News: Verizon and YouTube announced a new deal to stream YouTube videos on Verizon cellphones for $15/month. The service, called “VCast,” will offer only a limited, pre-selected number of videos approved by Verizon for content. A YouTube spokeswoman said, “We’ll select content that has the broadest appeal and the highest entertainment value.” (more from NYT)
Analysis: $15 sounds like a really high price tag to me (in addition to high cost of phone service). I haven’t bought a new cellphone recently, but if the quality of streaming images is not that great, I wonder how many consumers will sign up. On the other hand, as cellphones incorporate greater visual capability, the streaming of videos on cellphones seems to be a natural complement to the growing phenomenon of people recording videos on cellphones (as in the UCLA taser incident).
