One-half of the worst-kept secret in all of Canada over much of the last year -- the HSPA networks being prepped by Bell and Telus -- is finally launching in just two short days' time. Bell has announced that its shiny new 21Mbps airwaves will be available to the public at large starting November 4, along with a host of devices ready to take full advantage of it; perhaps most impressive, though, is that they'll be covering fully 93 percent of the country's population out of the gate, which should make the new network a viable option immediately for would-be switchers. Your move, Rogers.

[Thanks, Shawny]

After stone-cold blowing past its original planned start window in January, India has announced that its huge 3G spectrum auction will finally kick off on December 7 of this year. Interestingly, operators MTNL and BSNL have both already begun their respective 3G rollouts, but they're not getting out of paying fair market prices: when the auction concludes, they'll need to pay the equivalent of the high bidder's price to keep their own slices of the airwaves. After the WCDMA 3G auction wraps up, both EV-DO and WiMAX auctions kick off two days later, which means the world's second most populous country is about to get a whole heck of a lot more high-speed wireless data -- or the promise of it, anyhow. [Warning: PDF link]

A North American Nokia with 3G that doesn't work on 3G, needs to be recalled and replaced... something about this story sounds familiar, doesn't it? Unlike the curious case of the 5800 XpressMusic, though, the Mural is a branded phone operated directly through AT&T -- so the fact that it was accidentally released without being able to connect to 3G is especially shady. It's a hardware problem which means a firmware update isn't going to magically make this particular quirk go away; replacement phones are expected next week, but if Mural owners prefer, they're welcome to come into an AT&T store and take a different device in its stead.

HTC has been on a global Android-pimping mission with its Hero device, and it looks like Chinese subsidiary Dopod gets the honor of announcing three new handsets for the Middle Kingdom. Unlike others, the Hero retains its WiFi capabilities by playing nice with China's custom WLAN security protocol and is expected in late August on China Unicom for 5,600 Yuan ($820) along with the few-frills Click for 3,400 Yuan ($500). The carrier has opted to strip Google Maps from the Hero (though it's still downloadable), and to soften the blow it will likely offer a snazzy red version of the phone. China Mobile will have to settle for an as-yet unspecified TD-SCDMA handset and the already announced Magic, both of which will likely be sporting the OMS flavor of Android. We're not sure we'd classify the Hero's price tag as reasonable -- but really, can you put a dollar figure on being the first big-name Android release in the world's largest wireless market?

Still having doubts that an iPhone will ever come to China via legitimate means? Have a gander at this. According to the listing after the break, which was discovered on China's State Radio Regulatory Commission (SRRC; basically the Chinese version of the FCC) website, we're looking at a GSM / WCDMA cellphone complete with Bluetooth, an internal model number A1324, a little-known manufacturer called "Apple Inc." and an approval date of May 7th, 2009. We're also told that the certificate expires in five years, which should give China Unicom plenty of time to capitalize on its reported three-year deal to offer the phone in mainland China. So, all we need now is what's we've needed for years: a handwritten note from El Jobs himself saying that this whole thing is more than some sick charade.

[Image courtesy of Sina, thanks Joe]

Update: Looks like this may be the first live look at a China Unicom iPhone 3G, complete with no WiFi to speak of.

Is it really happening? Is the world's most thickly settled nation finally getting the iPhone in earnest? If a bold (albeit woolly) report from China's own national news agency is to be believed, China Unicom has just locked down a deal that'll grant it exclusive rights to sell Apple's heralded smartphone in mainland China for three whole years. Unfortunately, most of the nitty-gritty details are absent, but we are led to believe that this will be the first-ever iPhone sold with any branding at all outside of logos splashed on at Cupertino. The "Wo" icon you see just below the speaker signifies that this here device is ready to rock on the carrier's 3G network, though we still can't say with any amount of certainty if said image is fully legitimate. We're also waiting to hear whether it'll be the iPhone 3G or 3GS (or both) that's sold, and we're particular curious as to whether or not these handsets will include WiFi modules.

In related news, it does sound as if China Unicom bent over backwards a bit to make this all come together, with the article stating that it signed on to move between one and two million units per year regardless of how many consumers actually show up to buy one. If you'll recall, an eerily similar agreement has Russian operators in a world of financial hurt, but we get the feeling the reception in China will be quite a bit warmer. At any rate, it's noted that Unicom will be snapping up the devices from Apple at a cost of around 3,000 Chinese yuan apiece ($439), with end users being asked to pay an undisclosed lesser amount on contract. If all goes well, the units could hit Chinese shops as early as September, though only time will tell how everything shakes out. Oh, and considering that Apple can hardly keep up with iPhone 3GS demand as it is, we suspect it'll want to wait a few months anyway before stressing its supply channels further.

Update: A China Unicom spokeswoman has now been quoted as saying that "we have made progress but there are still some problems to be resolved." Really? Another round of this?

Following China Telecom and China Mobile, China Unicom has now become the last of the big three Chinese operators to begin trials of its 3G network -- christened "Wo" -- with some 55 test markets lighting up this week. Happily, the trials are purely UMTS / HSPA, which means you won't need a pesky, proprietary TD-SCDMA handset to take advantage; unfortunately, though, regular commercial service won't begin until the end of the year. In the meantime, Unicom is expecting an expansion in the September time frame that would see the high-speed service expand to some 284 cities.

