It was also arguably the most controversial panel out of dozens of others that tackled topics like mobile commerce and how to bill a customer for content. In fact, sources said, the CTIA at first didn’t want to convene the panel, but ultimately relented.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t solved the problem,” Reiter told a crowd of three dozen. “But this is at least a start.” One of the panellists was Richard Ekstrand of Rural Cellular, a provider with 600,000 customers in 14 states. His company generated about $356 million in revenue last year.

Rural Cellular is among the group of smaller providers that is feeling the pinch of dropping cell phone rates and hoping to make up for it with new services. The pressure to find new revenue sources, Ekstrand said, is very real. Entertainment and even gambling are viable alternatives, he said.

Because of their small size, Rural Cellular and other smaller carriers “can be more creative, more aggressive,” with their content offerings, he said.

Ekstrand said he hasn’t been approached by content providers to offer gambling, but he is expecting the day to come.

“Frankly, I don’t see what’s wrong with it,” he said. “It’s real. People are going to demand it. By making it available, are you encouraging people to do it? No. You still have a choice.”

 

Ekstrand is facing his own choices, too. Given the option between offering porn, which is growing in popularity on the wireless Web, or gambling, he’d choose gambling. It seems the more socially acceptable of the vices.

“It’s easier to deal with gambling than porn materials,” he said. “It’s kind of like the argument between marijuana and alcohol. One is illegal. The other is not. One is more socially acceptable. The other is not.”

But others aren’t so accepting. Ray Soular, chairman of SafeSurf, a Web filtering company, is asking wireless sites to start offering ratings, along the same lines as how movies are rated. The same type of rating system never worked on the Internet, where the number of Web sites swelled into the tens of millions.

But the number of wireless sites is still at a manageable level, so a rating system wouldn’t be too late, Soular said.

Charles Gertech, a director at consulting firm Mainspring, said wireless gambling presents the wireless Web with the “classic Internet problem” of whose laws govern what actions.

Because a consumer in America can access a Web site run in London, for example, what laws apply? Is it the United States’ strict gambling rules or Britain’s? The same type of issue was central in a legal case against Yahoo, when a French court said it was allowing the sale of Nazi memorabilia, which is illegal to do in some countries. Mobile casinos and gambling included.

“That issue is not over, by a long shot,” Gertech said.