Hutchison 3G, Britain's newest mobile phone operator, has appointed an executive to develop ways of offering soft-core pornography over third generation handsets.

The handsets, due to be launched next autumn, will enable users to download full colour photographs from the internet. As the technology improves, short video clips are also expected to become available on some phones.

However, many analysts have become sceptical about the willingness of mobile phone users to pay for additional internet content and earn enough to recoup the £22.5bn ($32.3bn) cost of buying 3G licences from the government.

Online pornography could therefore prove to be a vital way of boosting revenues for struggling mobile operators, particularly as it has already proved to be one of the few economically successful areas of e-commerce through desktop computers.

Hutchison 3G, which is jointly owned by Dutch and Japanese investors, is believed to be the first UK mobile phone network to consider offering its own services. It has a full-time member of staff, referred to as the "head of adult services" by one person who has recent held talks with the company, examining the business prospects.

Hutchison refused to discuss the job title of its employee, but confirmed that a member of its "entertainment" team had been asked to explore the potential benefits and disadvantages of such a service.

"We have looked long and hard at this, but have still not decided what sort of services we will be offering," said the company. Hutchison is unlikely to become involved in producing or editing pornographic content, but may form partnerships which allow it to receive a share of any subscription revenue. No contracts to supply content have been agreed yet.

The company is also keen to develop appropriate filtering and barring software to ensure that adult material cannot be accessed by children.

Existing mobile internet services using technology known as WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) have encouraged some independent websites to offer pictures using primitive black and white graphics on existing phones.

However, there are few effective ways of charging for premium content over WAP phones.

A more advanced Japanese service known as i-mode has already encouraged a flourishing market in unofficial websites offering pornography.

Hutchison is jointly owned by Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong conglomerate, NTT DoCoMo, the dominant Japanese mobile operator and KPN, the Dutch national phone company.

If it does decide to proceed with adult services as part of its online service, the content is expected to be similar to that available through tabloid newspapers or men's magazines rather than hardcore pornography.

However, as the mobile internet develops many expect it to become impossible to police which sites can be visited by users. To begin with, the menu of services offered by network operators will be more important in determining what is available.

Source = FT