As well as Vodafone, the companies believed to be going through to the second round of bidding are British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc, BT Group, Fastweb SpA and Wind.

The official shortlist has not yet been revealed but is believed to include six companies.

Tiscali will now open its books to the remaining bidders to allow due diligence to be carried out.

The Financial Times revealed the news that Carphone Warehouse’s £550m bid had been rejected because Tiscali felt that it undervalued its assets.

Carphone Warehouse could still re-enter the bidding process, but would have to substantially improve its offer.

It is believed that the UK division will be sold off separately from Tiscali’s broadband business.

Vodafone has also been linked with a £19 billion bid for MTN, a South Africa-based mobile phone operator, but has now said that these rumours are false.

Turkcell is the leading mobile communications provider in Turkey and is eager to add BubbleTALK voice SMS to its popular text SMS service.

Turkcell plans to use the KonusGonder service to provide an innovative and unique Value-Added Service to its subscribers.

The introduction of the BubbleTALK service has been very attractive to mobile operators because of its simple, revenue-generating service which eliminates the need for any additional network infrastructure.

BubbleTALK usage has been an overwhelming success story, with mobile operators globally offering the service to more than 140 million subscribers.

US-based Bubble Motion pioneered voice SMS. The company works with mobile operators around the world to create a global network of asynchronous voice messaging and advanced voice content applications.

It warns that mobile operators could pay up to several hundred euros per broadband subscriber in network CAPEX alone. This is more than ten times the benchmark CAPEX per voice subscriber.

Traffic-dependent infrastructure software licence fees in particular are a threat to mobile broadband profitability.

The consultant has stated that, when data traffic increases, it quickly becomes very expensive to upgrade and expand the networks, which is a clear threat to the mobile broadband business case.

The popularity of mobile broadband flat-rate services with High-Speed Packet Access is driving the market forward, but operators also need to have a clear strategy to limit extreme usage.

A senior consultant at the company maintains that broadband operators are faced with entirely new technical and commercial challenges compared to 2G.

They need to move the business forward but at the same time must limit extreme usage that degrades services or requires disproportional network investments.

In Omnitele’s opinion, detailed techno-economic business models must be developed to tackle new broadband challenges effectively.

In 2G it has been relatively easy for operators to estimate voice CAPEX and related costs, while mobile broadband services require much tighter links between the technical and commercial aspects of the business.

This approach is necessary to make sure that profitability can be sustained.

Omnitele operates internationally, and its main clients are mobile operators, various system suppliers, regulators and ministries across six continents.

The company offers detailed technical expertise complemented by a solid business understanding and concentrates on mobile communications network planning and business operations development.

The company hopes that Hampson-Jones will be able to use his experience in the IT and Telecoms software industry to continue and build upon their current success.

His key aims are furthering IKIVO’s leading position within the mobile software sector, and developing the company’s product areas.

IKIVO believe that Hampson-Jones will lead to a substantial increase in product sales across Europe, Asia and North America.

IKIVO’s software is based on open standards, and is currently used on more than 250 million mobile phones around the world.

Hampson-Jones said that he is ‘delighted’ at his appointment.

He added: “My mission is to build on the long-standing relationships established within the Mobile Network Operators, the Mobile Handset Manufacturers and the emerging Consumer Electronics Manufacturers.

“I believe with the knowledge and expertise we have throughout the company, we have a very exciting and strong future ahead.”

Bo Dimert, Chairman of IKIVO’s board, said that he has ‘complete confidence’ in any new ideas that Hampson-Jones brings to the company.

Using Clickatell’s managed service, Christie will be able to inform customers via SMS about soon-to-be-released auction items likely to be of interest, and give pricing updates prior to, and during, auctions.

Christie’s SMS alert service is free to all customers. To subscribe, customers log on to Christie’s registration page and complete a simple enrolment process.

Customers will begin receiving email and SMS messages pertaining to auction items, announcements and other pertinent information no matter where they are in the world.

An increasing number of top performing businesses in their field are embracing SMS and mobile messaging as a key component of their customer relations, acquisition and retention strategies.

Clickatell is enabling these businesses, governments and communities to leverage the ubiquity of mobile messaging to inform, alert, notify, transact, interact and share information.

The company serves more than 8,000 customers, reaching more than 700 networks in over 200 countries.

The company has pinpointed the best performing mobile advertising campaigns and can help advertisers avoid paying too much on sites that do not convert into value for their business.

The Internet Advertising Bureau has reported the need for independent testing and scrutiny to build trust and confidence in mobile advertising.

Bango is fulfilling this need with a service that provides hard data, free from any vendor bias.

The new goal comparison feature helps marketers measure the return on investment for campaigns across different ad networks to make smarter buying decisions.

Mobile marketers can use the Bango mobile analytics tool and the new goal comparison feature in its mobile analytics tool to see which mobile advertising campaigns and traffic sources deliver the best conversion rates.

Advertisers can also compare the value of the traffic from third-party ad services using independent data provided by Bango Analytics.

Some companies have already reported discrepancies approaching 20% between the traffic they are getting and what they have paid for.

Bango offers a reliable and persistent identity for every mobile user with its user ID technology.

This tracks people as they enter a mobile website from different sources and reach a defined goal, such as buying content, downloading an application, or click to call.

Bango Analytics operates as a hosted service, allowing mobile website owners anywhere in the world to connect their sites to the analytics service in minutes and use it free of charge.

The new software package is intended for companies, as well as SMEs.

Contact is a program which allows for mobile messaging with CRM systems and also supports the production and distribution of advertising campaigns via SMS.

The premise behind Contact and its SMS delivery method, is that companies can be highly specified when selecting targets for their campaigns, as well as receive feedback at the same time.

