Telstra MobileNet customers now have access to Australia's first Short Messaging Service game -- based on the television program -Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" And if the excitement of playing an interactive mobile game isn't enough to lure you, maybe the AU$10,000 cash prize, available for the first three months of the game's life, is.
SMS users, the dominant demographic widely regarded as the youth market, are charged 30 cents for each SMS sent when playing the game. A correct answer to a question sent within three minutes triggers a new question and in Europe, where three carriers with a total subscriber base of about five million launched the same game, users were playing on average five questions and more than two million questions played in the first 30 days, according to Telstra.
Telstra claims to have a mobile subscriber base of over five million, 30 percent of which "use SMS regularly".
-We are confident that SMS games will be equally as popular as the overseas experience," Telstra's general manager of wireless multimedia, Greg van Mourik, said in a statement.
However, when questioned by ZDNet about the forecasted revenue it would expected to rake in from SMS games, the telco giant was tight-lipped.
Gambling trap?
Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said it would be a very -lucrative" business. "It's like gambling...it's a huge problem but no one really wants to do anything about it because it's so lucrative."
-I think it's a rip-off," he said, adding that it wouldn't be surprising for SMS game players to rack up bills worth tens of dollars - a potential trap for the youth market, whom he says predominantly use SMS -- -not the richest people in town and a very vulnerable group".
"A lot of people will be caught in the net and we can't be arrogant say 'it's their own fault'. We as a society do have some responsibility to prevent people getting into financial problems caused by the greedy promoters," Budde said.
However, according to Telstra representative Virginia Murphy the demographic of SMS users isn't what people tend to think it is.
-Most people tend to think that the youth tend to use it [SMS] a lot more than people on higher end plans...but people on higher end plans tend to use it as much as people on lower end plans," she said.
Helping users to avoid falling into debt from excessive game playing will be very much a matter of -good education and information" provided by the service promoter, according to Budde.
Telstra, which is rolling out a three-month long advertising campaign to promote 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaiare', has a sub-licence from Finnish interactive wireless games company Codeonline for exclusive rights to the game in Australia for six months.
Jesus,
when will they stop this toying around and put this wasted money into developing a decent reliable unlimited no caps no frills no gimmicks broadband solution?
ll