Forums and companies have been a buzz for the past few weeks about the fact that Vodafone UK has blocked the user agent from being transmitted to mobile internet sites.

As one former Vodafone employee puts it : “ Vodafone claim they take this action because their newer devices’ browsers can handle a full web site (with a little help from their transcoder).The stated aim is to allow folks to browse the web from their mobile phone without being restricted to the “mobile” versions, or little/nothing where no mobile version exists.”

User agents are used by mobile content providers and mobile sites to optimize the content or the sites and services to the particular mobile of the user.

David Harper founder of MobileMonday New York and Founder, Winksite had this to say, “Vodafone’s actions thwart the efforts of companies in the mobile
ecosystem who set out to provide a customized mobile presentation of their services, hurt these companies financially, and is counter to the advancements facilitated by groups such as the W3C and dotMobi.

Wurfl which is an open database of user-agents and is led by Luca Passini has been venting justified rage on this blog. He had this to say quite justly : ” If we don’t make some noise now and let the industry understand that developers won’t give up without a fight, I fear that the battle will get much harder to fight down the road.”

It is quite obvious that mobile devices are not ready yet for the full web experience. It is also true that mobile content providers (including the MNOs) have got fat on selling content at highly inflated prices. The web is coming to the mobile that is inevitable and in my opinion is a good thing. The question is whether the user MNOs control the traffic or the user who controls which sites are visited.

At the beginning of the web there was a concerted effort to restrict users from going where they wanted. This effort ultimately failed. I would place a safe bet that though the mobile web is still controlled via the pipe that the MNOs hold restricting access to mobile content and services will ultimately fail.

A very interesting model, and I believe a model to be emulated by MNOs elsewhere, has evolved at Bouygues Telecom in France. Bouygues allowed and even encouraged users to get out of their walled garden, the French imode portal. Users did explore and today Bouygues’ share of off deck traffic represents close to 60% of all off deck traffic in France (the other MNOs are Orange and SFR, subsidiary of Vodafone). Yet their portal is still doing very well ! Using the portal is easier to use, the sites are classified and limited. This appeals to a certain public. But the off deck appeals too for stuff that they can’t get on deck. The two co-exist. And what ever the case the MNO wins as they raise data ARPU.

Others who have commented on this issue are Mike Butcher from Techcrunch UK.

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