You might call it a case of: “if you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em”. Finnish mobile giant Nokia (NYSE: NOK) filed a lawsuit against Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) on Thursday on grounds that the iPhone maker has used Nokia’s mobile technology without permission. The case is filed in the Federal District…

This is the tie-up that finally makes sense. After several rumors surfaced saying that Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile unit is in talks with Sprint, Bloomberg is reporting that Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA is also in discussions with a company much closer to home. According to unnamed sources, talks are underway between T-Mobile…

—UK mobile spectrum talks: British business secretary Lord Mandelson has declared himself “encouraged” by a meeting with the country’s mobile industry on how the networks carve up mobile broadband frequencies and expects a resolution of “remaining issues” in the next few days. Independent spectrum broker Kip Meek published a series…

Swindon-based maker of 3G femtocells—3G signal generators designed to improve mobile access via the internet—has won $11 million (£6.6 million) from its existing shareholders to fund a range of global commercial deals in consumer and corporate markets, adding to existing partnerships with Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Siemens and Netgear. No word…

The first phone that Hutchison Whampoa-owned INQ Mobile built was known for its tight integration with Facebook, and drove 65 percent of users to use the social network regularly—a figure more in line with the iPhone, but much higher than phones in that price range. Nine months after launching the…

Motorola (NYSE: MOT) launched an LTE trial network lab in Swindon, UK, with the intention of offering operators the ability to engage in LTE field trials and test equipment. Motorola can also host the core elements of the LTE network for operators that require a hosted LTE trial in the…

In Western Europe, the number of subscribers using 3G have surpassed the 100 million mark, but what’s surprising is that this translates to a low penetration rate of 11.1 percent, reports Reuters, quoting figures from Informa Telecoms and Media. Specifically, at the end of May, Europe had 101.5 million 3G…

UK operator O2 has admitted limiting the speed of most of its customers’ 3G connections to 128 kbps, instead of the 384 kbps the technology is capable of, reports The Register. This is obviously bad news for content providers, since one of the main benefits of 3G for them is…

The eagle has landed… Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) has agreed on handsets which include Nokia’s Ovi brand of mobile services. There was a fair bit of deal making—the handsets will have an integrated suite of Vodafone services combined with Nokia’s Ovi services on a range of Nokia (NYSE: NOK) handsets, some…

UK regulator Ofcom has announced it will delay the auction of new spectrum until 2008, following complaints from operators over the process. The main complaint by the operators is that the auction is expected to raise about 2 billion pounds (US$3.97 billion), a tenth of the price they paid for…

Orange Netherlands has launched a 3G mobile TV service in Holland that will show public broadcasting channels (RTL News), SBS and Tien (Voetbalvrouwen), as well as BBC World, Euronews, FashionTV and the Cartoon Network, reports Thomson NewsEdge. A video on demand service is also available, and the service will be…

M:Metrics has released a report showing that 3G subscribers are twice more likely to consume mobile content such as games, news and information, photo messaging and search. Italy leads 3G penetration with 26.4 percent of subscribers using 3G, followed by the UK with 15.2 percent of British mobile subscribers owning…

UK media and telecom regulator regulator Ofcom has announced a spectrum auction, with forseeable digital media use-case scenarios, ranging from broadband to mobile television. “The sale, which could be completed by the end of 2007, will see 215 megahertz (MHz) of frequency sold - the largest single sale of radio…

ZDNet UK is reporting that in the wake of a Nokia demo showing 3G connectivity over the 900 MHz spectrum (normally reserved for 2G functionality) Vodafone and O2 are lobbying regulator Ofcom to change the licensing rules so that they can implement the 3G service. This would improve their networks…

Frost & Sullivan has released a report arguing that music will drive uptake of 3G services… “With key participants such as handset vendors and operators offering customers a bundled package of both communication and entertainment, the market is anticipated to develop and innovation will be seen as a key driving…

This is an interesting approach to take from a vendor—“A senior representative of Sarian Systems, which launched an HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access)-compatible router on Tuesday, told ZDNet UK that operators were misguided in hoping the technology would get non-corporate customers to use their phones for downloading value-added multimedia…

Vodafone UK apparently thinks mobile TV provided via 3G networks is in a better position to succeed than mobile TV via broadcast networks, such as Virgin Mobile’s planned DAB-IP service. “If we couldn’t provide 3G streaming then I’d probably do the same thing,” says Alan Harper, strategy director with Vodafone…

UK spectrum regulator Ofcom has said that it will be releasing spectrum for 4G networks (whatever they will be) “using the market mechanism”. Since Ofcom doesn’t know what 4G will entail exactly, and since the 3G spectrum auctions caused a lot of problems, Ofcom will let companies bid for spectrum…

The Register has a good article on the problems facing European operators in terms of their 3G licenses, which could be exacerbated by regulators trying to force them to meet their license obligations when it has become obvious it would be uneconomical to do so. From the article the best…