Vodafone Mobile Web (User-Agent) Debacle

Today I read on multiple weblogs (Mike Rowehl, Barbara Ballard, David Harper), about Luca Passani’s rant on Vodafone’s mishandling of the User-Agent HTTP header.

I am writing about this, to show my support. I’m not going to regurgitate Luca’s point here, and you should go read how Vodafone UK is abusing its position. I totally support Luca on this.

Providing a better mobile web user experience is about properly identifying the web client (typically via the User-Agent header), with the goal of properly serving content to the connecting device (based on its features/characteristics). This is central to mobile web today.

Vodafone knows better… don’t break the User-Agent!

ceo