VZW snags YouTube deal
Verizon Wireless has secured a deal with media portal YouTube to air the Web site’s infectiously popular user-generated video content over its V Cast 3G service.
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Though the deal is not exclusive, Verizon Wireless is the first carrier in the U.S. to tap into YouTube’s mobile potential. The portal has become one of the most trafficked sites on the Web, allowing users to view thousands of videos posted by individual users or upload their own. While user-generated content has been highly popular on the Web, the wireless industry is wrestling with a business case for mobile data services. Services like MySpace and YouTube are available for free to any subscriber on the fixed Internet, but carriers are trying to develop a paid model to account for the much higher costs of delivering content over the mobile network.
Verizon Wireless appears to be using the YouTube service as a way to drive more subscribers to its premium data services and 3G EV-DO network, including access to the YouTube application with its V Cast service, which starts at a $15 monthly subscription rate. YouTube’s vast library of video content won’t be available over the new application. Instead, YouTube will provide a limited selection of its most popular videos to Verizon Wireless, which will approve them for distribution over V Cast. While that model may make managing the content database easier and allow for a less cluttered menu, it may detract from YouTube’s basic appeal: the ability to upload and view any type of content. YouTube’s own website has very few restrictions, banning pornographic or copyrighted material from the site—but usually only if protested by the copyright holder—some of the material on YouTube has been criticized for being offensive or at least tasteless.
Verizon Wireless is also allowing V Cast users to post videos to YouTube using their camera phones and 3G connections, but it did not say whether it would make provisions for sharing that content among other V Cast users via the mobile network. Otherwise, Verizon Wireless revealed very few details about the new application, saying only it would launch in December.
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© 2012 Penton Media Inc.
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