Vodafone’s Content Barring In UK Runs Into Trouble; Rollback Possible

Europe’s telecom giant Vodafone, whose content blocking policy in UK went into effect on June 30th night, is considering a rollback on the blocking rules after thing went awry due to technical difficulties, paidContent.org has learned. Despite the fact that has launched more than three months late, Vodafone’s Content Control mechanism is still a total mess, a source affected by this content blocking has told me.

The content policy was supposed to work this way: all the sites accessible through Vodafone’s WAP interface were to be whitelisted before they were allowed to be accessible. Works in theory, even if it was controversial, as some people in the industry said it was tantamount to censorship and would kill a nascent industry.
According to a support e-mail which went out to content providers supposed to be in the whitelist: “Unfortunately due to system problems with the Vodafone content barring, it seems some “white-listed” sites are working, whilst some have been barred. This is a problem across the Vodafone base, and the latest information we have is that they are planning to roll-back this [July 1] afternoon.”

The technical issues were still not solved until last I knew, which was about 6 PM GMT on Friday…I’ll keep you all updated…

Related:

– Silicon.com: Vodafone launches controls to stop kids looking at ‘adult content’

– FT: Vodafone blocks access to adult content on its mobile phones

The Dawn of the Hand-Held Internet

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