We’re all familiar with campaigners who think that cellular network masts are pumping diseases into their heads and lobby against the towers being placed anywhere near them. But it takes the Taleban to really grab the issue by the throat. This week the fundamentalist insurgents from Afghanistan threatened to blow up masts in the war torn country.

The group claimed it had something to do with a belief that cellular networks are being used to track its members, but the Informer prefers the idea that they’re all curtain-twitching Nimbys who read the Daily Mail.

If carriers in Afghanistan were concerned by the Taleban’s threats - which came with the demand that the networks be shut down overnight, every night - they will be gladdened by the news that the whereabouts of self professed ‘bullet magnet’ Henry Windsor have now been revealed. Turns out that Henry, a young soldier and top-flight binge drinker, who happens to be third in line to the throne of Great Britain and is more commonly (as in, among the commoners) known as Prince Harry, is in Helmand Province. This news will probably generate some debate within the Taleban as to which targets ought best to be prioritised.

They’d better be quick about it, though, as Harry’s to be flown back to the UK amid ‘fears for his safety’. But aren’t there fears for every soldier’s safety out there? What with it being a war zone and all…

In a more figurative kind of firing line this week are 2,100 Nortel unfortunates whose jobs are about to disappear up the Swanee as the Canadian firm revealed this week that its Q4 loss for 2007 grew tenfold year on year from $80m to $844m. Another 1,000 jobs are to be shipped to cheaper climes as the vendor struggles to plug the hole in its coffers. Full year revenues were down four per cent at $10.95bn, while the Carrier Networks division saw the top line drop nine per cent to $1.35bn, in part due to the fire sale of the firm’s UMTS business to Alcatel in September 2006.

Posting some fairly hefty shortfalls of its own this week was US carrier Sprint Nextel. The third placed player in the US market, Sprint Nextel posted a Q407 loss of $29.5bn. The firm took a $29.7bn write down on the acquisition of Nextel by Sprint in 2005, but has also been troubled by subscriber defection in its wireless operation - which saw declining profitability in 2007.

Net adds for the 2007 at Sprint totalled just 700,000, taking the firm to 53.8 million wireless customers across its CDMA and iDEN platforms. This is not unexpected news from Sprint, which gave CEO Gary Forsee the old heave-ho last October. Poor subscriber growth and wrangles over the planned deployment of the firm’s Xohm national WiMAX network have plagued the carrier in recent months and these results will do nothing to bolster confidence.

“The fourth quarter financial results reflect the challenges facing our Wireless business,” said Dan Hesse, Forsee’s replacement. “Given current deteriorating business conditions, which are more difficult than what I had expected to encounter, these changes will take time to produce improved operating performance, and our near-term subscriber and financial results will continue to be pressured.” More difficult than he’d expected? Perhaps they hired him because of his cheery optimism, which has now presumably disappeared.

Another operator in the doghouse this week was UK carrier O2. It seems the firm, owned by Spanish incumbent Telefonica, has been putting off until tomorrow what it should have done today in regard to its 3G network deployment. As part of its WCDMA licence terms - a licence for which O2 paid more than £4bn - the firm was supposed to have provided 3G coverage to a minimum of 80 per cent of the UK population by the end of last year.

Alas it managed just 75.69 per cent of the population; close, but no cigar. In fact, that 4.31 per cent equates to some 2.5 million people. So UK regulator Ofcom has spanked O2 with a warning that, if it doesn’t meet the requirement by June this year, it will find its licence term pruned by four months. This would see the licence end on August 31 2021, instead of December 31 2021.

This threat has less teeth than the Informer’s 93 year-old grandmother - and she has trouble chewing soup. The actual punishment is thirteen years away for a start, which is hardly the most effective way of admonishing a firm whose crime has been one of procrastination. Ooh, no, says Ofcom. That four months is equivalent to £40m. Well, is that £40m today, or £40m in 2021? Because, by then, $40m will probably be the price of a damp one bedroom flat in London’s roughest suburb.

