Worries me to think this is where it's all heading.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12507989

Imagine being out and about, shopping, on holiday or whatever and your phone is going off every 2 minutes with an SMS, MMS, EMail or Bluetooth message.

I'm all for advertising, albeit passively. i.e a street sign, banner on the side of a bus; taxi or even a spread in a newspaper. But to have it shoved down my throat like this really gets my rant on.

The flipside of that would be free phone/service.

Pay to opt out.

Without the option to pay/opt out of the ad, they risk to invite the wrath of a nation. They can't afford that.

Personally I don't want any solicitous texts, bluetooth messages, emails, NFT communicated advertisements to appear on my mobile phone, not now, not ever. If I wanted to be bombarded with advertisements I would flick Sky to one of the shopping channels and sit and watch that all day.

Nothankyouverymuch.

If I want to be bombarded with ads, I'll just watch ANY tv channel here in the States. I don't want it on my phone thanks very much.
CNN: 2 minutes of news, then commercials. WRONG

that's why one of the first things I did after getting a new phone is...getting an sms spam blocker
too bad there's still no fully functioning sms blocker here on maemo

Well for me... If it's paid then let them come all in! How hard is it to blacklist their numbers while your earning

I doubt it very much. We already pay a premium for the services we already get, IMO.
Also for it to be workable you'd need to see the networks invest in their infrastructure to the point that wherever you go you get 3G coverage. Imagine downloading all those ads over 2G.

As for over the mobile web, at £5pm for 1GB the networks would have to offer some concessions to make it work. i.e lower their prices, remove the usage caps, improve the capacity of their networks.

Their was something trialed a while ago that saw people pick up adverts via Bluetooth when they walked past shops. Didn't catch on due to the security risks and only the non-tech savvy would walk around with their Bluetooth activated all day.

Same could be said for Wi-Fi.

Just like BT did with Phorm? No one got the option. They just woke up one day to find their screens filling up with adverts of things they'd Googled the night before.

Nonsense. Like cable and satellite TV, you'll pay for the service and get ads shoved down your throat regardless. The only way to "opt out" will be to either not use it, or modify your device (if they haven't locked it down hard) to bypass ads.

Agreed. The DC news station advertises "traffic and weather on the 8s"...But what they have started doing is to place ads *between* the traffic and weather. That's in addition to the two or three minutes before the traffic report. Thank God for the podcasts on my N900. I flip over as close to *8 past the hour as possible...