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Mobile operators argue that advertisers should cover the data costs of serving ads.
3UK and 3 Italia are rolling out network-level ad blocking to give customers more control over their privacy and data usage, it emerged on Friday.
Parent company CK Hutchison said in a statement that it has partnered with ad-blocking specialist Shine to deploy its technology in 3’s networks in the two countries.
"Our objective in working with Shine is not to eliminate mobile advertising, which is often interesting and beneficial to our customers, but to give customers more control, choice and greater transparency over what they receive," CK Hutchison said.
The announcement comes amid tension between those who argue that intrusive, irritating advertisements degrade the customer experience, and those who rely on ad revenue.
Apple has introduced ad-blocking support to iOS 9, while EE’s former CEO Olaf Swantee late last year revealed he was considering blocking adverts on his company’s mobile network.
On the other side of the debate, some media outlets, such as the Washington Post, Yahoo, and Wired can detect when a visitor is using an ad blocker, and prompt them to turn it off. In some cases they withhold content until the visitor complies with their request.
CK Hutchison said it has three objectives when it comes to deploying ad blocking.
Firstly, it said customers should not have to pay data charges to receive adverts; the costs should be covered by the advertiser.
Secondly, customers’ privacy and security must be protected.
"Some advertisers use mobile ads to extract and exploit data about customers without their knowledge or consent," CK Hutchison said.
Finally, customers should be entitled to receive relevant, interesting adverts, and not have their mobile experience degraded by "excessive, intrusive, unwanted or irrelevant ads."
Hutch said it will work with Shine and the advertising community over the coming months to achieve these objectives.