If Ofcom wants to punish O2, it should slap the fine on it now, not fanny around with idle threats. Besides, given that all four of O2’s competitors have met the 80 per cent rollout target, O2’s effectively punishing itself by not being able to compete for those 2.5 million people. Or at least if would be if there was a genuine opportunity for it in that segment of the market.

The people that run these operations aren’t stupid. It almost certainly makes more financial sense for O2 to delay its rollout than to meet it, otherwise it would have met it. It’s a bit like the US carriers who ignored the FCC’s 911 location directive because the fines were cheaper than the cost of implementing the technology.

Let’s have a look at something else from the future: Nokia’s nanotechnology-based devices concept that the Finn has dubbed ‘Morph’. This week the concept, which is a joint effort by Nokia’s Research Centre and the University of Cambridge, went on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It suggests that In The Future, as well as moving round the cities on escalator walkways and sporting one-piece silver jump suits, we will all be carrying mobile devices that are stretchable and flexible, allowing us to transform the shape of the device depending on our needs. Sort of a phone version of Plastic Man.

The belief is that nanotechnology will pave the way for transparent electronics and flexible materials. The earliest elements of Morph could make their way into Nokia product in seven years’ time, Nokia said this week. Just imagine the first one arriving at O2 HQ. All the execs would be playing with them at the board meeting. Item one on the agenda would be that 3G rollout fine thing, which would get rapidly shelved because they still had another six years to worry about it.

In other handset news, sector analyst Gartner released its terminal market figures for Q407 this week. Guess who’s at the top?

By Gartner’s reckoning, there were 1.15 billion sales of mobile phones to end users in 2007, a 16 per cent improvement on 2006. Q4 sales hit 330 million units. The firm expects growth to slow going forward, dropping to about ten per cent as super saturation in mature markets becomes more widespread. But the massive potential in emerging markets will protect the handset industry from the risks of any economic recession in the US and Western Europe, Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi said.

At the top of the billboard, there are no surprises. Nokia’s still number one, and Gartner confirmed Nokia’s estimation that it had bust through the 40 per cent barrier, while Q4 saw second-placed Samsung gain a couple of per cent to take it to 13.4 per cent.

Plummeting through the charts like an annoying novelty song is Motorola, down to 11.9 per cent from 21.5 per cent for the same period in 2006, while Sony Ericsson is a non-mover at four, with the power ballad Nine Per Cent.

Sony Ericsson has long been mooted as a third place replacement for Motorola, but the Swedish/Japanese JV having gained no market share, you might want to keep an eye on Korean vendor LG instead, which picked up 0.8 per cent year on year, to take it to 7.1 per cent. The ‘Others’ section also picked up steam, growing to 18.2 per cent from 15.7 per cent.

In the past people more or less ignored The Others but Q4 last year saw some new additions to the leader board, according to Gartner. ZTE, Apple and Research In Motion all made it into the top ten for the first time, which is interesting because they all play in particular niches. “On one hand, we have aggressive pricing and a focus on emerging markets (ZTE), and on the other, RIM with targeted functions and Apple with brand and design,” said Milanesi.

Apple, meanwhile, missed its February commitment for the release of the iPhone software development kit. Steve Jobs has promised that it will be unveiled on March 6th, though.

It falls just outside of the February promise but Apple has promised to unveil the Software Development Kit (SDK) for the iPhone next week.

Head honcho Steve Jobs is set to take the wraps off the much anticipated toolset at an event at the company’s Cupertino headquarters on Thursday, March 6.

The arrival of the SDK will allow third party developers to build native applications for the iconic device. At present, software developers are restricted to writing web-based applications, or widgets, which aren’t able to tap the same functionality as native installations.

Hackers have found ways of getting third party apps to run on the device before now, but the release of the official SDK opens up this opportunity to a wider community.

Jobs had promised to have the toolset in developers’ hands by end-February, but we’re sure he will be forgiven a six day slip. It is February after all.

