The European Commission has approved the much-needed 50/50 JV merger of France Telecom’s Orange UK and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK, subject to them giving away a small chunk of radio spectrum - creating the UK’s largest mobile network, with 30 million customers, or 37 percent of the market. The combined…

Today’s earnings from France Telecom (NYSE: FTE) were a signal that the operator wants to look ahead and put the last year behind it. The telco said 2009 revenue was down by 1.8 percent to €45.8 billion (£40.4 billion; $61.8 billion), and net income also decreased by 6.4 percent to…

		EPS*	Rev. vs Q408	Net Inc. vs Q408
France Telecom	Release		1.8%	6.4%

* vs. Analysts' Estimates: Beat Met Missed

T-Mobile UK lost 16.3 percent of its income through 2009, finishing at €3.39 billion ahead of what parent Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT) hopes will be Office of Fair Trading approval for its planned merger with Orange UK. T-Mobile UK actually ended with 2.4 percent more customers (17.2 million) - but…

Today, we got the latest in what is quickly becoming a long list of apps that promise to make accessing one’s various social networks and contact lists into a seamless mobile experience… Orange launched its own version, On, at Mobile World Congress, HTC upgraded its Sense UI and, yesterday, Microsoft…

Some briefs from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona… —Orange SMS ads: Orange is extending its interactive mobile advertising service to multiple markets in Europe, following a launch earlier this year in the UK. Orange Shots, as the UK SMS/MMS service is called, is based on a platform originally operated by…

Two dozen of the world’s largest mobile-phone companies, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T (NYSE: T), NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM), Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT), China Mobile and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), are teaming up to create an “open international applications platform,” which is obviously in direct response to Apple’s success with its own…

—LoveFilm: Lesley Mackenzie is the new group digital officer for the film and game rental site. Her previous roles include CEO of now-defunct Project Kangaroo and director of channels and operations at BSkyB (NYSE: BSY). (Via NMA.) —Dailymotion: David Ripert has been promoted to the role of director, global content…

That’s what you get for saying your merger will give you 37 percent of all UK mobile subscribers. The UK government’s Office of Fair Trading says it’s asking Europe’s permission for it - and not the European Commission - to review the proposed 50/50 merger of Orange and T-Mobile’s UK…

So the pieces have come together for how Orange plans to use its relationship with Blyk, the European company that once ran a “free” ad-supported mobile service for 16-24 year-olds but turned away from the free model after failing to make it work financially. The UK mobile operator today announced…

Has mobile operator Orange spilled the beans on the supposed Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) tablet? Bloggers got themselves tongue-tied Monday, when they leaped on comments - given by owner France Telecom’s deputy CEO during a French radio interview - as “confirmation” that the device is indeed launching soon, equipped with webcam,…

More developments in the connected-TV space: Orange and LG (SEO: 066570) have signed a three-year deal to offer a content and services portal for LG internet-enabled TVs to be sold in France. The portal will be accessed using a key directly on the remote control. Integrated TV carriage like this…

—Free MMS: UK carriers got five months’ (42,000) worth of pic messages in one day when they made MMS free to BBC Radio 1 on December 11. It was Mobile Data Association project. —Absolute Radio: The station has released three alarm clock radio iPhone apps. There are several alarm radio…

What do Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and just about every other mobile operator now have in common? They’ve all got a mobile app store… Now add France Telecom’s Orange to that long list. It’s announced the opening of the Orange App…

—Conduit: Content aggregation tool company Conduit has opened its European HQ in London and has hired former Sportingo CEO Ze’ev Rozov to lead it as European MD. It’s the company’s third office, adding to bases in the US and Israel. Conduit already counts Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI) and Football League…

—SFR: Vivendi’s French Fr telco SFR has signed a three-year deal with RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) to power its mobile music service in France. The service crossed over to Real’s control on Tuesday. Real also runs mobile music stores for Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) in nine countries including the UK and Germany.…

After Vodafone and then O2, Twitter is now re-enabling in-bound SMS tweets for another UK carrier, Orange, but this deal goes farther than that…

France Telecom’s Orange, mad-keen on building a web advertising network, is expanding its Orange Advertising Network out of Europe and in to Latin America. It’s assembled more than 20 Hispanic publishers (including Orange-owned starMedia, 20minutos.es, elMundo.es, Marca.com and Peru.com), with a claimed US/LatAm monthly audience of 21 million uniques, for…

—Orange UK: Former O2 and BT (NYSE: BT) executive Martin Stiven has joined France Telecom’s UK division as VP of business, responsible for Orange’s “strategy, marketing and expansion”. Release. —Vodafone: After a stint as European brand director at Gap, Danielle Crook is returning to Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) next months as…

Orange UK, the country’s third largest network, announced today that it will begin selling the iPhone on November 10. While the move marks the end of O2’s exclusive contract to sell the phone to its customers, consumers hoping for a better deal at Orange will be disappointed…