Submitted by Mike Grenville on Tue, 12 Apr 2005 18:41

Playboy TV UK is the first broadcaster to allow customers to pay for their TV subscription via premium rate text messages.

Yakara, who are providing the text message subscription service, claim this is the first time this has been done in the UK.

By texting "go" to 89191, Sky customers can now subscribe to a six channel package including Playboy TV, the Adult Channel, Spice Extreme and three Climax3 channels. They then pay for their subscription via their mobile phone bill which reflects charges for twenty premium rate text messages at UK £1.50 each per month.

Signing up to the service involves replying to three messages asking for the customer's telephone number, postcode and Sky viewing card number. This information is verified before the service is activated to prevent unauthorized access. The subscription is then activated within 2 hours.

Until now viewers had to subscribe by telephoning a call centre or via the Playboy website.

Stuart Malcolm, Managing Director of Yakara plc said: "We have made the ordering and payment of TV content as easy as voting for a reality TV show. Playboy TV, has seen the business benefits of using SMS."

Playboy TV UK has also launched the red button on their remote control for viewers to subscribe to their channels.

Although paying via SMS is more expensive, Malcolm believes that using text messaging will be very popular pointing to the added benefit of anonymity that text messaging offers when ordering erotic content.

www.yakara.com

www.playboytv.co.uk