The phrase shooting oneself in the foot comes to mind with Vodafone and VMware announcing they are taking on bandwidth-guzzling pre-fetched short video clips to improve network conditions. Despite dubious first appearances, Faultline has been told that the joint offering – launched at Mobile World Congress this week – has not been laughed out of existence, but has received significant interest from key players. The proof of concept is an attempt to improve coverage of mobile networks by getting content providers to opt-in to reducing the “infinite scroll” experiences that underpin social media applications like TikTok and Instagram. This pre-fetching of content is also being framed as a wasteful use of energy. Flaws in the business model from Vodafone and…