Lazarus be praised! The last time we heard about ASUS' P565 was back in February, when we mourned its sad and supposed demise. Turns out that's not the case, as we've now got a hands-on with the GPS / PDA phone from Polish site ASUSPDA, who claims (at least via machine translation) that it's been on sale for several months. The plethora of product / unboxing / interface pics look mighty legit, and as for the impressions, the reviewer seems very quite fond of it. Compliments are given for its general performance and design, though he does note the Glide interface isn't as seamless as you'd expect with a 816MHz processor inside. If you're interested in finding out for yourself, it looks like you can order the GSM / WCDMA-enabled device from Qbit for around $566.

[Thanks, Jackob]

Read - Unboxing
Read - Product page

In the wireless biz, simple economics ensure that the little guys have a harder time of everything, including the all-important matter of getting decent handset selections from manufacturers. That's just the tip of the iceberg, though -- beyond the lack of hot hardware, rural carriers are struggling to find a way to pay for network upgrades that'll get them in line with what the rest of the world's up to. Some 28 companies so far have banded together as NextGen Mobile, a consortium designed to share the cost of network upgrades and give smaller operators a unified voice for approaching manufacturers and demanding what it calls the "next 'it' handset." Though members haven't yet been identified, everyone involved in NextGen is GSM-based and either has or intends to deploy UMTS -- and down the road, LTE. We're probably not looking at a team that's going to be challenging Verizon or AT&T for market dominance here, but if it means more people are going to have access to high-speed data faster, we're down.

[Via Phone Scoop]

We could start off by telling you just how much this decision will hurt Qualcomm and just how celebratory the mood must be at Broadcom, but instead, we'll key you in on this quote: "The appeals court also rejected Qualcomm's request for a new trial." At long last, we may have actually heard the end of what has seemed like a never-ending battle between the aforementioned parties. Today, a US Appeals court upheld an earlier ruling that Qualcomm had indeed infringed upon two Broadcom patents while ruling that a third patent in question was invalid. The ruling is obviously a huge win for Broadcom, who will soon be bathing in Benjamins as Qualcomm is forced to pay mandatory royalties for the chips it sells during the "sunset period" ending January 31, 2009.

[Via Reuters]

As much fuss as we make about 3G, the impact it has on the mobile experience, and the death of old-school GSM as a viable technology, deployed WCDMA networks in their various forms are still just a drop in the bucket when compared to the GSM subscriber pool as a whole -- even in 3G-rich Europe. A new report from market research firm Informa Telecoms and Media reveals that European 3G users now number 101.5 million, which works out to about 11.1 percent of the some 910.8 million wireless users in the continent. Norway, Sweden, and Italy all individually broke 25 percent 3G penetration, but even so, that paints a very interesting picture of the overwhelming importance of the legacy infrastructure. With EDGE Evolution on the way, it could continue to play a majority role well into the next decade, too.

Nokia's bringing some new, unsurprising, E series hotness to the States in the form of the new E66 slider. Featuring GSM, EDGE, WCDMA and HSDPA bands galore, the phone is slated for a Q3 release this year. Features include a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera, along with a front-facing cam for video calls, WiFi, A-GPS, 3.6mbps web browsing and a 2.4-inch QVGA screen. What really sets it apart from its E series forebears is the 13.6mm thickness, and some rather sexy new styling. Nokia's also worked in a sort of business / pleasure switch to change profile from your work email and documents to your personal accounts and such -- you can also swap to landscape mode by turning the device. Battery life is certainly no slouch, with 14 days of standby, and 7.5 hours of talk on GSM, or 3.5 hours of talk on 3G. There's only 110MB of internal memory, but you can supplement that with an 8GB microSD card. The phone comes in "grey steel" or "white steel" (what, no blue steel?), but brace yourself for the pricepoint: Nokia's quoting this at "under $500," and probably won't have any carriers Stateside subsidizing it in the short term. Quite a hefty price for a QVGA phone with little built-in storage, but some Nokia fanboy is certainly going to get a kick out of it.

Oh, come on, Qualcomm, show a little emotion; shed a tear or something! After some two years of planning and urging legacy customers to migrate, Australia's Telstra has flipped a big, red, scary-looking switch somewhere, sending its CDMA network into darkness, never to return. The move effectively obsoletes roughly 3,500 CDMA sites around the country along with what the carrier bills as "redundant equipment" -- a nice little cost savings, no doubt, not to mention the freeing of significant chunks of spectrum for more advanced services. As you might have guessed, Telstra is jumping through these hoops to get customers onto its Next G-branded UMTS network, mirroring a widespread trend away from CDMA-based technologies and toward the GSM roadmap. Globally, it seems like CDMA2000 has years of life left -- but without a shred of major carrier support for the 4G path, its glory days may be numbered.

[Via Pocket PC Thoughts]

Make no mistake, LTE is quite likely the buzzword at CTIA 2008. That being the case, Nokia Siemens Networks is making sure it's part of the in-crowd by introducing a "LTE solution for radio and core networks [that] will enable operators to deploy WCDMA / HSPA and LTE in all major frequency bands, including the 700MHz and 1.7 / 2.1GHz bands that are of particular importance in North America." Apparently the outfit is assuming that winners of the recent spectrum auction will be champing at the bit to deploy new networks / services, and while we can only hope it's correct, the equipment to make it happen is seemingly ready to roll.

[Via PhoneScoop]