It looks like Apple also has greater designs on the business market - the company is also planning to reveal “some exciting new enterprise features” next week.

Meanwhile, the company quietly released its latest firmware update for the iPhone this week, taking the device up to version 1.1.4. Jupiter Research analyst, Michael Gartenberg, said how impressed he was over how in control Apple seems to be with these updates. “It’s amazing that ATT is letting Apple push these out, seemingly at will. Hard to imagine another handset vendor pushing updates out like this without going through the trials and tribulations of network testing (that’s one reason we don’t see Windows Mobile updates hitting as fast as they should),” he said.

Nokia gave the industry a glimpse of the future when it unveiled a shape changing mobile devices concept based on nanotechnology.

Morph, a joint nanotechnology concept developed by Nokia Research Center and the University of Cambridge, has gone on display as part of the “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The concept demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform the gadget into radically different shapes. Nanotechnology would enable the ultimate functionality delivering flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces.

Nokia said that elements of Morph might be integrated into handheld devices within seven years, though initially only at the high end. In the future however, the Finnish firm sees nanotechnology as one day leading to low cost manufacturing and the potential to integrate complex functionality at a low price.

Check out the video from Nokia below:

It’s always quiet in the week after World Congress. It’s as if the whole industry has pulled the duvet up over its head and is issuing only the occasional, muffled rejection of any attempt to persuade it out of bed. This was not a week during which the Gods of News Announcements, in their fury, flung thunderbolts down around our ears. They barely managed a stiff breeze - hardly surprising after the Beaufort-buster they whipped up in Barcelona.

And so, for much of the week, the Informer stared listless from his window, the occasional news-trawl and ring-round proving largely fruitless. Reading the dictionary for a while, he found that a haruspex was a religious official in ancient Rome who interpreted omens by inspecting the entrails of sacrificial animals. And he knew how the haruspex must have felt when there were no more animals left to sacrifice.

One thing that apparently has been sacrificed is the agreement between Orange and Vodafone’s UK operations to share their 3G radio access infrastructures. A year or so ago the two firms announced that they were to embark on a 3G RAN sharing deal. This week, however, a joint press release stated the following:

“Orange UK and Vodafone UK will continue to maintain separate networks, will retain full responsibility for the quality of service they offer their respective customers and will remain competitors in the UK mobile wholesale and retail markets.”

What the two will be doing is sharing mast sites for their GSM and WCDMA networks. The two carriers reckon that, in the first two years of the arrangement, they will be able to reduce their combined site presence by 15 per cent - a reduction of almost 3,000 sites. They trumpeted the ecological improvements that this would reap, as well as the financial rewards each would derive from scaling back on its footprint.

This will be good news for everyone who fears The Rays!!! and urges us all to THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Although no doubt there will be complaints from those people who find themselves in proximity to the masts that have been chosen to remain in place.

Over in France, Orange was busy with another collaboration, this time with Gallic electronics vendors Thomson and Sagem. The three firms have established a joint venture with the remit of improving the interoperability of domestic digital equipment.

The JV - Soft At Home - aims for a collision of device connectivity and advanced services that could see PC-based content such as photographs called up remotely on the television screen, or voice calls to be initiated from a multimedia remote. Essentially what we’re looking at here is a level of functionality that will probably render the species even more sedentary than it already is.

Speaking of inertia, the proposed acquisition of US enterprise communications specialist 3Com by Chinese vendor Huawei and finance house Bain Capital has been stopped in its tracks with a tobacco chewin’ “Y’ain’t from round here, are ya boy…” from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which in a film would probably be played by an ageing Jackie Gleeson.

Last September, 3Com’s board of directors gave its unanimous approval to an agreement under which the firm would be acquired by Bain and Huawei for $2.2bn. In a bid to pre-empt US jitters about foreign (specifically Chinese) ownership, the companies committed to Huawei being restricted to a minority stake. But this was apparently not enough to put the Yanks at ease.

