For cellphones, porn may be call away
The lure of pornography helped drive the mass-market adoption of videocassette recorders, satellite television, and the World Wide Web.
Now, history could repeat itself in the world of cellphones -- specifically, the newest generation of cellphones, which sport high-resolution color screens and connections to super-fast data networks that can stream X-rated photos and film clips straight to the handset.
Adults-only wireless websites have begun sprouting in many regions, including Europe and Australia, that are generally a year or more ahead of the United States in adopting advanced wireless technology. In Britain, the profusion of adult sites and the interest in them has forced the six major British wireless carriers to develop ways to block people younger than 18 from getting access.
As implausible as the idea of trying to look at pornographic images on a screen of only three square inches may seem, some industry analysts think a combination of novelty, and especially privacy -- unlike a computer, a phone can be used almost anywhere -- make cellphones an appealing way for some to view pornography.
Almost all of the content available today via cellphone is found on foreign websites. US cellphone users with Web access plans can already download images -- as explicit as anything that's found on the Internet -- without dialing an overseas number. They simply use the Web browsers in their cellphones. Usually, the sites offer free access.
US wireless carriers already offer pictorial and digital content, including television-style news clips, and roughly one-fifth of the 171 million US cellphone owners carry handsets that can receive full-color digital photos and video.
''New technology is often brought forward and driven forward by adult services, and I don't think mobile phone content will be different," Chris Lane, director of the Australian cellphone carrier Optus Mobile Partners, said last month as the carrier outlined plans to add an adult channel on its wireless portal in the next six to eight months.
Adam Zawel, a research analyst with The Yankee Group in Boston, recently estimated that one ''phone erotica" website run from Britain is getting more than 300 million ''hits" per month, including visits from some US cellphone owners, who have learned about the service largely by word-of-mouth.
The site says it offers more than 3,000 images and short video clips formatted for display on a cellphone, plus erotic fiction that visitors download in 80- to 100-word snippets.
For now, the service is free as its owner attempts to drive up traffic as a way to prove to the phone companies that a potential paying audience exists.
Zawel estimates the annual market for ''wireless adult content" will reach $1 billion globally by 2008, including $90 million in the United States.
Although $90 million sounds significant, it would represent only 0.1 percent of current annual revenues for the largest US wireless carriers:
Pornography is not a revenue source that US carriers are rushing to wrap their brand names around, though.
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Alexa G. Kaufman, spokeswoman for Atlanta-based Cingular Wireless -- with 46 million subscribers, the biggest US carrier -- said, ''We don't have any intention to partner with adult content providers."
At number-two Verizon Wireless, spokeswoman J. Abra Degbor declined to comment.
Verizon is 45 percent owned by
In Britain, carriers including Vodafone, Virgin Mobile, Orange, and T-Mobile have agreed to block adults-only content from subscribers unless they have demonstrated that the person who owns the phone associated with a specific phone number is over age 18, which would not keep minors from using adults' phones to visit adults-only sites.
Carriers in Britain acted following pressure from national telecommunications regulators and groups such as the Children's Charities Coalition for Internet Safety, all of which expressed concerns about young people having easy access to hard-core pornography.
Like all carriers, however, Cingular, Sprint, and others would profit indirectly from porn-driven wireless data traffic in the same way that landline Internet service providers depend on interest in adult content to enlarge their customer base.
Getting into the business of directly offering and billing for adult content could be a political and public-relations minefield for image-conscious wireless brands.
''This is obviously not a development that would thrill anyone with religious sensibilities or secular sensibilities who wants to protect some modicum of human decency and respect in our society," said the Rev. Diane C. Kessler, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches.
Carriers might never directly promote adult offerings. But they are also unlikely to actively block or censor them.
Cingular's Kaufman said: ''We do believe that the type of content customers access through their wireless services is a matter of personal choice. We also believe that parents are the best line of defense in protecting children from objectionable content. They should actively monitor their children's use of the cellphone, both for voice calls and data services."
Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com
