Actual telecoms news has been thin on the ground this week, so it’s rather fitting that the Informer filed his last edition of A Week in Wireless for 2007.

The biggest news, such as it is, is that Sprint Nextel reckons its still going ahead with a commercial launch of WiMAX next year - a statement which didn’t seem to get much coverage from the analyst community. Still, Daryl Schoolar, senior analyst at In-Stat has some comment on Sprint potentially spinning the business off.

Another company that might be doing some spinning off is Motorola, which, given its poor performance of late, is facing increasing calls to be broken up. Brian Modoff, Deutsche Bank analyst, has some comments on Moto’s potential trip to the breaker’s yard in the Economist.

We’re getting well into roundup story season now, so Michael Gartenberg, of Jupiter Research, has a list of features he’d like to find in the iPhone. While Dean Bubley, over at Disruptive Analysis, looks at ‘device of the year’ for 2007, which is of course, where the iPhone gets another mention.

Meanwhile, pre-empting a lot of interest next year, China has lifted geographic restrictions on foreign investment and increased the ceiling on assets ownership by overseas companies. Charice Wang at Ovum, has some comment here.

And so this is Christmas, and what have you done? If you’re the Informer, you haven’t done a damn thing, including your Christmas shopping. And if you’re the rest of the industry, you haven’t done much either, judging by the paltry news offerings that wafted the Informer’s way this week, which counts among its events the last appearance of A Week in Wireless for 2007.

Nope, everybody’s hunkering down for the holiday season, gradually drifting away from the office and into the bosom of their family. Or the local pub.

Meanwhile, let’s remember that Christmas has a meaning. That’s right, it’s all about getting presents. And what will many kids want under the tree this year? You guessed it: the iPhone.

So, in a bid to marry the commercial and spiritual elements of the festive season, here’s the Informer’s wireless nativity story, complete with seasonal carols…

iNATiViTY

ON A DARK night, Jobseph, a lowly craftsman, was travelling to Cupertino, California, for there was a census. It was vital that Jobseph found somewhere to stay, for word was out that a product was to be born unto him and that this product would be the saviour of the User Interface.

The Virgin Mobile had wanted to come along, but Jobseph told her to bugger off.

Far away, some operators sat tending their flocks of sheep. They were having a conversation about interconnection rates, but they weren’t price fixing or anything. All of a sudden in a blinding flash, an Analyst appeared…

(Carol number one - to the tune of While Shepherds Watched)

While carriers fleeced their sheep by night,
With complex pricing rates,
An Analyst appeared to them
With news that changed their fates
Yes news that changed their fates

“Soon there will be a phone of such
Desirability
That all your sheep will long for one
Despite it being 2G
Despite it being 2G

“And if you want a piece of this
To Jobseph you’ll be sent
But he’ll want something in return
Perhaps forty per cent.
Perhaps forty per cent”.

The operators were startled by the Analyst, especially his offer of 24 hours of celestial advice at a very reasonable rate. But they were intrigued by the glad tidings he had brought them.

They weren’t exactly bowled over by the prospect of forking over 40 per cent of anything to anybody, if they were completely honest. But if it was true that such a wondrous phone would be coming unto them, and stuff, they wanted to get in on the action. They resolved to travel and find this Jobseph and the phone of which the Analyst had spake.

“Ooh, what about the sheep?” one of the operators said to his fellows. “Who’s going to keep an eye on them?” Fortunately, among their number was an unbeliever, called Vodafone. So Vodafone stayed behind and kept an eye on the flock, while four of the operators - AT&T, Orange, O2 and T-Mobile set off for Cupertino.

Meanwhile…

When Jobseph reached Cupertino the city was full, because of the census. There was nowhere for him to stay. Eventually, an innkeeper offered him the use of his stable, where slept the humble animals. It wasn’t really to Jobseph’s liking. There was no wet room, for a start, and it didn’t smell too pleasant. On the upside, it had a giant plasma screen, which would be useful for the presentation that Jobseph had a feeling he was going to need to do. Jobseph settled down to await the arrival of his new phone.

