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European telecoms: "secret" Barcelona meeting set


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#1 Rogerdodger

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Posted 04 February 2007 - 12:52 PM

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Europe's biggest telecoms groups are aiming to create a mobile phone search engine that could challenge Yahoo! and Google, the US giants.

Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and one American network, Cingular, are among the companies that will come together for secret, high-level talks at the mobile industry's biggest annual trade show in Barcelona next week.

Faced with declining revenues as calls become cheaper, network operators are determined to secure a large slice of the lucrative search advertising market.

In the UK alone, more than 20 per cent of subscribers are expected to have access to mobile internet at broadband speeds by the end of 2007, which should prompt a dramatic increase in the use of search engines via mobile phones.

The initiative will come as a surprise to Google and Yahoo!

Mobile internet will be given a further boost at Barcelona when Far Eastern manufacturer LG Electronics is announced as the winner of a competition to produce an affordable, mass-market handset capable of accessing the web.
The deal will also be a massive boost for LG, allowing it to challenge the dominance of the four largest handset makers: Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Siemens and Motorola.