T-Mobile Senior Vice President, Brad Duea sat down in an interview this morning and hinted at a new effort by T-Mobile to expand video content for your smartphone. The data plan under consideration by T-Mobile (Verizon hinted at the same style plan as well) would allow for a new video channel that would be available on T-Mobile smartphones carrying T-Mobile ads and device tips alongside entertainment programming. The cost of the data plan would be paid for by the content providers, advertising sponsors or T-Mobile itself.

T-Mobile’s Mr. Duea said the goal of new video offerings that don’t count against data plans would be to get customers interested in consuming more data, and set T-Mobile’s plans apart from those of other carriers.

“On certain plans, we actually could include special channels and not count the data,” Mr. Duea said. T-Mobile is developing a video channel that would be shown on its smartphones and carrying T-Mobile ads and device tips alongside entertainment programming, he said. The cost of the data, he said, could be paid for by the content providers, advertising sponsors or by T-Mobile itself.

Most data plans these days only allow for viewers to see a hours worth of a video before they suck up their entire monthly data allotment. As content available for smartphones continues to expand like wildfire, the carriers have to do something to match it without significantly increasing the cost coming out of consumer pockets. For the moment, technology seems to be ahead of the business models created by the wireless carriers and now they are playing catch up.

Would you use a video channel containing ads that doesn’t come out of your data allotment if the programming were worth it?

Wall Street Journal