Sprint Nextel has just announced
the mobile availability of Fandango Wireless, where you can hop on your phone's web browser (or your wireless PDA's
browser), purchase movie tickets, then have the "virtual ticket" pushed back to your handet with a bar code
image that can be read by the scanners at movie foyers - gaining you "no-line" access.My question is this, from a purely technical standpoint: I hope this has been tested, since screen resolutions and brightness vary widely, and bar codes could be hard to read on some screens I would think. However, this is a great step forward in using the mobile phone for other things than voice. Although, Sprint mentions in this article on how they were interested in this service becuase "of results from a recent nationwide survey that found 56 percent of wireless users say they want to do more than make voice calls on their phones, such as use entertainment applications." So, while we hear agreeing news and contradicting news about how mobile television and song downloading is flopping, this survey says customers want to do more than voice with their phones. Well, what do they want? Ask them instead of giving a solution very few are interested in - and that is what drove this new Fandango offering it appears. Kudos to Sprint on this one.
1. Your info on how to pick up your ticket at the theater is inaccurate - it does not use barcoding. (Wireless Week incorrectly reported this.)
This is how it works:
First, you must establish a Fandango account by creating a username and password on the Fandango web site. Once this is completed, you find your theater location information on the WAP page and enter the desired number of tickets for the applicable movie. Then you are prompted to enter credit card information. (There is a surcharge of $1.25 over the base ticket price.) Finally, a confirmation number is sent to your phone by SMS or email that you must bring to the theater ticketing area to get your tickets.
Posted at 8:53PM on Mar 13th 2006 by Laura Tigges