One day, we will pay for nothing. All goods and services will be ad-supported. This will continue until the only advertisements are for more ad-supported services. Then, late one Monday afternoon, sometime in 2012, the Singularity will occur, snakes will swallow their own tails and, born from the collapse of reality, a second big-bang will birth the Googleverse.

At least, that's the first thing that popped into my mind when reading that in Britain, a free, ad-supported mobile phone service has hit 100,000 subscribers in just six months. Blyk gives away text messages and calls in return for text and video ads (this is one case where it pays to have a crappy low tech cellphone). According to Blyk, the ads are getting a huge 29% response rate, an order of magnitude better than most other advertising.

Whether this means that cellphone ads really work, or that the ads themselves are just particularly well made, we don't know. What we do know is that the king of the new reality will be George Forman, Lord of the Infomercial.

Ad-funded telco reaches 100,000 clients in Britain [Reuters]