Speaking to the Informer’s chums at Mobile Communications International last year, Huawei’s chief marketing officer Zijhun Xu conceded that the privacy with which it conducts operations - financial results aren’t published, precise ownership details are hard to find - does generate some problems. He said this could make it look as if “the company is not transparent and that it does not enjoy a good reputation.” Although he added that all customers are given access to detailed financials.

Certainly the US Government seems a tad suspicious. This will doubtless create reciprocal issues with foreign (specifically US) investment in Chinese firms. Indeed the view from Beijing is likely to be that the US is using security concerns - 3Com has a supply deal with the US Government - as a means of justifying a protectionist stance on foreign investment.

Sino-US relations might be a little rosier between Motorola and ZTE. According to a report from Reuters this week, the Chinese vendor has spoken - in albeit non-specific terms - of wanting to deepen its relationship with the US player, which is having a rough old time of it in the handset space. As we’ve said before, any external saviour of the Motorola handset business is likely to come from China, either in acquisition or JV form.

On the subject of international investment, Indian carrier Reliance Communications this week nabbed itself a Ugandan firm called Anupam Global Soft, which holds a cellular licence in the African nation. The Indian firm has committed to a $500m investment in Uganda, where it wants to deploy a variety of service; fixed line voice and internet, long distance and WiMAX, according to local reports. With the scale that Indian players have built and the expertise they have developed in working with extremely low average revenues, they are well positioned for emerging market expansion and we’ll probably see a lot more of it.

If you follow Formula One motor racing, you’ll be seeing a lot more of Vodafone, according to brand analysis outfit Margaux Matrix, which this week reported that the Big V has hit the top of the Formula One brand exposure league, displacing Marlboro - a brand that has been synonymous with F1 for as long as the Informer can remember. It’s good, the Informer supposes, that cigarette brands are being phased out of high profile sponsorships, but there was never an F1 car that looked as good as the JPS Lotus, was there?

The thing about brand sponsorship is that it’s nigh on impossible to prove that it’s worth all the cash that gets thrown at it. Just how many people watch Ferraris zipping by at 200mph and think: “that reminds me, I must get a new phone” is anyone’s guess. In fact, a few years ago the Informer was speaking to a Vodafone spokesman who told him that the only time the firm had received any public feedback specific to its F1 sponsorship was when Rubens Barrichello hit the anchors on the home straight of a race in 2002, allowing German man-machine Michael Schumacher to take the chequered flag on team orders. Apparently Voda’s customer service units were inundated with complaints.

Vodafone will be hoping that its UK BlackBerry customers will certainly not be complaining now that it has given them a new stick to beat it with. The carrier has cosied up to disaster recovery specialist Neverfail to introduce a “high availability” option for enterprise customers who use the devices. The service promises “uninterrupted availability of Blackberry services to Vodafone business customers.”

So convinced of the solution’s ability to prevent service collapse is Vodafone, that it’s installed it on its own corporate network. It’s not clear how much extra Vodafone’s enterprise BlackBerry users - the largest single customer base outside of the US - will have to pay for this, though.

Things seem to be ticking along nicely at Canadian firm Research In Motion (RIM), which makes the BlackBerry. RIM announced this week that it expects Q4 adds to be up to 20 per cent higher than the 1.82 million that it had previously predicted. By the end of March, the firm said, its total subscriber base should hit 14 million. Revenues for the three months to end March should hit between $1.80bn and $1.87bn.

Not all of the BlackBerry pie is lip-smackin’ good, though. RIM is in the courts with Motorola over IP charges being levied by the US firm. These are too high, says RIM, also complaining that Moto is failing to acknowledge some RIM patents. Now, now, children. Play nicely.

Sticking with the enterprise market, Swedish vendor Ericsson this week announced its intention to quit the enterprise PBX space. Ericsson is offloading the relevant division to Canadian enterprise communications outfit Aastra for SEK650m (US$102m), with the sale expected to close in April this year. 2007 saw the unit rack up sales of SEK3bn and Ericsson reckons it will clear SEK200m on the deal, which will see 630 staff switch to the Canadian firm. On announcing the deal, Ericsson predicted further consolidation in the enterprise space.

