Walled garden (media)
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A walled garden, with regards to media content, refers to an closed set of exclusive set of information services provided for users. This is in contrast to providing consumers access to the open Internet for content and e-commerce. The term is often used to describe offerings from interactive television providers or mobile phone operators which provide custom content, and not simply common carrier functions.
Some examples of walled gardens include the following:
- America Online. AOL started its business with revenue sharing agreements with certain information providers in their subscriber-only space. Though AOL was one of the most famous walled gardens, in the mid 1990s it started to provide general Internet access to its subscribers.
- NTT DoCoMo i-mode. The interactive mobile phone content portal signs on content partners into their walled-garden, but also allows open internet-access to 'unofficial sites'. For official content providers DoCoMo shares subscription revenue and places the fee on the subscribers mobile bill. It does not share data revenue with any content providers. This is a 'semi-walled' garden approach.
- Full Service Network. A pilot project from Time Warner in the early 1990s, this was an early interactive television system that provided residents of Orlando, Florida, access to online shopping, grocery order and US Mail Service.
- Infovía, a Spain-wide Intranet established by Telefónica in the 1990s. It connected content providers and modem users. Telefonica provided the connection between modems and server over its telephone and data networks. Telefonica expected that its warranty of avoiding man-in-the-middle attacks would promote Infovía as a venue for e-commerce. Soon the main use was just as a gateway between modem users and a plethora of Internet Service Providers that avoided the cost of a modem pool and dealt just with the connection to the Internet.