Vodafone wins round against iPhone

Last month, Apple was forced by French law to promise that consumers could buy a version of its much-hyped iPhone in France without having to be locked into a long-term contract with Orange, the only mobile phone operator offering the new device, reports the International Herald Tribune.

Now, the same issue is tripping up Apple`s plans to sell the music-playing cellphone in Germany, the largest European telephone market. Last week, Vodafone won the first step in a legal case against T-Mobile over its exclusive deal to sell the iPhone there.

Because of the court ruling, T-Mobile will have to offer the iPhone to everyone, even without the 24-month contract that it has required for buyers of the 399-euro cellphone, since it went on sale in Germany on 9 November. T-Mobile is appealing the ruling.

Booming demand for Internet services, combined with insufficient infrastructure investment, could leave the Web vulnerable to brown-outs within three years, a study released yesterday predicted, says Information Week.

Nemertes Research said Internet providers need to invest $42 billion to $55 billion - or 60% to 70% more than current plans call for - to stave off interruptions to the digital economy that could happen if the Internet bogs down. "The next Google, YouTube, or Amazon might not arise" if the situation isn`t fixed, Nemertes said.

The problem, the group said, is that bandwidth usage is outpacing infrastructure build outs. While core fibre and switching/routing technology "will scale nicely", Internet access resources could soon be overwhelmed in three to five years, Nemertes said.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is not measurably faster than the original stock edition, a Florida-based developer of performance testing and network metrics software said on Monday, according to PC World.

"Microsoft has hinted that SP1 is faster than Vista RTM," said Craig Barth, CTO at Devil Mountain Software, referring to the release to manufacturing version of the operating system.

"But we found pretty much nothing measurable. It surprised me as much as it surprised everyone else, but the numbers are the numbers."

Singapore has lifted a ban on an Xbox 360 video game featuring an intimate scene between two female characters, a newspaper reported on Saturday, says iafrica.com.

The game, Mass Effect, would now be sold with an "M18" label, meaning it cannot be legally purchased by anyone under 18, the Straits Times said, citing the city-state`s media watchdog, the Media Development Authority.

The futuristic space adventure game, made by Microsoft, was banned on Thursday because it contained what the Board of Film Censors described as "a scene of lesbian intimacy".