At length, the phone appeared. And what a little cutie it was. For it was without buttons and was all smooth, with a lovely big touch screen. Jobseph was bursting with paternal pride and he gently laid the baby iPhone down in a manger. Even the cows were impressed, although they did look upon their clumsy hooves with a mournful expression, for never would they be able to use the iPhone.

(Carol 2 - Away in a Manger)

Away in a manger, no sign of 3G
The little lord iPhone is giggling with glee
The hype’s been amazing, a marketing coup
He chuckles to hear of the size of the queue

At this point, the operators arrived. “You Jobseph?” enquired Orange.

“I am,” said Jobseph.

“So, where’s this iPhone of yours, then?” T-Mobile said, feigning nonchalance. Jobseph simply swept one arm outward, drawing the operators’ gaze to the manger and the iPhone that lay inside it, wrapped in swaddling cloth.

“Oh, that’s just to protect the screen,” he said, when the operators looked askance at him. “So, what do you reckon?”

“Ooh, it’s very nice,” said O2. “No 3G, though?” Jobseph coughed into his hand.
“Ah, no we don’t think it really needs it at this stage,” he said.
“That just a two megapixel camera, is it?” asked AT&T.
“Yes, yes it is,” said Jobseph,
“So there’s no 3G and only a two megapixed camera?”
“Look, what do you expect,” snapped Jobseph. “A miracle?”
Snatching the phone out of AT&T’s hand, he said: “But look at this…”

Jobseph turned the phone on its side, and the display shifted from portrait to landscape. Everyone cooed, whipped out their pens and signed on Jobseph’s dotted line.

As the operators were celebrating their good fortune, and Jobseph was pondering his triumph, two Oriental Kings arrived. Jobseph assumed that they were there to see him and his chosen one, so he began making some space in the manger for the gold, frankincense and myrrh that he’d been led to expect would be his gifts. He was, however, to be disappointed, as the Kings were actually there to talk to the operators.

“Aren’t there supposed to be three of you?” said Jobseph, visibly miffed that the Kings were more interested in the operators than they were in him.

“No, no, just the two of us,” said one of the kings, whose name was Huawei. The other one was called ZTE. In a bid to explain their presence, they sang a little song…

(Carol 3 - We two Kings)

We two kings of Orient are
Selling kit that’s cheaper by far
We’re doing our best
To conquer the west
For ours is the rising star

Oh… Western vendors scurry in fright
Slash your headcount, do what you might
Match our charging, watch your margins
Shrink and shrink ’til out of sight.

All present had to concede that the Western vendors hadn’t had a very good time of it lately and so they joined in a short verse, commemorating the top executives who had departed their companies in the course of the year. They consoled one another with the knowledge that these people usually bag a handsome pay-off when they leave because of their company’s poor performance.

(Carol 4 - God Rest Ye Merry CXOs)

God rest ye merry CXOs, your firm has hit the skids
Pursue new opportunities, or spend time with your kids
The shareholders have ousted you, they really flipped their lids
O Golden parachute of joy, ‘chute of joy,
O Golden parachute of joy

Just like a football manager you’ll pop up somewhere new
Or maybe you will choose to start a VC fund or two
A non exec directorship must surely wait for you
O Golden parachute of joy, ‘chute of joy,
O Golden parachute of joy

Just then, the two Kings, the Shepherds and even Jobseph stopped their singing, in order to hearken beyond the garden walls of the stable. For the townsfolk had gathered together to witness the arrival of a great heavenly apparition. It was the big G himself, and he presented the people with a new offering, albeit with an altogether scarier name.

(Carol 5 - O Little Town of Bethlehem)

O little town of Mountain View
With thoughts of wireless
They permeate your every move
They cause carriers great stress
You shaketh up the industry
With might you sit on high
Delivering advertisements
With your all seeing eye

For iPhone is born of Steven Jobs
And gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love
O Android promises to give
Open platforms for all
And praises sing to God the King
And Peace to men on earth

Just then Tiny Tim said “God bless us, every one.” And Scrooge popped round with a goose, while Jimmy Stewart realised what a wonderful life it really is and Clarence got his wings and everybody lived happily ever after. Apart from the Grinch.

THE END

So it just remains to be said that everybody here wishes all of you out there a relaxing and peaceful break.

