Swisscom has launched its mobile television service, Bluewin TV mobile, in Switzerland to become one of the first European providers to offer high-quality television experience to its mobile customers. Working together, Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks enabled this service with their leading-edge mobile TV technology, services and expertise.

Bluewin TV mobile was launched on May 13 with quality comparable to that of the customers — home TV. The service is made available through a network based on the Digital Video Broadcast for Handheld (DVB-H) standard and can be watched on DVB-H-enabled mobile devices. Swisscom provides its customers with a range of subscription plans and Nokia N77 devices.

For this project, Swisscom’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Swisscom Broadcast chose Nokia’s Mobile Broadcast Solution, while Nokia Siemens Networks integrated the mobile television platform with Swisscom’s systems and provided a broad range of services, including project management, network and architecture planning, security and implementation.

“With the time constraints of the project, it was essential for Swisscom Broadcast to rely on one partner offering a solution based on open standards which can guarantee the end-to-end interoperability of the whole solution, from the DVB-H back-end system to the mobile devices” says Olivier Anthamatten, Head of Strategic Projects at Swisscom Broadcast.

With Bluewin TV mobile, featuring high-definition picture quality and excellent sound, the viewers have a choice of 20 channels, including SF1, TSR1 and Eurosport. An electronic program guide and an easy navigation key allow people on the move to always stay on top of the news.

Swisscom is one of the first DVB-H service providers in Europe and worldwide. Bluewin TV mobile marks a further step in the Group’s multimedia strategy and offers customers on the move the same viewing experience as with their TV at home.

Swisscom’s DVB-H broadcasts reach some 44 percent of the Swiss population, mostly in the area of Basel, Berne, Geneva, Zurich and Lausanne. Customers outside the DVB-H coverage area or without DVB-H handsets can receive Bluewin TV mobile on the Vodafone live! portal using UMTS/EDGE, which covers 99.8 percent of the population.

Here’s a new twist on mobile advertising and social networks: Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM) is launching a Facebook application today that will give customers, who participate in its Sugar Mama advertising program, a new way to earn up to 75 free voice minutes a month. Up until now, the Sugar Mama program gave users free minutes when they watched a commercial and answered a short survey online. But the “Fund My Phone” Facebook application now also earns users minutes when they get their friends to watch ads too. This way, Virgin can expand the audience (of what is probably like-minded individuals) without having to sign up more subscribers to the program. Currently, about 700,000 of Virgin’s five million subscribers have signed up for Sugar Mama.

How it works: A Virgin subscriber adds the Facebook app to their profile page, where friends can see it. The app encourages friends to watch commercials to help them pay for their wireless phone. When friends click on the application, a Sugar Mama ad or other piece of content begins playing for them to view and rate. Advertisers include Xbox, Diet Pepsi, Subway, U.S. Navy, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures and Sony Music. The subscriber then earns six minutes of airtime as soon as the first four “views” by Facebook friends are credited. After the initial viewings, the customer receives one minute of airtime for every four views by their Facebook friends. I can imagine if a girl really wants to talk to a boy and he’s out of minutes, this would be a small price to pay. If it’s any indication, Virgin has given away 26 million minutes of free airtime since Sugar Mama was launched in 2006.

Embarq said today it will end its wireless reseller agreement with Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel next year, becoming the second phone company following Qwest, to terminate its alliance in recent weeks. Embarq was essentially an MVNO that allowed it to sell an Embarq-branded service on Sprint’s network, but sales fell short of expectations, according to the WSJ. Embarq entered the resale agreement after it was spun off from Sprint in 2006. Gene Betts, Embarq’s CFO said at an analyst conference today Embarq ended last year with only about 112,000 wireless customers—far below its expectations of signing more than one million wireless subscribers. Embarq will support existing customers until sometime in 2009, when it may transition them to another carrier. Meanwhile, the company is exploring ways of tying its landline service to wireless offerings regardless of the carrier.

Qwest announced earlier this month that it was ditching its arrangement with Sprint in favor of a five-year agreement with Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) starting this summer.