Financial Times Launches News Service For Vodafone Users

The Financial Times has secured an innovative deal with Vodafone Live! to make its news content available to the mobile phone operator’s subscribers.

The deal will see the newspaper’s content divided in to two sections: standard and business. The standard service will include the top stories from FT.com, as well as an industry section, a business in brief service and world news.

The premium ‘WAP Gold’ service will provide Lex notes, market news, quotes from industry insiders and a specialised search tool. Vodafone customers will pay £1 per for a day’s access, £3 for a week, or £5 for a month, which will be charged directly to the user’s phone bill.

Commenting on the initiative, Zach Leonard, the FT‘s EMEA managing director, said: “FT.com’s already extensive reach is expanded once again by this deal. Our award winning coverage can now be accessed directly by Vodafone Live! Customers through their handsets, allowing customers to benefit from FT.com’s agenda-setting news, comment and analysis.”

It is understood that the Financial Times has already launched a news service on Orange World and plans to roll out content to other UK mobile network operators by the end of the year.

WAP-based mobile phones services are becoming increasingly popular amongst consumers and the latest figures from the Mobile Data Association show that a total of 897 million page impressions were viewed during October 2003.

Financial Times: 020 873 3000 www.ft.com

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