Despite the recent disasters that have befallen the company, Sprint Nextel still reckons it’s on track for a commercial launch of WiMAX next year. It’s in the process of soft launching the network in three markets right now, with several hundred employees using data cards to access the wireless broadband network.

But most of the noise coming out of Sprint right now seems to be geared towards easing the concerns of those companies that have got involved in the Xohm ecosystem. And the shareholders of course.

I wonder if Sprint’s come so far down the line now that it has to run with the WiMAX ball, or whether its all bluster. The reader commenting below makes an interesting point…

The gauntlets are going down left, right and centre as some of the industry’s biggest players start facing off against each other in the mobile music arena. But the lines between content provisioning and content delivery are becoming increasingly blurred as companies from outside of the content space begin seeking a chunk of the revenue stream.

Nokia set the cat among the pigeons this month, with the promise of a music subscription service that lets users keep their music when they leave. This breaks the mould of the ‘music rental’ service typically favoured by the industry but also puts Nokia in a questionable position with its own operator customers. Meanwhile, the operators’ in house music portals seem to be taking a back seat as third party offerings become more attractive and the music labels themselves scramble to come up with a business model suited to digital distribution of their wares.

Here’s a round up of our recent coverage on mobile music:

3 UK goes radio ga ga

Nokia promises users music they can keep

Nokia gets Kylie before rest of world

Microsoft buys Musiwave for $46m

Mobile music gauntlet goes down

Free Stuff’s the right stuff for 3

Mobile music: quality verus quantity

Operators finally capitulate to third parties for content future

With the high number of telecoms big cheeses doing the off of late, I’m beginning to wonder if Palm’s chief exec, Ed Colligan, is starting to sweat a bit.

On Friday, Palm said its loss for the quarter just gone was going to be greater than usual [a loss warning?], mainly because of a new gadget that didn’t get certified for shipment when it should. I’ve no idea what this secret weapon is, but getting it to ship after the Christmas rush isn’t going to help.

Palm’s had a bit of gadget trouble of late. It’s cheapo Centro device is too popular, diluting the revenue mix, and then there’s the ill-fated Foleo, which got killed off just as it was about to ship, mainly because no one understood what it was.

This is all against the background of Colligan trying to get the operating system strategy onto a two-fork road - Linux and Microsoft Windows Mobile - but something’s afoot as the company is still releasing PalmOS-based devices.

Let’s say you had to compile a historical ‘Who’s Who’ of the mobile communications industry. Who’d make the grade? Bell? Marconi? Gent? McCaw? Dunstone? Ollila?

How’s about Papworth? What do you mean you’ve never heard of him? We’re talking about Neil Papworth, here, people. Snap to it.

Neil Papworth, the Informer will have you know, is an engineer who, 15 years ago this very week, sent the World’s First SMS. Containing simply the words ‘Merry Christmas’, this seminal message was sent to some engineers at Vodafone. Papworth was at Airwide Solutions at the time, where he remains to this day. When new people start at Airwide, the HR manager points him out in hushed tones. “That’s Neil Papworth,” they whisper. “He sent the world’s first text message.”

So, happy birthday text messaging and respect to Neil Papworth (the Informer hope’s you’re a reader). If A Week in Wireless was one of those glossy celeb mags, like Hello!, it would feature Mr P. like a shot.

In other people news, Smilin’ Ed Zander showed flagrant disregard for the Informer’s deadline last Friday afternoon and walked the plank at Motorola. He announced just after last week’s edition had gone out that he was fleeing the position of CEO effective January 1st next year. He’ll remain as chairman until the annual shareholders meeting in May.

At this point, no doubt, Moto’s third largest shareholder, Carl Icahn - not the CEO’s number one fan - will hold the door open for Zander as he leaves, closing it with the words: “And stay out,” before lobbing a box of surplus RAZRs onto the street behind him.

But Zander’s sacrifice has not satisfied Icahn, who still yearns to cleave Motorola asunder. “I believe that the steps announced today do not even begin to address the major problems at Motorola,” said Icahn. “In my opinion, Motorola should be split into separate companies: a mobile devices company; an enterprise mobility company; a connected home company; and a company focused on mobile networks infrastructure. In particular, I believe that the best opportunity for the mobile devices’ business to attract top flight management and to prosper and grow is to establish it as a stand alone business.”

