The UK’s second biggest mobile operator stopped Carphone Warehouse selling its pay monthly phones in 2006 after a dispute over the commission it had to pay, and instead signed an exclusive distribution deal with Carphone’s rival, Phones4U.

Vodafone pay monthly handsets will be available from Carphone Warehouse from Tuesday.

“Carphone Warehouse has developed a formidable retail presence on the high street and we’re very pleased to offer our customers even more choice,” says Ian Shepherd, Vodafone UK’s consumer director.

“This agreement marks a continued strengthening of our relationship, and will benefit both businesses and their customers,” added Charles Dunstone, Carphone Warehouse chief executive.

Vodafone added that it has signed a new multi-year contract with Phones4U covering mobile phone and mobile broadband.

With both Carphone and Phones4U on board, Vodafone handsets are now available at 1,650 stores across the UK.

The deal for the Palm Pre was announced Tuesday, and should lead to a huge boost in O2 consumers as the company now owns the exclusive rights to the iPhone and the PalmPre, not to mention the TG01 Smartphone.

While the company has declined to comment, the acquisition of the rights should help O2 push forward among its major UK competitors, Vodafone and Orange, who were also rumoured to have an eye on the Palm Pre.

O2 is owned by Spain’s Telefonica who beat out Orange for the iPhone at the last minute as well as the current winning bid for the Palm Pre.

Jon Rubinstein, the chairmen of Palm, said that the launch of the Palm Pre is the first step of many to get back in the competitive playing field of the mobile market.

The RCN offer was made at the beginning of June, after FiberNet announced on May 28th that it was to be bought from Louisville network operator Zayo for $88 million.

A term in the Zayo contract allowed FiberNet to take other offers into play before the sale concluded so long as the proposals were made before June 17th and the RCN report was allegedly sent on June 16th for the higher price tag.

All three companies declined to comment on the bidding war.

On June 18th FiberNet’s board of directors’ issued an announcement they would favour the merger with Zayo but continue to consider the RCN offer.

RCN provides cable and internet to major Eastern cities including New York, DC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York and has recently been looking to expand by swallowing smaller telecom companies who have crumbled in the economic recession.

FiberNet is based solely in the New York area and has remained quiet since the 18th about which merger proposal it will accept.

Answer: Because at £1,200 an episode, the download will probably cost more than your whole holiday.

Research by Broadband Genie has found exactly how much of a “bank breaker” overseas roaming with mobile broadband really is.

Downloading a one hour episode of The Wire or CSI could set holiday makers outside Europe back by up to £2,000, Broadband Genie said.

Even inside Europe, where new EU rules have made roaming mobile broadband cheaper from today, downloading a one hour TV programme could cost as much as £525.

Broadband Genie editor Chris Marling said: “If you feel you have to take a UK mobile broadband dongle on holiday, make sure everyone understands it’s for basic browsing only.

“Otherwise, you could be in for a nasty surprise on your return.”

Under the terms of the deal, the two companies will share infrastructures for international telecoms traffic, with BT using Tata’s global submarine cable, and Tata using BT’s distribution channel for its international traffic into the UK.

Tata will provide Direct Dial, International Direct Dial (IDD), and other voice termination services outside BT’s footprint countries.

“Under the contract, we will undertake all BT’s voice applications across the world, except for a few markets in Europe,” said Srinivas Addepalli of Tata.

“Apart from direct dial and termination services, we will also provide routing and switching services for BT.”

The agreement will see BT become Tata’s main distribution channel for IDD in the United Kingdom.

Those who subscribe to O2’s mobile broadband services, as well as those who have an iPhone, will be able to connect via the hotspots much faster than usual, as this increases the total amount of Cloud and O2 hotspots across the UK to 10,500.

There will be no charge to customers to use the hotspots, which are primarily found in travel lounges, conference centres, service stations, and cafes such as Starbucks and Caffe Nero.

Head of O2 Pay Monthly, Jonathon Earle, stated that the company wanted to give customers another opportunity to get the most out of their mobile broadband service contract.

