Just noticed this on Ecademy; some not-mobile-marketing guys I met last week mentioned this move to me but it's the first official sign I've seen of it:

"The increase in number and scope of subscription services has brought with it a massive increase in complaints from customers that they have been misled, that money is being taken from their account without their permission, or that they are unable to unsubscribe from these services.

WHAT ARE WE DOING ABOUT THIS?

As indicated at the recent Vodafone Aggregators seminar, we are carrying out an urgent review on the operation of subscription based premium rate SMS services. We are pleased to say that this review has been given the support of O2, Orange and T-mobile and the findings will be reported to ICSTIS.
"

So: subscription SMS services have been jumped on by cowboys and Vodafone are going to sort it out.

Robert and Jon (both ex-Scan) wandered down to Brighton for yesterday evening, and having spend the last week bashing out proposals, I had an evening off and wandered out to meet them for a catch-up. They're interesting chaps, having done a dot-com-ish thing and been into mobile long before most of us, and we had a good chinwag in the Great Eastern before heading up to the Albert.

To describe the gig as "intimate" would be a bit of an understatement. Thanks, we believe, to Bill Bailey playing in Brighton there wasn't much of a crowd. In fact there was, err, me and Jon (though a few more people turned up later - including a couple of the other acts - and swelled the audience to 8 or so). But undeterred, Robert held forth and cracked me up a couple of times. Plus he was invited back at some unspecified point in the future, which is a good result as I understand it.