ESPN Cellphone Has Great Sports Content But Many Trade-Offs
- From: Monty Solomon <monty@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:13:14 -0500
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
When you think of U.S. wireless phone carriers, the name ESPN hardly
leaps to mind alongside Verizon, Cingular, Sprint and T-Mobile. But
this month, ESPN joined their ranks, sort of. It leapt into the
cellphone business not merely with vastly increased sports content
available from phones and a new phone customized for sports fans, but
also with a whole new cellphone company.
The sports network isn't actually building cell towers or licensing
frequencies from the government, as traditional carriers do. Instead,
it is launching a "virtual" cellphone carrier called Mobile ESPN.
It's leasing high-speed network capacity from Sprint and reselling
that capacity as if it were a real carrier, complete with its own
sports-oriented services, phones, pricing plans, billing and customer
service.
I've been testing the new ESPN Mobile service and its first phone,
called the Sanyo MVP. In general, I liked the elaborate package of
sports news and information that lies at the heart of the new venture,
which can only be accessed via ESPN phones and the ESPN service -- not
through traditional carriers, even Sprint.
But I encountered some glitches and problems, including missing
features. And to my amazement, I discovered the phone's Web browser
goes only to sites approved by ESPN. I can't imagine anyone other than
the most hard-core sports addict going through the hassle of switching
phones and carriers to sign up with ESPN, especially since the new
company's prices seem to be on the high side.
...
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060216.html
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