No World Cup footy for Vodafone's UK subscribers - it's as bad as porn

In the UK, as in many other parts of the world, mobile comms companies are legally required to protect children and minors from exposure to "adult" (i.e. pornographic) and other questionable material. To ensure this is done, and to insure themselves against possible criminal charges and concomitant massive monetary compensation claims, cellular operators usually opt for overkill and routinely block any content that their resident censors and arbiters of good taste might consider questionable.

So, as far as the UK's mobile sector is concerned, (but not for fixed line ISPs) a blanket ban is the norm and adults can only effect the unblocking of RTSP (real time streaming protocol) streams by the presentation of a credit car that is verifiably held by an adult. No one in the UK under the age of 18 can legally hold such a piece of plastic, nor can a minor enter into any other form of credit agreement.

That's the law, but, of course there are plenty of ways of getting round it and there's a booming market in fake IDs. However, there's no law against anyone of any age watching football on a mobile handset and even in the US there's a general awareness that the Football World Cup competition is presently underway in South Africa,while the rest of the world, and global TV schedules, are in thrall to the competition.

Many mobile operators are making good money by providing apps as services allowing football fans to sate themselves on World Cup content, but not Vodafone in the UK.