The first mobile phone election

By Sean Coughlan
BBC News

Mobile phone election: Tony Blair's DIY photo-opportunity in Weymouth

This is going to be the first general election when many of us get the results on our mobile phones.

Whether it's sitting in the pub or travelling on a train, when the first declarations and pundits' predictions start emerging on 5 May, many people will be peering over their phone screens to find out.

The BBC's figures show that for the first time five million pages of news and information are being accessed each week in a mobile format.

Mobile phone operator O2 says the number of its customers able to access online news services has almost doubled in less than a year - rising from 2.3m in June 2004 to a current level of 4.1m.

And when big news is breaking, whether via news services or a text from a friend, the mobile phone is becoming a more common way for information to spread.

'News at tone'

"There were lots of people saying that they first heard through their mobile phones about the death of the pope," said Graham Brown, head of the research organisation, Wireless World Forum.

Tony Blair appears on the small screen in Gravesend

O2's Steve Bartholomew gives the example of football matches. "You used to see people in football grounds with a radio clamped to their ear, getting results, but now they're checking on their mobile phones."

The technology has been around for several years - but using mobile phones to get news is making the shift into the mainstream - and out of the realm of the anoraks and gadget enthusiasts.

"It's like camera phones," says Mr Bartholomew. "Almost no one had them - and suddenly they're everywhere."

"People have their mobile phones with them all the time, everywhere they go. And so increasingly it's how they get news," says a spokesperson for the Mobile Data Association.

There are now more mobile phones in the UK than there are people - and news organisations are trying to find ways into this market.

"Traditional news outlets are being squeezed - and news companies around the world are very actively 'mobilising' their content," says Mr Brown.

People expect "anywhere, anytime" services, he says, and in terms of accessibility, mobile phones can reach the parts that other news channels cannot reach.

Youth appeal

Even the commuter zone of the railway carriage, once the preserve of the newspaper, is being slowly colonised by people checking the latest news on their phones. And so newspapers are pushing to use mobiles as a platform - with the Financial Times launching a mobile service earlier this month.

There are now more mobiles than people in the UK

The growth in mobile phone news "comes on the back of internet news", says Mr Brown, where people have become accustomed to directly accessing the information they want - whether it's a football score, news headlines or the weather.

And O2's Mr Bartholomew says this kind of instant news-checking comes in the gaps in everyday life - on public transport, stuck in a queue or when waiting for someone.

Emphasising the acceleration of news that comes with mobile phones, he points to the Heysel football stadium disaster, 20 years ago, when people didn't know what was happening in the same football ground. Now mobile phones would have spread news almost instantly.

For the general election, the Electoral Commission hopes to harness the "accessibility and sense of immediacy" of mobile phones, setting up an election service, with 02, which will give young people information about voting.

"Mobile phones are a way that young people are used to getting information," says the Electoral Commission's campaign manager, Becky Lloyd.

Photo-finish

So the information about the voting process, where to find polling booths and how elections work has been created in a format for mobile phones.

"There are young people who are surprised that they have to go to a polling station to vote, it seems very antiquated to them, when they're used to the internet and mobile phones," she said.

Mobile phones are also popular with the politicians fighting this year's contest. Tony Blair has repeatedly been seen having his photograph taken by mobile phone cameras.

And as they travel around the country, government ministers and their advisers are getting news updates about the campaign through mobile news services on their Blackberry handsets.

The Blair years have also been the mobile phone years. When Mr Blair entered office in 1997, only about one in six of the adult population had mobile phones. By the end of last year, an average of 78 million text messages were being sent every single day.

If the mobile phone has become one of the dominant cultural icons of the era, then the format for news looks like it could also be influenced. We want push-button, customised news on the subjects that interest us.

It's still the news. But this time it's personal.