back to article EE plans to block annoying ads on mobile network

EE may have a pretty pathetic customer service record, but the company is hoping to cheer up its 27-million-strong subscriber base by potentially allowing them to block ads on their mobile phones. At present, the carrier is mulling a proposal to bring in network-level blocking tools for its customers. “We're at the beginning …

  1. ukgnome

    Does this also include annoying texts, because EE are particularly great at them.

    1. Captain Queeg

      EE

      Damned right - and doubly so when you're roaming. A constant, endless and seemingly random bombardment of texts inciting you to hook up to one of their roaming add-ons that are such "good value" - their words - certainly not mine!.

      1. PhilBuk

        Re: EE

        You mean those roaming texts are real? I thought they were joking. Their rates are certainly jokes.

        Phil.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Eh?

    Quote

    Swantee told the Telegraph: "Not all ads are bad. When a business gets it right, it's appreciated and sparks a connection. But when it's intrusive or crass it can drive people crazy." ®

    IMHO, ALL, repeat ALL adverdising is BAD. It is an intrusion that I did not ask dow. I never buy anything that I have seen advertised on TV or heard on Radio.

    If I am looking to buy a particular item then I might look at ads for various types of that item but that is part of normal research that you should do before opening your wallet.

    Once upon a time I did buy stuff after seeing adverts. Then I spent 18 months working for an Ad company. boy, were my eyes opened.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Eh?

      "IMHO, ALL, repeat ALL adverdising is BAD." [sic]

      Right your position is clear and unshakeable.

      "If I am looking to buy a particular item then I might look at ads for various types of that item"

      Oh, it's not...

    2. Martin Summers Silver badge

      Re: Eh?

      The last thing you should do is look at ads if you're doing your research on something. Seems you play right into the hands of those 'bad'advertising people.

      Their job is to get you to buy product. Ignore it if you don't like it, the ad was never designed for you in the first place in that instance. Which is why personalisation/targeting is not the devil people make it out to be.

      Ads have their place but intrusive ones do not. There is a difference that a rational person can discern. And besides if it were not for adverts, the Reg would not exist.

      1. User McUser
        Facepalm

        Re: Eh?

        Which is why personalisation/targeting is not the devil people make it out to be.

        No, it's just worthless. Usually I see a ton of "targeted" ads for things I've already bought - like when I bought a cordless screwdriver I started seeing ads for cordless screwdrivers. However yesterday I had something altogether new happen.

        I'm on Newegg.com buying an SSD and some RAM to upgrade my grandmother's laptop. The SSD and RAM are *in my cart* and I am *in the process of checking out.*

        NewEgg's site is running a little slow so I open my email in another window while I wait. Along side my email is an ad - an ad for NewEgg to be precise. An ad featuring the *exact two items that are already in my cart.*

        So thanks targeted advertising for trying to sell me something *while I was already in the process of buying it.* That was super useful.

        1. John H Woods Silver badge

          Re: Eh?

          "No, it's just worthless. Usually I see a ton of "targeted" ads for things I've already bought" --- User McUser

          Top Tip -- browse for under, beach and nightwear --- even better, leave some items 'saved for later' in various shopping carts to cheer up your browsing experience for a few days.

          1. NotWorkAdmin

            Re: Eh?

            While I get that some are laughing at ad targeting as the AI behind it clearly isn't very smart, I'd caution everyone to be careful what they wish for. I think I prefer ADs served badly than some kind of SkyNet overlord that can actually guess what I might want/need accurately.

      2. The Travelling Dangleberries

        Re: Eh?

        Eh? There are adverts on The Register?

  3. Andy Nugent

    How long...

    ...before EE start a program that allows certain companies ads through for a small admin fee?

  4. Fazal Majid

    It's not about the customer

    It's about shaking down advertisers: either they pay the ransom to get on the whitelist or their ads get blocked. It's also a stalking horse for further, more damaging net neutrality violations by setting a PR friendly precedent.

    1. James 47

      Re: It's not about the customer

      It's not going to be the advertisers, it'll be the ad networks.

    2. Peter X

      Re: It's not about the customer

      Exactly this. It's the same as when the service providers were complaining about BBC iPlayer and this like using too much bandwidth, basically trying to frame it so they can charge people on both ends of the wire*.

      It should be illegal to tamper with content over the wire*.

