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Virgin Radio Launches 3G Radio Service
An anonymous reader writes "Virgin Radio, one of UK's top radio stations, has launched the first 3G radio service for free (as in beer). This is great news for those with a Symbian equipped phone and an unlimited data plan. Various articles suggest that mobile radio could be a major threat to satellite radio. Russell Beattie and friends have had an initial look and commented on the program."
Forbes recently had an article about how Verizon was planning a similar service. I find this really interesting because I heard a couple of reports on C-NBC today talking about how Verizon has been in private talks with Virgin about a technology license. The pundits seem to believe that verizon is trying to get a license from Virgin to carry their content on the verizon network.
I think that this would actually be a really smart strategy for Virgin to employ. Think about it, Virgin not only gets the advertising for it first and everyone begins to associate it with them but then once it becomes famous they get a piece of everyone elses action.
The world is moving towards total technolgy convergence where people will have a radio/mp3 player/phone (they already do actually). This will become another feature that every phone will have to have in a couple of years and Virgin will not hold a monopoly for very long. By letting people buy into their content they make sure that they get money from everyone.
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If you have an unlimited data plan, what's stopping you from listening to internet radio on your cellphone?
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Unfortunately, at least in the UK, unlimited (3G) data plans seem rather hard to come by with the majority of services having sub 100MB caps or a pay-per-megabyte price structure.
Slightly off-topic but related, Virgin is unusual as a 'major station' in the UK in that it offers its streams in Ogg/Vorbis format. (The BBC did previously but has stopped for an undetermined ammount of time).
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
They would be competeing with the new phone radio market, which I think some of us agree would be huge. Of course if it wasn't huge they would raise their prices or probably be allowed to merge.
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Read the F*cking Fine Print. Unlimited Data service has a lot of exceptions. I'll bet you the streaming radio service becomes an exception if anybody actually uses it. I signed up for unlimited data, then saw that it was unlimited only with one phone, and NOT when you used the phone as a modem for your bluetooth-connected laptop, and not when you wore brown shoes, or drove a Swedish-made automobile. All of that vented, Virgin Radio is cool, they have always been a leader in internet streaming, since the beginning (1995, when I helped get them started)