Israeli firm Ki-Bi has invented a card-based system that it claims makes downloading content much easier.

When held against a phone's speaker the chunky cards play a series of tones that connects the handset to an operator's portal.

Pressing other buttons on the card starts the download of whatever it is that customers want on their handset.

Tone load

Phone firms are keen to get their customers downloading and paying for ringtones, images, songs and video clips, said Richard Cohen, Ki-Bi's European boss.

"Content is very hard to find on the operator portals," he said, "because they are like very narrow windows that run very deep."

The Ki-Bi cards are the size of credit cards but are several times thicker. On the face of each card are a series of buttons that, when pressed, play a seven-second long tone which makes a handset dial a number and download some content.

Already Ki-Bi cards have been used to promote mobile phone games, such as Driv3r, Splinter Cell, and ringtones and other extras for operators such as Orange, O2 and Vodafone.

Phone owners can buy the cards in shops or from operators and can be used for up to 1,000 transactions before running out.

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The cards can also be used to ensure that phones are configured correctly before their owners start to download anything.

Currently only 10% of the phones that can use faster downloads via GPRS technology are configured to do so, said Mr Cohen.

Early trials with the UK's Orange network showed that the cards were popular, he said.

Late last year Orange gave out 60,000 cards, more than half of which were activated and used to download extras to handsets.

Such a response rate is far better than operators usually get, said Mr Cohen.

But Sebastien de Halleux, head of strategic alliances at mobile games maker Macrospace, sounded a note of caution about the cards.

"We'd be worried about marketing and visibility in the stores," said Mr de Halleux, "because physical shelf space is much shorter than digital shelf space."

Games on operator portals will stay in place for months, he said, but the same may not be true in shops selling Ki-Bi cards.

"It also introduces an inventory management problem that we are happy not have in the first place," he added.

But, he conceded, the cards could be useful for raising awareness about mobile games and content generally.