Cingular, Verizon bulk up on content

The two largest wireless carriers in the U.S. have beefed up their content decks, with Cingular adding its first over-the-air music streaming service and Verizon Wireless pouring dozens of new content features into its Web-browsing portal.

Cingular kicked off a streaming music service this week, powered by its streaming video provider MobiTV and content programmer Music Choice. Featuring 40 channels, the service is Cingular’s first that sells music directly to the customer’s phone, though no download options are yet available. Its music-purchasing portal through AT&T Wireless only allowed customers to preview songs before downloading to their PC, and the iTunes phone it launched this fall with Apple and Motorola can play music from the phone, but can only receive music from a PC connection.

The cost of the service isn’t cheap, however. Cingular is charging $7 a month plus per kilobit data costs, but it is packaging the service into some of its MEdia Net content bundles, offsetting some of the cost. The service is also the first to specifically target Cingular’s EDGE network, which can achieve data speeds up to 100 kb/s, three times as fast as GPRS. MobiRadio is initially available over three of Cingular’s EDGE-enabled phones, the Nokia 6620 and the Sony Ericsson S710 and Z500A. Cingular said the service would be available over additional handsets soon. It currently has more than half a dozen EDGE phones in the market, and it plans to launch UMTS phones by the end of the year, which would increase data downlink speeds upwards of 250 kb/s.

Verizon Wireless today announced several new partners for its Mobile Web 2.0 browsing service. It launched two new Web portals revolving around ABC’s hit series Desperate Housewives and Lost, a daily comic strip site called GoComics from m-Qube, a celebrity news site powered by FoneStarz and other content targeting pet owners and astrology lovers. Verizon also launched several storefronts, including a mobile version of Overstock.com’s popular discount shopping portal, a mobile florist and gift shop, and two gaming portals selling EB Games titles and game cheats and codes from Prima. It also added a slew of news and information sites, dealing with topics from travel info, local weather and sports, restaurant reviews and movie reviews.