World Cup tech-fever

If you want to follow the footie in great detail, without having to rely too much on TV signal strength then there are still other ways to catch the cup while you’re out and about. 3G services worldwide will be covering the event in their own detail. The German arm of the T-Mobile group will be broadcasting the first 20 games live to customer’s phones.

Here in the UK, Three will be running three dedicated mobile channels. These will be match highlights, a football show, and something called “Today’s Best of…”. None of these could be described as watching live football, but they’re free to subscribed Three customers.

If you already have a Three phone, then the shows could provide some welcome entertainment and a nice daily catch up on matches you may have missed. It’s not worth buying a 3G brick for, because you’re not going to be seeing much action on a little phone screen, though, so you might be as well signing up for one of the many SMS update services that are going to be available.

So, if you can’t get near a TV set, computer, or 3G mobile, then you’re stuffed. Well, not quite. What you’re not short of is people who’d like you to buy SMS updates of the matches.

There aren’t many free services available, and those that are support the cost by adding you to one of their pay SMS alerts service. In the UK, SMS updates cost 25p per message. You can expect to get at least three per match, one for the kick-off time and lineup which will be followed by half and full-time scores.

That should only work out at about £48 if you want to stay abreast of all the matches, unless you subscribe to any services which send you an alert every time a goal is scored, in which case prepare to bankrupt yourselves.

Or not! We've just discovered the Official FIFA service which appears to be free. Sweet!