The Informer believes that the best opportunity for the mobile devices business would be for it to design some decent phones.

Icahn also said: “I like Ed Zander personally.” The Informer’s glad that Icahn has expressed no such fondness for him, as he has a mortgage to pay and can’t afford the peculiar rewards of the billionaire’s personal favour. Presumably, though, the big E.Z. will stagger away from Motorola beneath a lumping great payoff that will allow him to pursue other interests and spend time with his family until the cows come home. And, as an added bonus, he can start using a Nokia phone, or a Sony Ericsson, without fear of reprisal.

Motorola is to plug its Zander-shaped hole with Greg Brown, until now the firm’s COO. It’s a quick business promoting from the inside, but you have to ask one question: If Brown was unable to exert sufficient positive influence on the firm as its chief operating officer to check its downward slump, what change will be effected by the substitution of an ‘E’ for an ‘O’?

There was yet more top level change to come at Schaumburg, Illinois, as CTO Padmasree Warrior bailed out of Motorola in the wake of Zander’s departure - perhaps giving an insight into what one of Greg Brown’s first moves would have been - and popped up in the same role at Cisco. Here, according to her first (somewhat overblown) Cisco blog post, Warrior will be, among other things, “envisioning and creating the future.”

It used to be that the future was Orange, according to the adverts, anyway. The iPhone is helping the French operator go some way to securing a future of its own, as the firm reported that it shifted 30,000 of the Apple preciouses in the first five days of their Gallic availability. Half of these were new sign-ups to the Orange France network, which is pretty good going for a single model. It’s not clear whether the other 15,000 bought the phone without a contract or if they were upgrade sales.

Over the border in Deutschland, Apple’s distribution partner T-Mobile saw off a sour grapes legal challenge from Vodafone over its right to sell the handset locked only to its network. Vodafone had won a temporary injunction forcing T-Mo to sell an unlocked version of the device but a court in Hamburg this week overturned that ruling. In the UK, T-Mobile has launched a new prepaid web access tariff that gives users unlimited internet on the handsets for just £0.50 per day.

Meanwhile, Google’s changed the bed sheets and waxed its back in a bid to make itself more appealing to all the lovely iPhone users. The company claims its portal has been tweaked so that the full screen display and Safari browser on the phone can make better use of Google functionality. But the user reports coming in suggest Google has been rendered all but unusable on the device.

In other handset news, heavyweight vendor Nokia has predicted big increases in demand for terminals next year. On Tuesday, the Big Finn said it expects 2008 device shipments for the sector as a whole to grow ten per cent on this year’s figure of 1.1 billion units.

No prizes for guessing where all that tasty growth’s going to come from; it’s the emerging markets, said Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo at the firm’s annual investor shindig this week.

The Informer was always told to honour thy parents, so he’d never disagree with the Victorian Dad of Informa Telecoms & Media, no siree. But Nokia dares to! While ITM reckons that global sub numbers will be up at 3.81 billion by the end of 08, Nokia’s talking a faster, bigger game - projecting that the four billion sub barrier will be broken before 2009.

Markets don’t come much more emerging than Iraq, as the rebuild continues apace, and this week Kuwaiti spendthrift Zain dipped into its big, beautifully embroidered bag of Dinars once again, finding enough to buy Iraqi operator Iraqna for $1.2bn. Zain already holds a licence in Iraq, where it operates under the MTC-Atheer brand and the consolidation of the two operations will give the firm more than seven million customers in the market. Penetration in Iraq is just 33 per cent at the moment, so there’s plenty of room for growth.

Just like there is at Ericsson, which this week issued some good news; a rare thing of late for the Swedish firm. It’s won a contract in Russia with market leader Mobile TeleSystems that will see it supply and deploy a WCDMA/HSPA network. As well as the RAN and core network gear, the Swedes are delivering a bunch of services and the network is due to go live in the second half of next year.

With only one A Week in Wireless left before Christmas, the Informer ventured out of the office last night for the first of hopefully many Yuletide festivities. 3UK was the host and according to the invitation, the venue was some snazzed-up ex-public lavatory.

