Ofcom’s plans to auction the 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum for the UK is good news for mobile operators, but it will not be the panacea for addressing the problems of data capacity they face, according to Stephen Rayment, chief technical officer at wireless networking specialists BelAir Networks. ‘The £22 billion raised from auctioning of the 3G licences was largely a speculative move as operators weren’t completely sure how the spectrum would be used,’ said Rayment. ‘It took nearly seven years and the launch of devices like the iPhone before demand for mobile data really started to take shape.’

Wireless Magazine 

Ericsson AB is suing ZTE Corp. for alleged infringements of its GSM and WCDMA intellectual property after the two companies failed to reach a bilateral agreement. ZTE says it has received "legal papers stating that Ericsson has filed lawsuits against ZTE over handset patent infringement in the U.K.," while The Financial Times reported that Ericsson is suing ZTE in Germany and Italy as well as in the U.K. Ericsson Chief Intellectual Property Officer Kasim Alfalahi told the FT that ZTE had allegedly been infringing the Swedish company's patents for years, but that the Chinese vendor had refused to sign agreements despite years of negotiations.

Light Reading 

Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) , which is in the early stages of rolling out its Long Term Evolution Time Division Duplex (LTE TDD) network in India, is looking to team up with some atypical partners to help jumpstart the country's broadband wireless access (BWA) services market. "There is no better network than [the one] Reliance is building for the Facebooks, Twitters and Googles of the world to partner with and use this network as a reference framework of a rich experience," states Mathew Oommen, Reliance's new president of corporate strategy, who outlined some of his views on the prospects for a digital economy in India during an interview at the recent CTIA show in Orlando, Fla. (See Reliance Preps for LTE TDD.)

Light Reading 

It was Sony Ericsson's worst kept secret and now after being officially announced earlier this year the Xperia Play smartphone is available in 11 markets. These markets include the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan but not the US. Anyone itching to get their hands on the handset stateside won't have long to wait though as it is due to be released with Verizon this spring. The phone is equal parts a handheld gaming console and smartphone as it combines the familiar gamepad layout of Sony's PSP and the form factor of an Xperia smartphone. Overall it bears more of a resemblance to Sony's ill-fated PSPGo device though this has far more promise than the failed console.

Rethink Wireless 

Ironically, as Microsoft turns the tables of history and makes an antitrust complaint against Google, the search giant is introducing some Microsoft-style approaches to Android. The company is reportedly stepping up its efforts to gain stronger control over the supposedly open source platform, a strategy that could play to Microsoft's advantage by narrowing the gap between Android and WP7. Microsoft is filing its complaint with the European Commission, scene of some of its own greatest antitrust setbacks. This is part of the ongoing EC probe into Google's practices, and Microsoft SVP and general counsel Brad Smith says the Windows giant has turned to Europe because Google's behaviour is more extreme there (it has 95 per cent of the search market in the EU, whereas in the US, Microsoft Bing has succeeded in gaining 25 per cent share).

Rethink Wireless 

Mass adoption of NFC mobile payment systems is still "years away", according to a report by analysts at Forrester Research. This is despite the fact that the company anticipates NFC-capable devices to ship in their millions this year. "Adding new players and technologies like NFC to an already complex and evolving value chain is a recipe for disruption in many forms," says Forrester analyst Thomas Husson. With new entrants expected to arrive in the space, such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google, new partnerships will form to offer mobile payment options, says Husson. The first mass showcase of contactless mobile payments will be the 2012 Olympics, but true cross-market expansion and interoperability is not expected before 2013-2015, he says.

UK startup Cubate has launched Mosho, a mobile platform designed to help boutique retailers earn mCommerce revenues. The platform offers the retailer a mobile-optimised, transactional site, on which users can quickly and easily pay for goods via PayPal. Cubate has secured an agreement with PayPal, which enables it to act as an umbrella organisation under which the individual retailers play in the mobile channel. This means that retailers who sign up to the Cubate platform can enable PayPal payments with a persistent login for their customers, which lasts for up to a year, making the buying process quick and seamless. In the few weeks since the platform launched, 10 boutique retailers have signed up.

Mobile Marketing 

More than 250 million people are now accessing Facebook from their mobile phones, the social network has announced. That represents rapid growth, since in February 2010 it passed the 100 million mark. Alongside the new mobile milestone, Facebook has relaunched its mobile web presence, merging its two sites m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com. The former was for feature phones, while the latter was for touchscreen smartphones. Now they will use the same framework, but Facebook will automatically serve the best version of the site for each device that visits it, according to what features they have or don't have.

Rovio reveals mega stat for its movie-branded spin-off game for iPhone and Android. Rovio Mobile has announced that its new Angry Birds Rio game has racked up more than 10 million downloads across iOS and Android in its first ten days of availability. The developer tweeted the cryptic message "10 in 10:-) Angry Birds Rio breaking all records. A massive thanks to all our fans!!!!" a few minutes ago, and when ME checked that it was referring to 10 million downloads, responded "yes:-)"

Mobile Entertainment 

Microsoft has been trumpeting the successes of its Windows Phone 7 platform with the release of some official figures this week. Windows Phone 7 now has 11,500 applications in its Marketplace and 36,000 developers creating content for the platform, which isn’t bad for just one year’s work. Microsoft was also keen to stress that it wasn’t ‘tweaking’ the figures either by including things like Wallpaper apps and the amount of times developers have downloaded the Windows Phone 7 SDK. Instead, Microsoft has only included core apps – i.e. ones that are actually applications, in that they do something – and registered AppHub members. Both figures – 11,500 apps and 36,000 developers – are pretty impressive. And when you consider the recent Nokia partnership, things are certainly looking rosy for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform.

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