Georgina Prodhan

Media companies longing to bring a paid-for culture to the Internet might just get what they want if they pay more attention to the smartphone revolution that is changing the way people access the Web.

The chief executive of Vodafone Group, the world's largest mobile network operator, expressed the fears of many on Tuesday when he said Google should not be allowed to dominate the mobile space.

David Thodey, CEO of Telstra, Australia's biggest phone company, says the company is having "productive" and "professional" talks with the Australian government on its potential role in the building of a nationwide super-fast broadband network.

Takeovers in the media sector are likely to be few and far between until at least next year, especially given the high gearing and shaky cashflows of many firms in the industry, bankers and financiers said.

Eight percent of all consumers in Britain, France, Germany and the United States admit to downloading video illegally from the Internet, according to a survey, showing the scale of the ongoing fight against piracy.

Vodafone and Telefonica agreed to share network infrastructure in four European countries to meet a surge in demand for mobile broadband, while saving hundreds of millions of pounds in costs.

From the world's biggest phone maker, Nokia, to tiny Irish semiconductor start-up Movidia, delegates to the wireless industry's biggest annual gathering couldn't stop talking about Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. The majority of visits to such online communities are still made by people sitting at a computer telling their friends where they are and how they are feeling, exchanging opinions on their favorite movies and music or uploading videos.

The world's mobile telecom industry will gather in the Spanish city of Barcelona next week, hoping to find ways to outwit the downturn, powerful new rivals and software developers threatening to steal their thunder.

Britain plans to provide universal broadband access in a bid to make the country more competitive and help drag it out of recession. A report by Communications minister Lord Carter said Britain would work to provide Internet access to the whole country at around 2 Megabits per second (Mb) through a mixture of fixed and wireless connections by 2012.

The US economic downturn has had a severe effect on broadcaster NBC's local television stations but the company has not yet seen an advertising slowdown at a national level, Jeff Zucker said.