14 DAY TRIAL // Are you annoyed by the presence of ads while using apps and games on your mobile device? Well, it seems that a number of mobile wireless carriers are feeling your frustration, as some of them might be planning to block online advertising from their respective networks.
The Financial Times would have us believe that at least one major mobile operator is considering taking actions that would ultimately prevent ads from showing on your smartphone or tablet while using them on their network.
For the time being, it’s not clear whether ad-blocking will be an option offered to customers for an additional fee or not. However, we’re told that at least one mobile operator is looking at the possibility of blocking everything ad-related, indiscriminately.
In theory, this might be a good thing, at least for your peace of mind, but let’s try putting things into perspective. Sure, apps, games and websites would load a lot faster with no ad activity interfering, but on the other hand, if millions of people stopped interacting with ads, this would translate into big losses for businesses that focus on the mobile environment.
Mobile operators are looking to use ad-blocking as a bargaining tool
It’s not clear whether such a project will pull through eventually, because there’s a big chance regulators could put a stop to network-level ad blocking.
Net Neutrality rules in the US and Europe assert that internet service providers are required to treat types of traffic equally and that includes ads and “content.”
On the other hand, users are free to install ad-blocking software on their own, things like AdBlock Plus or uBlock are supported on the majority of devices.
Going back to mobile operators, many of them are frustrated because digital media companies profit from their high-speed networks without actually investing in the infrastructure behind them. So blocking ads on mobile networks will likely bring digital media companies to the negotiation table.
Therefore, we can speculate that blocking is being used as a bargaining tool, not as a means to make mobile content accessing smoother for users of smartphones and tablets.
If a situation like this ever becomes real, industry giants will probably resort to paying big amounts of cash to prevent that from happening. A while ago, for instance, it was reported that Google, Microsoft and Amazon paid makers of Adblock Plus to allow some of their ads to slip through the filtering.