week 18 - Mobile giant Three to block online advertising - Christopher Williams

Three is poised to become the first major European mobile operator to block online advertising on its network, signalling a clash with digital publishers and advertising companies. It is understood that Three, which runs operators in half a dozen European countries including the UK, will next week announce a deal with Shine, a controversial Israeli technology company that specialises in blocking mobile advertising. 

They offer to lift their toll gates for those wealthy enough to pay them off, or who submit to their demands that they constrict their freedom of speech to fit the shackles of their revenue schemes.

Shine’s investors include Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire behind CK Hutchison, the owner of Three.

The partnership will be unveiled on Tuesday at Mobile World Congress, the industry’s annual jamboree in Barcelona, according to sources. Three’s operations in Italy and the UK are closest to implementing Shine’s technology, which can block online advertising on mobile web pages and within publishers’ mobile apps. 

It is understood that Three UK will announce that it will begin trials of the system with a small group of customers over the next few months to develop designs for a roll-out across its network. Sources familiar with Three’s plans said it would finalise how it will offer Shine’s technology to customers later this year.

Confirmation that a major European mobile operator is prepared to block online advertising will nevertheless cause serious unease among digital publishers, who rely on mobile advertising for a small but growing share of their revenues. They will fear significant loss of income if Three’s nine million UK customers do not see advertising alongside their content.

They will also fear that Three could pursue a similar model to Digicel, the Caribbean operator controlled by the Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien, which last year became the first to implement Shine’s technology.

The operator has blocked almost all mobile advertising and demanded that publishers and web giants such as Google and Facebook share their revenue with it.