Finally here’s a story that’s included based on the sheer optimism of the PR chap that sent it in. It’s about a marketing tie in with a new Samsung phone, the G600 Pink, and an upcoming film about a beautiful woman who has been a bridesmaid 27 times and - despite being beautiful and kind and beautiful - still hasn’t found that Mr Right. Back in the day it would have been a classic Ryan/Hanks vehicle. In short, the kind of film that makes you want to regurgitate. There’s all sorts of promo stuff being done and there’s some deal or other whereby if women propose to their boyfriends this month they stand the chance of winning one of these handsets.

Anyway, it so happened that the Informer was reading the email, thinking to himself: “What the hell am I supposed to do with this old fluff?” when the person who sent it phoned up and asked him whether or not it was the sort of thing that he would use. “Of course not,” the Informer thought, wrongly as it turned out.

It’s the week after Barcelona and actual news is thin on the ground, so naturally, the attention of us industry watchers turns to the skies. Which is where most of the action is this week.

First off is a real blue skies concept, with the British National Space Centre (BNSC) and NASA looking at joint plans to trial a cellphone network on the moon. The proposed MoonLITE robotic mission would send a satellite into the Moon’s orbit, which would then release three or four small missile-like vehicles that would embed themselves into the moon’s surface. The satellite orbiter would then act as a telecommunications relay station between the penetrators and Earth during its one year life span.

The set up would be used to test the space-based satellite communications network needed by future robotic and human explorers. But just imagine the roaming charges. And don’t expect to get too much web surfing done - data transfer is likely to be in the 2-3Kbps range on both the uplink and the downlink to start with.

Meanwhile, a bit closer to Earth, literally, a US company called Space Data, which provides specialised communications services to the military and various industrial outfits, has reportedly caught the eye of web giant Google.

Space Data’s business model is to provide low cost platforms for rural and remote data and voice communication applications via its high altitude SkySite network, which basically consists of an array of balloons equipped with a box of transceivers and other gadgets.

The word on the web is that Google, which has taken an interest in wireless services, sees the balloons as a way of expanding coverage out to remote areas. Some believe investment is on the cards, while others say the web giant will outright buy Space Data.

DVD Jon, the hacker (in)famously credited with releasing the DeCSS DVD decryption tool, is now promising to liberate your content and allow consumers to share and access their media on any number of devices.

doubleTwist, the company founded in March 2007 by Monique Farantzos and Jon Lech Johansen [DVD Jon], revealed the fruits of its labour this week, with a mission to help consumers enjoy their digital media on the widest possible range of devices.

As doubleTwist CEO Farantzos rightly points out, “With digital media such as video from a friend’s cell phone or your own iTunes playlists, it’s a jungle out there. It can be an hour-long exercise in futility to convert files to the correct format and transfer them to your Sony PSP or your phone. The digital media landscape has become a tower of Babel, alienating and frustrating consumers. Our goal is to provide a simple and well integrated solution that the average consumer can use to eliminate the headaches associated with their expanding digital universe.”

The cause is noble, it’s really something that should have been done a long time ago, but you can’t help but think that the legal issues that have dogged other attempts to free content, won’t somehow affect doubleTwist. Especially since the social networking aspect of the service, Twist Me, allows users to share content between themselves.

DVD Jon has already been acquitted of breaking DVD enrcyption twice. Will his luck hold out for a third time? Or is he hoping that the apparent sea change in attitudes to DRM will save his platform?

“It was very interesting to see that network status management is now Oz Word. Lots of vendors offering solutions. That gives carriers the chance to really affect customer experience using data from the radio network.”

Powered by SpinVox

The Informer has thought about this a bit but he can come up with no circumstances under which a person would need so much carbohydrate in a single dish that a potato omelette sandwich would be necessary. But they’re a staple foodstuff in Barcelona - and almost unique among the local cuisine in that they do not consist of cheese and ham. The Informer likes cheese, and he likes ham. But have too much them and you’ll start to experience strange and unsettling effects.