Upon arrival, the Informer was getting a few funny looks from the other guests and the conversation was stilted as he loitered in the gents outside Aldgate tube station. The bar staff were off-hand and the fragrant blue canapes were undercooked. It took the Informer half an hour and a quiet word from an undercover policeman before he realised the party was at Aldwych, not Aldgate!

Once he’d got his facts straight, the Informer made his way to the party proper. 3UK had, that day, launched its Non Stop Music service. For the princely sum of £0.49 users get 24 hours of music streamed to their device. There are eight different musical genres on offer, the downside is they’re all on a four hour loop that gets rejigged once a week. It’s like rubbish radio that you have to pay for.

It’s also eerily reminiscent of O2’s Visual Radio and Vodafone’s Radio DJ, both of which were launched in February 2006. Neither of which were what could be described as successful, not in the traditional sense of the word anyway. What we have here is a clear case of elements of the past and elements of the future combining to make something not quite as good as either.

Back in the underground bar-toilet, the Informer was told he could choose music from the SMS jukebox. The trouble with this concept was the venue was underground, it’s called The Cellar Bar for goodness’ sake, so the Informer had to leave the warmth (and drinks) behind and make his way out into the rain in order to text through his order (sadly the jukebox didn’t have George Michael’s Let’s Go Outside, so the Informer plumped for 20th Century Boy instead). The upside of all this is the Informer has found a practical use for femto cells.

Unfortunately for 3 it chose to launch its less than exciting music service during the same week as Nokia launched Comes With Music. The premise of the “Comes with Music” initiative is fairly simple. The user buys a Nokia device and gets bundled with it a year’s subscription to a music service, giving them unlimited downloads and a licence to play the songs on their PC as well as their phone. The music is DRM’d so it can’t be copied casually but, at the end of the year, if you choose to terminate your subscription, you get to keep the tunes.

That 3 should choose to launch its service in the same week that Nokia launched something substantially better pretty much sums up the reason we’re seeing operators finally concede that maybe they’re not best placed to deliver such content services.

Nokia’s service is not without its faults. The Finn intends to squeeze a revenue stream out of ‘value add licences’, such as charging a nominal fee to burn a CD, which sounds a bit like charging you for a right you already have. Then there’s the small matter of Nokia’s choice of Microsoft’s PlaysForSure DRM, which is so notoriously device/platform incompatible that even Microsoft doesn’t support it on Zune.

The other issue is that, in order to renew your subscription for another year, so you can keep downloading music, it seems you have to buy another device. This is because the contract is between Nokia and music label Universal, and that contract is tied to the device rather than a user. It’s a model that Apple would be proud of; not only do the users have their music tied to a single device but they have to upgrade that device every year.

In terms of music it’s a bit like Goth-dancing: one step forward, two steps back.

However, it does seem that the music labels are coming around to tackling the ugly reality of illegal file sharing in a way other than carpet bombs packed with legal summons. Already this year we’ve had EMI go down the ‘no DRM’ road, while other major labels such as Universal are still insistent on the ‘music rental’ route as the way forward.

But whichever path you choose, there’s still a significant difference between what is meant by free and what is actually free.

And now that’s all over and done with, the Informer himself is free. Free at last. For a week, at least.

Nokia seems to have set the cat among the pigeons this week, with the promise of a music subscription service that lets users keep their music when they leave. But beyond the soothing words and hints of revolution, the Finnish company has been pretty cagey - and now it seems with good reason.

The premise of the “Comes with Music” intitative is fairly simple. The user buys a Nokia device and gets bundled with it a year’s subscription to a music service, giving them unlimited downloads and a licence to play the songs on their PC as well as their phone. The music is DRM’d so it can’t be copied casually but at the end of the year, if you choose to terminate your subscription, you get to keep the tunes.

Sounds good so far, but then the holes start showing. It seems Nokia intends to squeeze a revenue stream out of ‘value add licences’, such as charging a nominal fee to burn a CD, which sounds a bit like charging you for a right you already have. Then there’s the small matter of Nokia’s choice of Microsoft’s PlaysForSure DRM, which is so notoriously device/platform incompatible even Microsoft doesn’t support it on Zune.

The other issue is that it seems in order to renew your subscription for another year, so you can keep downloading music, you have to buy another device. This is because the contract is between Nokia and music label Universal, and that contract is tied to the device rather than a user. It’s a model that Apple would be proud of, not only do the users have their music tied to a single device but they have to upgrade that device every year.

