On Thursday ESPN announced that it would shutdown its Mobile Virtual Network Operators called Mobile ESPN at the end of the year. I was surprised to learn that ESPN is planning to buy back the handsets of customers who pay their balances in full. In addition they are allowing customers to "suspend" their service without an early termination penalty. Subscribers presumably could suspend their Mobile ESPN accounts and sign up for service on a major wireless carrier immediately.

This shows how desperately ESPN wants the early adopters of their mobile phone service to subscribe to its data services on other wireless providers' networks. Who can blame them? The subscribers to Mobile ESPN already identified themselves as willing to pay for wireless data services. Very few individual customers have been willing to do this.

Is anyone else wondering how Mobile ESPN will succeed as a value-added wireless data service resold by other carriers? I just don't see many mobile phone customers being willing to pay extra for sports-related services, except perhaps game highlights delivered to their handsets. The problem is that most people don't have phones or data plans that are robust enough to easily use such a service, if it existed today.