Free UK cellphone service reaches 100K customers

Blyk announced that they would offer free cellphone service to people aged 16 to 24. At the time, I lamented how that wouldn’t fly in the U.S., though Google has brought up the notion of an ad-supported service of some sort. The only catch is that you get just 43 minutes per month, with 217 text messages to go along. Well, they just announced their 100,000th customer. Even more impressive than Blyk hitting its 100,000-customer goal six months ahead of schedule is their customers’ response rate to ads. It’s at a whopping 29 percent, while most ad campaigns generate response rates in the single digits. Maybe this will lend credence to Google’s desire to provide cheap or free phones and service in exchange for viewing ads. I suspect that people will need to see Blyk sustain this kind of success before they buy into the model, though.]]>