In this way they are similar to the Mobile World Congress, which is the reason the Informer has been in Barcelona this week, eating cheese and ham for breakfast, cheese and ham for lunch and cheese and ham for dinner.

The Mobile World Congress - 2008 is the first year the show has operated under it’s new name, which allows the GSMA to spread its tendrils further out into the industry - is a big show. It makes the Informer feel a bit like that bloke in A Clockwork Orange, whose eyes are pinned open while he’s subjected to a barrage of jagged, flashing images. Fortunately, the Informer is immune to the re-conditioning efforts of marketing directors, so maintained his usual healthy levels of cynicism throughout the whole sordid mess.

As well as being a major exhibition, one where pretty much everyone views attendance as essential, the show acts like a giant megaphone for the GSMA, which has been flexing its message management muscles this week like a pro body builder.

The trade association’s principle theme at the beginning of the week was redolent of that message on the statue of liberty about the weak and the huddled masses. Come one, come all, the Association was saying:

“We need to be agnostic about the precise technologies being used - or not used - at the radio access layer,” said chairman Craig Ehrlich. “For some operators, for example, WiMAX may be a threat. For others it may be an opportunity. Irrespective of these individual considerations the GSMA needs to embrace the entire constituency, including CDMA operators.” The Informer hasn’t heard a change of tune like that since he stopped listening to King Crimson.

Ehrlich even said that CDMA carriers would have representation at the GSMA (which is surely destined for a name-change itself in the near future) inside 12 months. Does anyone remember the days when these people used to loathe one another?

With the recent news that US CDMA player Verizon will be following the LTE route to 4G, the GSMA has clearly realised that it has an opportunity to expand its membership and its influence.

But it didn’t stop at the CDMA crowd. If the GSMA has had a bête noire in recent months, then it’s been Vivienne Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, whose personal crusade against exorbitant roaming charges has elicited a range of responses from the GSMA: everything from a kind of faux-injured “what, us?” to outright hostility.

But here was Reding, sat alongside key GSMA players at a press conference. Unfortunately, for some accidental reason no doubt, Reding didn’t really get any time to speak about the issues dear to her heart. Demure she ain’t, though, so she announced that she would be giving an impromptu speech after the press conference and led the assembled hacks outside where she stood on some steps and delivered her message, as the Sky News crew’s camera rolled. Some people just know how to work it, don’t they?

Word from an insider at the event’s Show Daily suggested that the love wasn’t being spread evenly, though, with coverage of any WiMAX news being scanned for worrying traces of positivity before being allowed through.

Vodafone’s CEO Arun Sarin - whose remarks about the lead that WiMAX was stealing over LTE at last year’s event were the source of considerable interest - had another message this week, urging the industry to consolidate the number of handset operating systems that are available. This would appear to be in contrast to the prevailing trend, as the likes of Apple and Google look to make their mark in the handset space.

The Informer met with Symbian CEO Nigel Clifford at the show, who was in expansive mood with some positive figures to report. Google is an application partner of the Symbian alliance and when the Informer asked Clifford why - with Symbian’s lead in the feature phone market fairly pronounced - he thought that Google was dabbling in the world of Linux.

“We may even have said that to them ourselves,” he said. “You never know.” He continued: “The unknown about a number of the new entrants is how their business model is going to work. How cooperative, competitive or challenging is it going to be to the established business models of the operators and the vendors?” It’s probably fair to say that this is one of the most prominent questions in the industry at the moment.

There were 22.4 million Symbian units shipped in Q4 last year, which represented year on year growth of 53 per cent, while revenues were up 18 per cent at £56.5m.

Symbian platforms are shifting down into lower end handsets as the overall level of functionality across terminals in general is on the increase. Interestingly, though, market share in the Symbian range does not accurately reflect overall terminal vendor rankings. Aside from the fact that Nokia’s out in front, of course.