Industry analysts are suggesting that, due to the relative inexpensiveness and ease of SMS campaigns, the medium will soon take off in the marketing field.

By the end of 2008, nearly 90% of major branded companies are planning some form of text message campaign.

There are now over 3 billion mobile phone accounts in use, which is leading to a dramatic push towards using the SMS as a means of advertising.

Included in the PageOne Contact pack is a user interface to allow companies to work with SMS Short Code, as well as supervise the messaging service.

A new service, titled Free text, is also included in the package, which gives companies access to numbers which are free to text to. This is hoped to bring in much feedback about the campaigns.

Part of the user interface for Contact is web-based, and will give companies an over-view of incoming and outgoing texts and allow them to easily create SMS messages using Short Codes.

This should streamline the process of dealing with large quantities of text messages.

PageOne are suggesting that companies may well see a reduction in inbound calls, as they will have the ability to now easily send update SMS’s through to clients before they feel the need to call.

By using such a modern medium of advertising, PageOne believe that Contact will allow for brands to keep an up-to-date image, whilst reducing costs for marketing campaigns.

The Swedish auction concluded at a price of €0.13/MHz/pop, with unpaired spectrum going for just below €0.04/MHz/pop and paired spectrum for €0.16/MHz/pop.

A strategy consultant at Analysys Mason has concluded that prices fetched at the 2000/2001 European UMTS auctions, especially in the UK and Germany, are unlikely to be repeated.

On the other hand, operators are reporting a rapid uptake of mobile broadband dongles, and new WiMAX players may be eager to enter the arena, suggesting that prices may still be substantial.

Despite being significantly below the UK and German UMTS auctions in 2000, the prices achieved in the Swedish auction were considerably higher than the recent Norwegian 2.6GHz auction (€0.03/MHz/pop).

Analysys Mason, a respected deliverer of market intelligence worldwide, considers that the Swedish auction may be a more reliable indicator of prices in other upcoming European auctions than the Norwegian auction.

The reason for this is that the competitive situation in Sweden, with four mobile players, is more representative of the situation in most European countries than the Norwegian two-player market.

However, there are plenty of specifics in the Swedish situation that should lead to caution when using this auction result as a benchmark.

Sweden has a very low population density compared to most European countries.

Consequently, it has a relatively low traffic density, leading to lower spectrum demand and hence lower prices.

Secondly, later auctions may be affected by rising expectations in the industry regarding the uptake of mobile data and the anticipation of LTE approaching commercial availability.

Bidders for unpaired spectrum also need to factor out the effect of the PTS’s decision to auction the unpaired spectrum in one block.

This decreased the liquidity of the spectrum, and potentially decreased its value.

Bidders for unpaired spectrum also need to factor out the effect of the PTS’s decision to auction the unpaired spectrum in one block. This decreased the liquidity of the spectrum, and potentially decreased its value.

The company is to team up with Portugal Telecom, which is Portugal’s primary supplier in the telecommunications industry.

Portugal Telecom will be using UPA-Compliant 200Mbps powerline cables, supplied by DS2, which have been proven to reduce instillation costs, and times, for IPTV services.

One of the main features of Portugal Telecom’s new IPTV plan, is that they can offer their customers both HD and SD channels on differing TVs through providing them with two set-top-boxes (STB).

Part of the attraction of DS2’s powerline technology, is that it allows customers of Portugal Telecom to have their STBs installed anywhere in the house without extra wiring.

The DS2 technology implemented by Portugal Telecoms allows for users to operate their STBs through either a coaxial network set up within the house, or actually using the electrical wiring within the home, for their IPTV.

A large portion of MEO TV customers already use DS2’s 200Mbps products as a means of networking within the home, through the use existing electrical cables.

One of the bugbears facing IPTV providers, is house-wide distribution.

Most customers do not have cabling that will properly support IPTV, and installing cable throughout the entire house is both costly and time consuming, as well as highly disturbing to the customer.

This is not an issue for DS2’s powerline products.

DS2’s 200Mbps powerline products win out over wireless because the bandwidth on wireless is such that HD video is virtually impossible, and interference in built up areas has also proven to be an issue.

The Vice President of Sales at DS2, Victor Dominguez, made a statement about their new 200Mbps products in which he mentioned that, not only would it be a secure method of delivering HD video, it will also allow for easy upgrade to 400Mpbs.

According to industry sources, this new UPA-compliant technology makes IPTV delivered in this fashion a more compelling offer, against that of satellite or cable-TV.

Portugal Telecom is expecting notable increases in their client base as a result of this new powerline product.

At this stage, the only equipment manufacturers working with Portugal Telecom to have attained the ‘UPA Plug Tested’ logo, are Comtrend Communications and Corinex Communications.

End2End will implement carrier grade delivery of the FSNs via SMS which will be capable of informing KLM’s passengers about flight disruptions and service notifications immediately.

They will first need to register for the service on the company’s site, KLM.com.

End2End will utilize the global mobile telecoms infrastructure (SS7) and connections to the international mobile operator, which will enable KLM to message their passengers anywhere in the world to keep them updated.

The SMS flight notification service will deliver updates on flight delay information, flight cancellation information, flight, and gate changes at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.

It will even tell customers when to board the aircraft at Schiphol.

There will also be a pull-service so that passengers can request arrival and departure details by messaging their flight number to an international Virtual Mobile Number, or VMN.

These VMNs are available in nearly all countries, regardless of the passenger’s phone, home country.

End2End is a mobile data specialist providing connectivity & messaging solutions, as well as scalable and carrier-grade 2-way SMS solutions for mobile network operators and business customers.

End2End enables companies to communicate with mobile subscribers in more than 200 countries.

Their clients include Cable & Wireless, Lycos, Microsoft and MSN.

End2End Connectivity is part of the MACH Group.