m-Qube agrees to $500K mobile billing settlement

Mobile content delivery and billing firm m-Qube has agreed to pay the Florida Attorney General's office $500,000 to settle a dispute over premium content billing and advertising. Florida AG Bill McCollum announced that per terms of the settlement, VeriSign-owned m-Qube will also modify its business practices and submit to monitoring by the Attorney General's CyberFraud Section. Specifically, m-Qube will adopt and enforce CyberFraud Section-mandated standards for advertising ringtones, horoscopes, wallpapers and other mobile media, and require its content providers and advertisers to "clearly and conspicuously disclose the true cost of their services in all online advertising." The AG first launched its investigation into m-Qube in July 2007--the settlement follows in the wake of similar cases targeting companies spanning from AT&T to MobileFunster.

For more on the m-Qube settlement:
- read this release