      * you know what I mean! :D

  5. msknight

    This is potentially going to be insane

    The big players can afford to program their own advertising platforms which the likes of U-Block, erc. can't block (faceache being one) in the mean time, the small players won't be able to do this, so will lose their small but vital revenue stream.

    Way to go EE. Kill the little guy.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Re: This is potentially going to be insane

      "The big players can afford to program their own advertising platforms which the likes of U-Block, erc. can't block"

      You mean you can't block Google (double click), one of the worlds largest?

      Fooled me.

  6. tiggity Silver badge

    no good ads on mobile

    My web use is normally on desktop / laptop with various ad scripts / domains disabled via browser addons (or nobbled at hosts level in some cases)

    So a salutory experience a few days ago when I needed to quickly look something up online on my mobile when out and about (not helped by a poor signal area) & experienced the full horror of ads on mobile with slow page loading, content obscured by popups, page layout jiggling about as various junk loaded and page layout changed, clicks getting hijacked due to layout change.

    From that experience, in the mobile space, with slow downlaod speed, I would say no such thing as a good ad

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I will ask Ofcom to block ITV ads at the transmitter.

    .......... And So, should web servers ban EE?

    Seems to me there is a plot to run the web a blackmail.

    It is a would be land grab, EE of course eventually selling access to advertisers.

    War war.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The thing is, by *definition*

    adverts are for things you don't need. Because if you did, they wouldn't need to advertise it ....

  9. Paul

    I find this painfully ironic. I recently bought and signed up to their mobile broadband service special deal.

    Immediately my Osprey Mini started receiving premium text messages from T-Zones, run by IMI Mobile, with chart updates regularly, at 17p per message!

    I called up EE and they failed to stop them. Eventually I tracked down the 3030 number to IMI Mobile and demanded they stop - they ignored the "STOP ALL" message I sent.

    I then called EE again and they said they would block the messages, but I would have to wait a while before they could refund the charges.

    So on this basis I would say EE are in cahoots with the text spammers.

    1. frank ly

      "Immediately my Osprey Mini started receiving premium text messages ..."

      I'm convinced that those actions are technically theft, in law. So, why aren't the buggers in court?

    2. Andy Non Silver badge

      "started receiving premium text messages"

      Ouch. I'm in the process of moving back to the UK and was considering EE for mobile broadband. Not any more!

  10. xj650t
    Mushroom

    Oh yes

    It'll be all about the EE definition of a bad or annoying adverts.

    And no, I'm sure EE won't inject their own or preferential partners adverts instead.

    Bigger questions would be the legality of the ISP replacing legitimate adverts with white space, not gonna make a lot of website owners happy that's for sure.

  11. John Tserkezis

    "Swantee told the Telegraph: "Not all ads are bad."

    Sure, all ads are bad - except the ones that paid EE to be "unblocked".

    That's a good deal, when you "look" like you're doing right by your consmers, but are making money at the same time.

    Till your users find out what's going on, that is.

  12. David 132 Silver badge
    Unhappy

    As an aside...

    I built a new PC yesterday. As I hadn't yet installed Firefox+UBlock, but needed to look something up, I clicked the little blue e icon.

    Big mistake.

    I had forgotten what a shitshow the Web is without script/ad/iframe blocking - thinking about it, it must be 10 years since I last browsed without block-tools installed. Popups, autoplaying videos, and - bonus - HTML5 video/animation that, as far as I can tell, IE has no way of stopping. (the "play animations in webpages / play sounds in webpages" checkbox options appear to be a sick joke from the days of embedded .GIFs and .WAVs).

    And I'd only been searching for innocuous technical content. I shudder to think how much worse it would have been if I'd been doing my usual game of where's-the-best-torrent-site-now.

    Short version: remember, there are millions and millions of IE users out there. To them, that is what the web looks like.

    Dammit, people, we the technically savvy owe it to them to get them onto a decent user-centric browser ASAP. It's practically a human rights issue.

  13. Number_6

    Since it's BTEE, Phorm MkII?

    Swantee told the Telegraph: "Not all ads are bad. When a business gets it right, it's appreciated and sparks a connection. But when it's intrusive or crass it can drive people crazy."

  14. Graham 32

    "It would seem that the proposals are aimed at nudging big ad players into better practices."

    No, it's about charging big ad players into have their ads shown. They looked at AdBlock Plus's revenue stream and would like some of it.

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