Lycos a MISP opportunity for Vodafone

Vodafone AirTouch is reported to be considering a bid for Lycos, the Internet portal and directory service. This isn't a surprise.

For a start, the price tag - around $10bn - would be small potatoes for Vodafone, given its future growth predictions, the cost of 3G licences, and what it ended up paying for Mannesmann.

But whether or not a deal is completed, the prospect of this kind of tie-up highlights a seismic shift in Internet power.

Lycos is an Internet stalwart, growing up with the medium - but it is now more valuable to the companies that will drive the next wave of growth. Those companies - with some notable exceptions - are the mobile phone network operators, soon to become full mobile Internet service providers (MISPs).

In the UK, we're seeing BT Cellnet and Orange publicise their Internet-over-the-phone services. This is just the beginning for the MISP.

Mobile phone adoption has even overshadowed the growth of the Net. Make a large proportion of handsets data-ready - made possible by WAP, and soon high-speed GPRS before full on third-generation in two or three years - and a company like Vodafone AirTouch (with almost 50 million global users) becomes the world's largest ISP.

And what could be better than also controlling significant chunks of content over those connections? Lycos would provide content, in addition to third-parties like the BBC and Charles Schwab.

In a world where even a device company like Nokia is talking to News Corp, a network operator courting Lycos is just a case of natural evolution.