Telecommunications companies Vodafone and Telecom Italia will sell the Apple iPhone in Italy. Previously, Apple only allowed one company to sell its popular device in any national market. Exclusive franchise deals that lets Apple share service provider profits were struck with AT&T in the United States, O2 in Britain, Orange in France and Deutsche Telekom in Germany. Vodafone and Telecom Italia haven’t said much about the agreement they struck with Apple.

“Telecom Italia announced today it has signed a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Italy later this year,” was all that the Italian group had to say on Tuesday.

Vodafone plans to sell the iPhone in ten countries by the end of this year.

“Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network,” the British-based firm said in a statement without giving any more details.

No one seems to be saying much about this break with the exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in a national market. It could simply have to do with Italian anti-trust laws, or may be a change in Apple’s sales strategy as regards the iPhone. As the iPhone enters new markets, we will learn if the Italian deal is an anomaly or a change in corporate strategy by Apple.

Want better mobile Internet access? Well, moving to the British Isles might be in order, or at least a trip to Ireland and the U.K. Vodafone has announced that has teamed up with Google, Myspace, eBay and YouTube in an effort to provide a more enhanced and robust service with those sites.

Additionally Vodafone mobile Internet users will access compressed and rearranged content of these and other Web sites to make it more mobile-friendly. The debate continues to wage on what is the best method for displaying Web sites on a mobile phone, but Vodafone is taking the route of compressing the content for its specific phones. Hopefully this should allow more streamlined use of the mobile Web. We’d hate to think anyone might fail to put in that eBay bid!

The service will be available to Vodafone’s 3G and 2.5G customers, and will allow users to surf the mobile Web for a fee of 99 (Euro) cents, or pay a fee of €9.99 per month. Of course there will be what Vodafone is calling “fair usage” price caps. Considering that YouTube and MySpace are in the mix we can hope that usage cap is actually fair.

[Via Irish Times]

U.K. mobile subscribers on either Vodafone or Orange UK will soon be able to watch mobile-only content from Discovery Turbo and Animal Planet. Each of these Discovery Network channels is making available exclusive made-for-mobile content as part of part of the Sky Mobile package. These launches are part of the re-branding of Discovery Network’s factual and lifestyle mobile TV offerings.

Discovery Turbo will feature 20-minute batch packages, which will be available on-demand and updated every weekday. Content will include program clips from The Garage and American Chopper. Animal Planet’s mobile content will be offered on-demand as a one hour weekly loop, and this will include “snack-sized” bits of the channel’s most popular programming, including segments from Meerkat Manor and Crocodile Hunter Diaries.

Additional content from the two channels will include behind-the-scenes segments and show highlights, along with information guides and talent interviews.

Discover Networks UK

Today Vodafone announced that it has become a principal member of the WiMAX Forum, a non-profit organization committed to promoting and certifying interoperable WiMAX products. This technology is et to allow high-speed Internet access from mobile devices over greater distances than previous technologies, such as Wi-Fi.

“Our membership of the WiMAX Forum will complement our existing memberships of other key industry bodies such as the GSMA, 3GPP and the Next Generation Mobile Network initiative,” said Steve Pusey, Global Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone. “Vodafone remains technology neutral as far as our future network options are concerned, and joining the WiMAX Forum is a logical step as we seek to evaluate the full capabilities and potential of this technology.”

The WiMAX Forum is currently comprised of more than 470 companies including 141 operators.

Vodafone
WiMAX Forum

The will it or won’t it question of the week is whether mobile phone giant Vodafone Group will sell off its stake in Verizon Wireless. Reuters is reporting that it seems unlikely that Vodafone will part with it stake, quoting a source as saying that “Vodafone has decided to hang onto Verizon Wireless for now.”

The key words are “for now,” and it is possible that the world’s second largest mobile phone company might dump its 45 percent in Verizon Wireless at some near future date. Analysts have valued Vodafone’s stake at about $45 billion, but despite this value it is not reflected in Vodafone’s own share price.

Verizon Communications controls the majority share of Verizon Wireless. But so far Vodafone investors have rejected calls by from activist shareholder Efficient Capital Structures, to spin off the stake into a separately-listed company.

[Via Reuters]

This week Digital Chocolate announced the launch of their D Choc Café Series of casual games, and are currently available for AT&T, T-Mobile and 3, and in the coming weeks will be released for Alltel, Nokia (including the N-Game platform), O2, Orange, Telefonica, SFR, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, Telecom New Zealand, Telstra, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone.

The first five games available in the D Choc Café Series include Sudoku, Kakuro, Hold’em Poker, Mahjong and Solitaire.

Digital Chocolate

In Europe they take football – what we Americans know as soccer – as seriously as many Americans take football – what we Americans call football. So when U.K. satellite service Sky Sports announced that it plans to offer all of its 92 Barclays Premier League matches on mobile this is big news indeed! Sky Sports 1, 2 and 3 will be available via the Sky Mobile TV series as simulcast channels.

Launched in November of 2005, and at the time said to be the largest 3G mobile TV service in Europe, Sky Mobile TV lets customers receive more than 30 mobile TV channels including news, music and entertainment… and now football! The service is currently available to 3G subscribers to Vodafone U.K., Vodafone Ireland and Orange networks. Additionally the service is expected to launch on T-Mobile in the coming weeks.

[Via Cellular-News]

It hasn’t been a good summer for Northern and Central England, where weeks of rain have caused massive flooding. The rain picked up again last week, and we’ve heard that it was so bad in the Newbury, Berkshire region that Vodafone had to evacuate the company’s global headquarters. An ornamental lake that runs through the center of the complex turned into a torrent.

Power was cut from the complex, while the 2,000 employees had to be evacuated to high ground after water breached the ground floors of the building.

[Via Cellular-News]

Many analysts believe that Vodafone could be in a good position to get an exclusive, pan-European lock on the new Apple iPhone, but there is a catch. The iPhone does not operate on fast 3G networks, and isn’t expected to bring out a 3G version until next March at the earliest. The iPhone operates over slower 2.5 generation networks in the United States, and as Vodafone has invested heavily in its 3G network and services the company probably will hold out for a 3G, or HSDPA (upgraded 3G) version.

[Via Reuters]

Is there going to be a merger of the big V’s? That is the rumor circulating the Web. As our sister site CrunchGear posted, Vodafone has expressed interested in Verizon Communications. The two companies are already partners, but a merger could be a truly massive mobile phone giant.

And as Vodafone’s 3G network is dominant in the U.K. and Verizon has their own “Most Reliable Network” in the United States, this could be a step closer to making international mobile calls affordable, reliable and just plain cool!

However, Vodafone has so far denied that any deal is in place. But we all know that denial is just the first step in any deal!

[Via Seeking Alpha]