Ad-supported freebies have been available on the web for some time now, but the concept of an ad-funded telco still intrigued me when I first read about it a few weeks back. But since I’m leaving the UK soon, I didn’t really pay too much attention to it.

Fast-forward to this week, when I was getting busy with my project (or starting to, anyway) and with 81p left on my mobile credit. I gave Blyk another look, and figured – why not? It’s free anyway. Supposedly you need an invite to join, but it’s easy enough to get one simply by texting “JOIN” to 82595 from a UK mobile phone. So I did, and am now enabled with free minutes and texts for my last week here in the UK.

The SIM card arrived in a little square envelope, which was rather cute I think. I like minimalistic packaging, somehow. Anyway, setting up was a bit of a pain – you’re supposed to get messages after inserting the SIM card into your phone, but they didn’t quite advertise that it might take up to 2h for that to happen. But after waiting for sometime, everything was finally set up, and the free balance was credited to my account.

The prospect of getting (up to 6) adverts a day isn’t particularly exciting to me, but I think it’s a fair enough trade. Besides, you’re able to specify the specific fields you’d like to receive spam about, and if it actually leads to you getting news about sales and discounts – that’s not so terribly bad, is it?

(Yes, I am fully aware that ‘Fashion’ and ‘Sport’ remain unchecked on my interests list. So sue me.)

Wonder if such a service will ever take off in Singapore? I think I wouldn’t mind being on an ad-supported service, as long as incoming calls are free…