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Ericsson has partnered with Boomerang TV and Spanish broadcast network Telecinco to launch Formula One live via mobile TV in Spain. Under the terms of the agreement, Ericsson’s HyC will deploy a service including encoding, editing and transmission, to allow Boomerang TV and Telecinco to stream the Formula One races to mobile subscribers via live or scheduled repeat broadcast. HyC will also provide related systems integration services. Service users will be able to access personalised coverage and choose between live streaming and downloading selected moments of the races which are recorded, archived, managed and published automatically in real time.

The Spanish Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) has approved several proposals for the regulation of fixed telephony relating to access, phone traffic and call origin. According to Telecompaper, operators have been given a month in which to comment, after which the National Competition Commission will file a final report.

The CMT wants to liberalise fixed telephony and its prices, meaning Telefonica will be freed of some obligations as the incumbent and subject to competition regulation like all Spanish service providers. This includes dropping the €59.5 access charge per line, allowing Telefonica to set the price.

CMT intends to continue to set the maximum annual increases for the monthly subscription fee of €13.97 monthly fee, which covers the cost of maintaining phone lines, but is prepared to let Telefonica reduce the subscription fee if it wishes.

However, the regulator plans to prevent Telefonica from indulging in anti-competitive practices, such as squeezing margin or inappropriate packaging. It will also be obliged to provide transparent accounting, accounting separation and advanced notification.

For the fixed telephony wholesale market, the CMT has approved a proposed regulation for call origination. This enables an alternative operator to deal with fixed line calls through interconnection with Telefonica’s network.

The regulator plans to maintain the obligation of meeting reasonable access requests, as well as Telefonica’s obligation of providing two wholesale offers – the reference interconnection offer and the wholesale access to the telephone line.

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The Spanish Athletic’s Federation announced a mobile phone service to allow people to follow the events of next month’s Olympic Games wherever they are.

The RFEA have worked with Television Espanola, the state broadcasting service in Spain and the station that have the TV rights to the Games, to develop the application that can be downloaded by sending a text message, a Xinhua News report also said.

The application, which has been developed with the help of mobile phone marketing company Adsmedia, will allow fans to watch the signal provided by TVE 1 and 2 as well as their specialist sports channel Teledeporte.

Fans will also be able to access timetables, interviews and highlights of the day’s events in Beijing and the service will be completely free of charge.

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Vodafone will partner MySpace to launch Vodafone Music Reporter, a platform that will share footage from Vodafone-sponsored music events with MySpace users across the UK, Spain, Italy and Germany markets.

The Vodafone Music Reporter interactive profile, hosted on MySpace, will offer clips from summer festivals including the upcoming Vodafone Music Unlimited event  in Cologne.

It will also host user-generated content so that subscribers can share their own music footage, upload and download photos, videos and additional content related to Vodafone-sponsored events.

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Amobee Media Systems announced it will be providing ad server capabilities and dynamic ad selection for Vodafone Italia’s live! portal.

Amobee, a world leader in advertising solutions for mobile, focuses on ad-enabling the first and the most frequently viewed screens on the mobile handset, like those used for messaging and on the carrier portal.

As Vodafone Italia’s partner for mobile advertising solutions, Amobee’s telco-grade ad server has been integrated with the operator’s network enabling its customers to watch and interact with relevant and contextual advertising while browsing Vodafone live!.

Several major brands are already using the service including Mercedes, BMW, Nokia, Heineken, Lavazza, Nike, Agos, Axe, Agip, Eni, and RCS.

The partnership follows a successful collaboration to deliver Freevideo, a recent ad-funded mobile video service with Vodafone Italia.

Amobee also works with Vodafone in Spain, Greece and the Czech Republic, delivering advertising on Vodafone live! as well as services such as ad-funded peer-to-peer SMS and games.

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Reuters reports that Spanish telecoms operator Jazztel has launched an MVNO mobile service and aims to have between 170,000 to 190,000 customers by 2010. According to Chief Executive Jose Miguel Garcia Jazztel, which already offers fixed line telephony, broadband internet and pay-TV services, his firm will piggyback on Orange’s network.

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Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa warned Mexican telecoms company America Movil that it must improve its second bid to hold onto a mobile operating contract or leave the country.

An Associated Press report quoted Correa in his weekly radio address saying that, “The first offer they presented us was a real insult to our intelligence. The second isn’t as bad, but it’s still far from what the concession is really worth.”

America Movil, Latin America’s largest mobile phone service provider, is owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. It has operated in Ecuador since 1993. Its concession expires in August, but two previous, undisclosed offers to renew the contract were rejected by Ecuador’s government. America Movil has made no comment on the situation.

In February President Correa announced that local units of America Movil and Spain’s Telefonica, which also runs mobile services in Latin America, must pay a combined total of €442 million (US$700 million) to renew operating contracts – 12 times the €36.6 million (US$58 million) they paid for their concessions in the 1990’s.

Telefonica agreed to pay €140 million (US$220 million) to extend its contract through to 2023, Correa said before threatening to hold an international auction for America Movil’s concession. He added that Slim’s company would not be allowed to bid unless it reaches an agreement within the next few weeks.

America Movil’s subsidiary, Porta, controls 68.8% of Ecuador’s mobile phone market, while Telefonica’s Movistar controls 26.8% and state-run Alegro PCS controls 4.4%, the report said.

