Damien Saunders

Nokia Corp. said it joined forces with Universal Music to offer unlimited music downloads for a year on phones bundled with its Ovi Web services platform.

Universal Music Group expects its deal to offer free music for 12 months on new Nokia phones to have a wider, “stimulating” effect on the digital music business next year, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The world’s largest music group Universal and the world’s top cellphone vendor Nokia said on Tuesday they would offer a free 12-month access to Universal’s music for buyers of Nokia music phones starting from the second half of 2008.

“I believe the announcement will act as a catalyst for a whole number of business partners to step forward. It’s definitely going to stimulate the business next year,” Rob Wells, Senior Vice President for digital operations at Universal, told Reuters. Universal is owned by French media group Vivendi.

The “Comes With Music” offering would differ from any other package on the market as users can keep all the music they have downloaded for free during the 12 months, the firms said.

sources: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119676374309413001.html?mod=googlenews_wsj  and Reuters

Turkey’s telecommunications regulator has postponed the tender for four third-generation phone licenses. The tender, which was supposed to be held May 25, will now be held September 7, an official from the Communications Ministry said on Tuesday.

There was limited interest in the contract conditions, said Ertuğrul Karaçuha, Head of the Telecommunications Board, reported business daily Referans. Fearing the necessary tender demand would not form, the tender has been postponed to September, he said. The Telecommunications Board made the decision on Monday.

 source: http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=73976

Turkey has announced plans to offers for third-generation (3G) mobile phone licenses — Short-listed bidders then enter a second-round bid. The minimum bid prices range from 140 million euros ($189 million) to 252 million euros ($340 million). The Turkish mobile market is currently home to three operators, Turkcell, Vodafone-Telsim and Avea.

Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım was speaking at the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association’s (MÜSİAD) traditional Thursday talks. Yıldırım said he was expecting interest from the existing three GSM operators in Turkey — Turkcell, Vodafone (formerly Telsim) and Avea — in the investigation of feasible price studies for 3G licenses.

European countries had made mistakes by requesting high license fees in tenders, noted Yıldırım, while Japan gave the licenses for free - and Turkey plans to do something in the middle. Yıldırım also mentioned possible future financial incentives to boost research and development in the telecommunications sector.

Up until now getting access to documents, music files or photos or your calendar when you are away from your office or home PC has been limited to a mess of cables, WIFI or datacards. SoonR seems to have hit the nail on the head, with a smooth interface and more features than you can throw a dog at.

While not all the word is as mass mobile as I am, and it could be a long way before many want this service, which Soonr has solved already …

Want to transfer music to your phone from your home pc? Soonr can Transfer pictures? or any file you want … Soonr can do that too

Want to check your outlook calendar at work? or book that meeting with your boss … Soonr can … or read that email you missed before you shut down … yes Soonr can.

And want to check this from your Mobile or from any ol PC? Soonr can … and you have complete control of what files are shared and accessible by you … or you can setup a shared folder for this.

I guess there are many reasons I like this - from the web2.0 styling to the speed in which it was setup. I was up and running in 2 mins - after it asked for my proxy settings on the office firewall … and took no time at all to install on my home PC. Now the little server client is loaded all the time.

So what about the competition - having checked out whats out there, I tried using the client from http://www.orb.com … which according to the blurb lets you watch tv from your phone … groan … why would you want to do that?? when I have a great 3G phone already? Oh and you need a TV Card in your home PC. Put to the test, it failed - when I discovered that you can’t set the web proxy so the server app couldn’t get outside the office network. From my home PC with its tangle of wi-fi, routers with ’solid’ firewalls and NATing I didn’t even try to set it up. Scared off by the first experience.

What I’m convinced is a good feature on Orb is the integrated streaming app - so you can listen to music on your home PC without downloading the full thing to your phone - saves you data and starts playing quicker than a download. If Soonr doesn’t do this soon (sorry for the crap english) then it will do it some time because its users are already requesting this.

Soonr just seems downright friendly, in a Flickr or any web2.0 softwar without the letter ‘e’ seems right. Put to the test, I emailed orb support to find out what I had to do to amend the proxy settings - contact my IT helpdesk and get them to open a port on the firewall … now why would I want that??

An article on http://3g.co.uk reports that the number of HSDPA networks (known as 3G Broadband) has now topped 100. That's either commercially available or in deployment. 

This new survey confirms that 30 HSDPA networks have commercially launched services in 23 countries/territories, delivering the full broadband experience to subscribers. We expect the number of commercial HSDPA networks will more than double to 63 by end 2006. All WCDMA networks are expected to activate the HSDPA upgrade."

HSDPA services are now commercially available in Austria, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Madeira, The Netherlands, The Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, and the USA.

The 49 countries where HSDPA networks are planned, in deployment or commercially launched are Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Guernsey, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jersey, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Madeira, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, UAE, UK, and USA.

Source: www.3g.co.uk/PR/June2006/3136.htm