O2 is currently the only mobile broadband provider that offers unlimited Wi-Fi to users, but it comes with a heavy price tag as it is £15 per 3GB of data transfer.

The lowest broadband package from O2 will cost a user £14.69 a month with an additional £5 a month for the first four months of the contract.

O2 recently also upgraded its Connection Manager software which works with Windows and allows a mobile device to instantly find new Wi-Fi profiles as they become available.

It also allows customers to monitor their data use.

Current O2 customers have access to the new Wi-Fi and upgrade services now, with new customers gaining access in the end of July.

As much as several thousand tons of waste is produced each year according to the European Commission.

Although Apple was expected to hold out, they have joined the initiative along with LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Samsung, Texas Instrument, Research in Motion, Sony Ericsson, and Qualcom.

For consumers, the move may reduce the price of a mobile upgrade since an additional charger will not have to be purchased with a new mobile purchase once the first uniform charger is acquired.

GSM Association led an alliance of 17 mobile device manufacturers back in February to start a similar initiative in Brussels.

The new deal only applies to the European Union and companies that have been included in the deal will face lawsuits if they fail to follow suit with the new standardised charger laws.

Smartphones and regular mobile phones are both included in the standardised charger categories.

While the move is good news for consumers, some consumer groups like Beuc expressed dissatisfaction that similar devices such as MP3 players and other small portable gadgets were not included in the standardized charger deal.

Manufacturers will have to adhere to the new charging standards beginning in 2010 next year and is expected to take the place of over thirty different chargers that are on the market today.

T-Mobile is owned by Deutsche Telekom AG and is valued at about 2-4 billion euros.

The acquisition of the company would give Vodafone the most power in the mobile phone market, owning about 40% of all shares.

Currently, Spain’s Telefonica SA has the largest share in the UK with its O2 service provider and a share of about 27%.

They are followed by Vodafone with 25%, Orange with 22%, T-Mobile with 15%, and 3 with 8%.

Deutsche Telekom AG has placed JPMorgan in charge of strategy for selling T-Mobile due to its underperforming status over the last few years.

Vodafone and Deutsche have both declined to comment on the rumours, but sources close to Vodafone have stated that the company is considering making an offer on T-Mobile UK or undergoing a joint venture with the company.

The UK is the only country in the European market that has five mobile companies that compete and each complains the fierce competition and over saturation causes reduced profit margins for each operator.

Regulators however may disapprove of Vodafone holding such as a large monopoly on the market, but there are 40% market shares in France, Italy, and Spain currently, so there is a chance the purchase could be approved.

The rise may be attributed to the new iPhone’s hardware ability to record video, but YouTube put in its two cents claiming that the website has also made improvements to make the upload speeds faster for posting a video from a mobile.

This is not first sharp increase in video downloads that YouTube has experienced, as the company reports that in just the last six months mobile video downloads from the website have increased by 1700%.

This large figure is widely attributed to the iPhone 3G and video games that allow direct upload to YouTube of stunning (or not so stunning as the case may be) direct game replays.

The influx is also due to the many other mobile devices that now offer direct access to YouTube from their platforms as well.

Additionally, OMTP hopes the new recommendations, known as the Mobile Terminal Testing documents, will help to improve quality of services and devices once they emerge in the marketplace.

With the many devices that make up the current market, testing, development, and launching devices and applications can take a significant amount of time especially due to the fact that many of the testing procedures are still performed manually.

The Mobile Terminal Testing document aims to solve the time dilemmas by making it much easier to test a new device via an automated system that has a clear set of functional requirements for a gadget, as well as a common set of interfaces for the terminals.

OMTP’s managing director commented that although mobile terminal testing is still in its early states, with so many fragmented approaches the testing up to date is heavily complicated which could be eased with the new OMTP guidelines.

OMTO has also helped move the mobile communications industry along in development recently by setting standard specifications for visual voicemail as announced at the most recent conference.

Visual voicemail allows users to check their voicemail by selecting which voicemail messages they want to hear by caller’s name or number instead of being forced to listen to every message which saves time and minutes for the user.