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DIDMO, a leader in the Scandinavian mobile advertising market, today announced plans to bring its successful advertising-based mobile content platform to the US, UK, Germany and Spain. The company has seen strong acceptance of its service, which digitally delivers free, full-version games to mobile phones in an ad-supported shell for 24 hours. Users are exposed to just four seconds of full-screen advertising to get into a game, a feature that has resulted in click-through rates 500% higher than traditional WAP advertising.

“DIDMO’s proven track record in Scandinavia and solid technology platform have prepared us for success and a leadership position in these key global markets,” said Joseph Oliver, newly appointed CEO of DIDMO. “Our team’s innovation and the company’s unique revenue model respect consumers as well as content providers, by delivering free mobile game content to millions of mobile users, while providing unparalleled value to advertisers in the mobile space.”

The DIDMO technology platform essentially takes a publisher’s game, strips it down to the code-level, and re-packages it to create an entirely new application wrapped with the advertising content, timed to last 24 hours. DIDMO co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Rikard Björklind, further explained, “Our platform enables us to deliver full-screen, high-quality advertising to users with a built-in campaign management system for advertisers, including real-time statistics on impressions, click-throughs, demographic data and more.”

- How DIDMO Works -

Users download a game and before the game loads, they are shown four seconds of full-screen advertising. At the end of the game, an additional four-second advertisement is also shown, but in between, the user is playing a free, full-featured version of the game. After 24 hours, the user is given the opportunity to purchase the game, or download a new game for an additional 24 hours. The model allows users to try before they buy with minimal investment, and lets publishers generate revenue on game sales.

According to recent research by leading industry analysts Mind Commerce and Gartner Group, the mobile advertising market is anticipated to grow anywhere from $14.6 billion in 2011, to $19 billion in 2012. DIDMO currently counts advertisers such as 7-Eleven, Activision, Unilever, and other well-known Scandinavian brands as clients due to its ability to deliver a 5-10% click-through rate on the ads it serves, as compared to 1-2% for WAP banners.

Since DIDMO’s June 2006 launch in Sweden, the company has established strategic partnerships with Scandinavia’s top mobile carriers including Telia, Halebop, and Tele2, and online portals such as Nokia MOSH, and GetJar.com, which offer direct downloads of DIDMO mobile games. As of January 2008, the DIDMO application has achieved an impressive two million downloads with an average of 220,000 game downloads per month in Scandinavia alone and growing rapidly. By entering the US, Germany, Spain and UK markets, 3.5 million users are expected to be using DIDMO on a regular basis by August 2008. DIDMO content is optimized for each mobile phone, runs on a standardized platform, and currently supports 99% of all java-enabled mobile phone models on the market today.

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Telecom Italia’s new CEO outlined a three-year business plan that calls for investing €15 billion/US$22.98 billion to help the company exploit the industry’s trend toward mobile and fixed line convergence, while reducing debts and compensating shareholders, an Associated Press report said.

The business plan is the first by the new management, which was put in place last November, a month after Spain’s Telefónica and a group of Italian banks took over Italy’s largest telecoms company.
It calls for revenue growth of 1% to 2% a year to 2010.

The Associated Press report also quoted CEO Franco Bernabe as saying that he was constrained by the company’s debt of €35.7 billion/US$55 billion, from making exciting announcements such as expansion and sees little room for selling other assets.

“Don’t expect from us fireworks, don’t expect from us bizarre strategies,” Bernabe said. “I think we are very realistic, we know what needs to be done and we need some time to do it, because the company is big and the problems are many.”

The core of the plan, debt reduction, will be through financial discipline, Bernabe added.

Telecom Italia also has cut its dividend by nearly a half to €0.08/US$0.12, which Bernabe said was more in line with industry standards.

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World’s biggest telecommunication company Vodafone has unveiled a new service in Spain, which enables its mobile consumers to turn their handsets into a fixed telephone at home.

Customers can now save on average 24 percent on their fixed telephony bill by signing up for the service nicknamed as “Vodafone In Your Home.”

The new service is an attempt by Vodafone’s Spanish subsidiary to push into the fixed-line market and claim larger slice of the market from former monopoly Telefonica.

Vodafone is about to start selling the service hoping to reach 9.6 million homes which have no broadband Internet access.

Consumers do not necessarily have fixed telephone to sign up for the service, Vodafone made it clear in a press statement issued last week.

All they have to pay is a monthly fee of EUR 3.

Customers who want a fixed telephony number can pay EUR 15 a month which also includes unlimited calls to one chosen fixed line. They will be charged cheaper rates when the mobile is receiving calls at home and can then opt for any other mobile tariff for other calls.

The service will allow clients to use their mobile phones as if they were fixed-line phones when they are at home.

Vodafone launched similar services in other European countries such as Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Greece, where it now has 4 million fixed-line customers.

Speaking at 3GSM (News - Alert) World Congress in Barcelona a couple of days ago, Vodafone Spain’s Chief Executive, Francisco Román, said, “At Vodafone Spain, we continue to bet on the gradual substitution of fixed telecommunications by mobile. Voice traffic over mobile networks is already higher than over fixed lines and it is possible that this will carry on accelerating in the coming months”

Over a year ago, Vodafone Spain launched its Vitamina Tariff for private customers and last year launched Vodafone Office for freelancers and small businesses, which now has 800,000 customers.

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