• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, November 30, 2006

Verizon's clearly pushing hard to convince people to subscribe to its $15-a-month V Cast service. This week alone, the company announced deals with two video-sharing sites, YouTube and Revver, to make select clips available to V Cast subscribers.

But the deals unveiled so far don't seem likely to spark subscriptions. Consider, YouTube and Revver already are available for free online. And, while a computer screen doesn't provide as good a view as a larger TV screen, it's still far better than a two-inch mobile phone screen. It's hard to imagine that too many people will be willing to shell out $15 a month--more than, say, the cost of HBO--for material they can already view gratis.

Additionally, Verizon, YouTube and Revver will select the videos to be available on the service. Maybe that's because it's not technically feasible to enable users to search and choose the videos they wish to see. But won't most early adopters--the ones who are big enough technophiles to want to subscribe to mobile video--also want the ability to choose which videos to watch?

Currently, just a tiny fraction of people are accessing video clips via cell phones. Ipsos Insight this week reported that only 3% of U.S. mobile phone owners have ever downloaded music videos to their phones, while a mere 2% have downloaded short video clips.

Yes, if more quality mobile content was available, more people probably would start downloading. But this week's deals with YouTube and Revver don't seem likely to move that needle.