In terms of music it’s a bit like dancing to the Cure - one step forward, two steps back.

However, it does seem that the music labels are coming around to tackling the ugly reality of illegal file sharing in a way other than carpet bombs packed with legal summons. Already this year we’ve had EMI go down the no DRM route, while other major labels such as Universal are still insistent on the ‘music rental’ route as the way forward.

But whichever of these routes you go down, there’s still a signifcant difference between what is meant by free and what is meant by free.

On Wednesday last week the Informer had to leave his trusty boneshaker at home and get the tube to work because he had a dining appointment in the evening. Riding the London Underground in rush hour is not a pleasant experience. You have to endure a level of physical contact with strangers that, were it to occur in any other public place, would probably land you on the sex offenders register.

There’s always someone strange standing next to you, with a cat in his jacket, or something. True to form, on Wednesday the Informer was jammed up against a man who looked like he was on day release from the funny farm. He was eating a cereal bar in so cack-handed a manner that there were crumbs in his eyebrows.

There were crumbs all down his jumper, too. And, when he’d finished the bar, folded the wrapper and put it in his little rucksack (both shoulder straps on, obviously, meaning that getting the wrapper in the bag involved much twisting and unsavoury loin-brushing), he started eating the crumbs from his sweater one by one.

When these were finished he dug into his bag once more and pulled out a bottle of chocolate milk, the sight and smell of which made the Informer gag. As we pulled into the next station, and another few thousand people tried to maul their way onto the train like rugby teams in business-wear, the man began protesting that there was insufficient space. He didn’t do this with words, rather he chose to ‘moo’ at the other passengers like a cow.

This has nothing to do with wireless, of course, but we have a story here that involves the London Underground and the Informer just wanted to put you all in the picture.

Telefonica-owned carrier O2 last week launched the UK’s first large-scale Near Field Communications (NFC) trial that, if successful, could see Londoners’ mobile phones doubling as electronic wallets next year. Central to the trial is an application that morphs the phone into a contactless train ticket. The phone’s your Oyster, as it were.

From this week, 500 lucky guinea pigs from O2’s customer base will begin a six-month trial of the service that is being run in conjunction with Transport for London, Transys, Barclaycard, Visa Europe, Nokia and AEG. As well as underground tickets, the trial handsets – Nokia 6131 NFC units with the O2 Wallet on board – can be used to buy goods from various merchants, coffee shops and the like, and to interact with smart posters. They can also be used to process credit card payments.

The NFC gubbins is on the handset but Nokia’s NFC bod, Richard Humbach, predicted that, in time, the software will be migrated onto the SIM card.

Oyster cards, the contactless tickets currently used in London, are without doubt an improvement on their paper predecessors. Consumer surveys suggest that end users favour the mobile phone when asked where they might like the functionality to exist outside of their dedicated card. But people swap their phones far more frequently than they change their credit cards – and they only get a new Oyster card when they lose the old one. So what happens when people want a new phone?

The thing about these payment notions is that you need critical mass. It will only really work when NFC is on every handset and accounts are easily portable across networks. We’re not far off the point where Oyster cards could be issued as stickers, which might appeal more to commitment-shy end users.

The Informer did a little research into m-payments recently and the whole NFC/ticketing/handset proposition was rebuffed by one specialist who said: “If it was that important to people, they’d already have elastic bands holding their cards to their phones.” (He also asked his old dad for an opinion, who responded with a simple: “what’s the point?” Pater would rather have a mobile application that could find his glasses for him, which is more Near Sight Communications than Near Field.)

In other O2 news, Telefonica O2 Europe CEO Peter Erskine, one of the few men who can still get away with wearing a moustache, is doing the off at the end of next January, although he’s going to keep a non-exec position on the board of the Spanish carrier. Erskine will be succeeded by Matthew Key, currently head of O2 UK.

Staying in the UK for a moment or two, wireless broadband operator UK Broadband has had the restrictions on its nationwide 3.5GHz licence, purchase in 2004, altered to allow it to use WiMAX.

