Multi-modali-T

A Diamond Cluster emeritus mega-uber value reader alerts me to reports of an upcoming announcement from Freenet in Germany to cross-sell its 700k DSL customers dual mode GSM/WiFi handsets from UTStarcom and Nokia, and possibly partner with either The Cloud or Fon. While 700k subs may be a drop in the ocean in terms of the German wireless market, this highlights just how much the incumbent mobile players have yet to do in this regard - so far it's all been GSM home-zone products (though Vodafone unit Arcor is moving), but that's only part of the story. Anyway, Freenet's parent, Mobilcom, has just under 5m cellular customers, and there's something over 2m Freenet internet subs still on narrowband presumably waiting for a key incentive to take the broadband plunge. Lastly, at 2.5 times the size of Freenet's DSL base, I wouldn't expect that United Internet is going to stand by silently.

UPDATE: A Palladium Club mega-uber value reader writes in response, to say he wouldn't be surprised to see something interesting being announced by MVNO enabler vistream, particularly in the wake of the announcement last month at Cannes of an agreement with UMA advocate Motorola.

UPDATE 2: How good was my mega-uber value reader's timing here? This came out of vistream the following day...