Others argue wryly that the market for porn -- at least the soft variety -- is minimized by the amount of sex on mainstream TV in Britain. "The content we supply to the UK is different," says Yates. "Sales would rocket if porn laws were loosened in the UK."
Interestingly, the UK-based independent television commission's most recent survey on attitudes to porn shows a dramatic drop in concern about the availability of sex on TV. Britain is, ironically, the most competitive market for pay TV porn in the world with around 20 adult channel brands, including Playboy TV's Spice and The Adult Channel, Northern & Shell's TVX, BSkyB's 18+, and Red Hot's Private Girls and Private Blue.
Yates believes these services will seem inaccessible once broadband VOD services kick off. "Sky is doing a good job with 18+, but until you've actually seen video-on-demand, seeing something that starts programs every 10 minutes maybe seems nearly as good."
Companies that have already set up VOD services in Britain have complained about the prohibitively high charges British Telecom (BT) imposes for use of its broadband infrastructure. Video Networks, for one, which markets its service under the Homechoice brand, buckled under the weight of subsidising each of its subscribers to the tune of US$710 last year and stopped marketing its service. But recently BT's rates have dropped to the point where it is possible to run a viable business, says Yates.
Although broadband mobile services, where phones come equipped with bigger LCD displays, are further off than fixed cable services, the salient pioneer in the field, NTT DoCoMo in Japan, has accumulated useful data. Of the 25 percent of the Japanese population that subscribes to its iMode mobile internet service, half pay to see content on their mobile phones. Most of it is porn-related video clips and games.
Takeshi Natsuno, the managing director of iMode strategy at NTT DoCoMo says, "iMode is successful because of the content and because we charge content providers only a 9 percent commission to carry it."
To be successful, European mobile companies must change their policy of charging content providers around 90 percent commission.
Other mobile operators, which have paid large sums for licences for 3G mobile phones, are following DoCoMo's example and are turning to porn among other material to recoup their investments. Hutchison has already signed a deal with Playboy and Virgin Mobile is also in talks with the company.
It seems there is a price to pay for the British government's broadband dream and the US$31.24 billion it pocketed from auctioning 3G licences: The prospect of an explosion in pornography on TV.
RSS