The firm, operating under the Now brand and owned by Hong Kong’s PCCW, is not exactly a mover and shaker. The most recent press release on its website is dated March 2006 and its offering is a touch ponderous. It’s got a smattering of TD-CDMA coverage around the Greater London area but offers a maximum speed of only 1Mbps, for £14 a month. Hardly competitive.

But changes to the licence will allow the firm to offer connectivity to portable and mobile devices and render the licence technology and application neutral. Mobile WiMAX might be in the offing. Then again, it might not.

The same can be said of the US, of course, where last week Verizon Wireless announced that it is to open up its network to any device or application that customers want to use – even those not offered by the carrier itself.

Verizon is going to publish tech specs next year with which developers will need to comply in order to design products that can latch onto its network. The move jumps the FCC gun on the open access auctions slated for early next year in the US, where spectrum holders will be obliged to let anyone use anything on their networks, provided certain standards are met.

Meanwhile, the carrier’s co-owners – Verizon and Vodafone – announced that they are to embark upon a 4G LTE deployment plan in the US, with trials beginning in 2008. Vendors involved in the trial include Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia Siemens and Nortel.

So does this nail Voda’s colours to the LTE mast? It may well prove something of a disappointment for the WiMAX Forum, which counted Vodafone’s decision to take membership this year as something of a coup. But Voda has publicly declared its technology neutrality going forward, and it plays in an awful lot of markets, so nothing can be ruled out. Certainly a joint LTE forward plan would settle the long-nagging problem of technology mismatch between the UK firm and its US investment.

And if Verizon sets a precedent by opting for an evolutionary strategy that carries the GSM crowd standard, we might actually one day see a scenario in which all networks are on the same technology. Apart from China, probably.

Verizon is a CDMA player of course, and the technology’s trade association, the CDMA Development Group announced last week that there are now 421.4 million cdmaOne and CDMA2000 subscribers across the world. This led the CDG’s head man, Perry La Forge, to say the following in a press release:

“The CDG is pleased to witness the continued rapid growth and strength of CDMA. Due to its industry-leading telephony and high-speed broadband connectivity, low-cost device availability, and substantially lower total cost of network ownership, it has become the technology of choice in emerging and developed markets alike.”

Now, the Informer appreciates that 421 million is quite a large number, and that you have to be positive in these kind of press releases. But “the technology of choice”? Informa Telecoms & Media, the disappointed, reproachful parent of A Week in Wireless, reckons that global mobile penetration broke the 50 per cent barrier this week, which means that there are somewhere in the region of 3.3bn mobile subscriptions in the world today. Not subscribers, mind, because there’s a lot of multiple account-holding about.

Nonetheless, it equates to around half the world’s population. A swift calculation reveals that the CDG’s figure gives it just under 13 per cent of the world mobile market, which hardly makes it the technology of choice, does it.

Back to Vodafone and it emerged this week that, following its acquisition of Indian carrier Essar, the big V is looking for partners in the Indian market with which it can share the pain of network costs. In South Africa, meanwhile, the firm is after gaining full control of Vodacom, which it co-owns with market incumbent Telkom.

The power struggle over service provision and customer ownership took another turn this week, as Vodafone and Telefonica joined forces to invest in mobile advertising firm Amobee Media Systems. The size of the investment was undisclosed, but described as a minority. Amobee has commercial operations with several operators, with Vodafone among them in its Greek, the Czech and Spanish operations.

In handset world, Korean vendor LG was fighting PR fires this week when reports emerged from its home territory that one of its phones had exploded in the shirt pocket of a quarry worker, killing the poor chap. The melted remains of the handset were found on the body of the man in question. LG was understandably displeased by such an association, and was quick to jump on subsequent reports that the man’s death was an industrial accident, with the handset combustion a consequence rather than a cause.

Meanwhile, thrilling news for all those celebrating St Andrews’ Day last Friday, boffins at the University of Glasgow have developed an interface that lets users tell how much battery life remains on their phone, or how many unread messages they have, from the sound the handset makes when they shake it. Battery life could be represented by the sound of water sloshing around, while messages could be the sound of ball-bearings in a jar. Useful.

The Informer reckons it would be better if you shook the phone and it made the sound of a hundred weirdos mooing on an underground train.

Take care,

The Informer