second half of this year.

The operator isn't revealing any details about its European expansion yet, but the company's research shows that its target audience in German, Spain and Belgium is up for it, according to CEO and co-founder Pekka Ala-Pietilä.

The service is aimed at 18 to 24 year olds, which are given 43 minutes of talk and 217 text messages per month, in exchange for receiving up to six commercial messages per day from companies like Coca-Cola, Penguin and L'Oreal.

When users run out of free minutes and messages, calls cost £0.15 per minute and text messages £0.10.

The model has already had some success in the U.K., according to Blyk. In April the operator announced it had reached 100,000 members, six months ahead of schedule.

Blyk's U.K. phone ads have a response rate of 29 per cent, which is impressive, according to Jessica Ekholm, principal analyst at Gartner. She thinks Blyk, even though it is still small, can act as an inspiration to larger mobile operators to move in the same direction.

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