In other handset OS news, Swedish-Japanese JV Sony Ericsson introduced a Windows Mobile phone - the Xperia X1 - which is being built by Taiwanese vendor HTC.

Back to the march of the internet players, though, and T-Mobile this week announced a partnership with Yahoo that will see the carrier implement Yahoo’s oneSearch function. Yahoo is not so keen on the partnership with Microsoft that the Redmond outfit suggested, though.

It reckons that Microsoft’s bid of more than $40bn “substantially undervalues” the firm. In a letter to stockholders, Yahoo said:

“We have a huge market opportunity - and are uniquely positioned to capitalise on it. The global online advertising market is projected to grow from $45 billion in 2007 to $75 billion in 2010. And we are moving quickly to take advantage of what we see as a unique window of time in the growth - and evolution - of this market to build market share and to create value for stockholders.”

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal was this week reporting that News Corp was looking at a bid of its own for the search giant. Gulp.

In other Yahoo news this week, the firm unveiled a mobile platform called oneConnect that plugs into every available social networking site - Myspace, Facebook et al - allowing users a single interface for all of their mobile social networking needs. Kind of a social networking site for social networks.

Mobile advertising remained a popular topic at the show this week, as it has done for the past few years. And the big international players, Vodafone, Telefonica O2 Europe, T-Mobile International, FT-Orange and 3, this week launched their own advertising initiative. The move was described by M:Metrics Paul Goode as “unprecedented”. The carriers are conducting a study on the UK market to see whether or not they can draw up a series of common metrics and measurement tactics with which they can simplify, and thereby stimulate, the mobile advertising offering.

O2 was making announcements on the network side as well, revealing this week that it is trialling NEC femtocell technology, ahead of a possible launch in 2009. The Informer caught up with Simon Saunders, chairman of the recently established Femto Forum, who pitched the technology as a low-risk option for further network deployments:

There has been a certain hesitancy among the operators to spend on network upgrades because there is no available capex for big rollouts,” he said. “Femtocells effectively de-risk the upgrade, they are low cost and they can be deployed where the data growth is highest.” All you’ve got to do is persuade an already jumpy public that having one in their living room will not put them at further risk from The Rays.

Back home now, the Informer is going through that process of looking back at the week and wondering if it wasn’t all just a strange dream. But the bag of show freebies sitting at his feet reminds him that he was, in fact, there. Not to mention the extra grey hairs. Amidst all the excitement this week, the Informer had almost forgotten that A Week in Wireless turns 300 today. So happy birthday to me! But just how do you stop yourself from going grey? The Informer would have liked to ask Robert Redford, who was at the show this week sporting a fiery thatch, but he couldn’t get anywhere near him.

Another World Congress draws to a close and we set off to join the bleary-eyed masses making the exodus from Barcelona airport. However, if you’re still hungry for news from the show, telecoms.com has put together a roundup of stuff we found interesting over the last few days. One thing we won’t be hungry for is cheese and ham sandwiches though.

China Mobile joins Verizon, Voda, in LTE tests

Nokia sets sights on Google

Android spotted in Barcelona; Sarin calls for OS clarity

Qualcomm’s Gilbert ‘frustrated’ over mobile TV

Sony Ericsson intros Windows Mobile phone

Disney unveils UK mobile portal

Carriers driving femto fever

“The search is over,” says T-Mobile

Yahoo goes down the social with oneConnect

One quarter of mobile users join social networks

Symbian shipments up 53 per cent

Mobile advertising gets granular

Orange and T-Mobile roll out TDtv in UK

Come one come all, says GSMA’s Ehrlich

LG goes touchscreen crazy

“It is from Global Work Congress Bad Network Status Management is the new password for technology’s that are taking care of customers experience in a radio access extending OHS(?) and BHS solutions for the first time into a highly fragmented radio access network. NHM(?) is gonna be the story of the next 5 years as people push Oplex(?) down and it’s gonna help customers get better service and more reliable calls.”

Powered by SpinVox