France Telecom (NYSE: FTE), owner of the Orange network, is in talks with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) to sell the iPhone in other countries, according to the company’s CFO Gervais Pellissier. Dow Jones reports that Pellissier revealed that the discussions were for more than “just two countries.” He also said that France Telecom was “pleased with the success” of the company’s exclusive deal with Apple that has another two and a half years to run—quashing recent rumours that the French group had balked at Apple’s supposed insistence that they slash iPhone prices to boost sales. Pellissier also said that he expected a 3G iPhone to boost sales in France, where Orange has sold over 100,000 of the device.

Yesterday, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) announced it would be selling the iPhone in ten countries. News later surfaced that its deal in Italy is not an exclusive one, after Telecom Italia announced they too would be selling the device. Thomson Financial, meanwhile, picked up a story today from Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias, which reported Tuesday than Vodafone’s Portugal deal is not an exclusive one either, though it did not cite a source. Portuguese networks Portugal Telecom and Sonaecom are reportedly still negotiating with Apple over distributing the iPhone.

In Australia Vodafone declined to say whether the deal to sell the iPhone was exclusive, reports the SMH, and it’s a short jump to the conclusion that it is therefore not exclusive. “Mark Novosel, telecommunications market analyst at IDC, said the fact that Vodafone hasn’t announced whether the deal is exclusive indicates the iPhone will be sold by all carriers…He said it is likely Vodafone will sell the iPhone at a discount and lock it to its network, in which case Apple would sell an unlocked version – capable of running on any carrier – through its own stores.”

France Telecom has reportedly offered roughly $54 billion in an all-stock bid to acquire TeliaSonera, Sweden’s largest telecom, according to the online edition of the Wall Street Journal.

The proposed deal would provide access to emerging markets that France Telecom desires as well as allow it to compete more aggressively with Deutsche Telekom AG.

If France Telecom pursues the deal, it will be a challenging endeavor and will require some political wrangling as France Telecom is 27%-owned by the French government and TeliaSonera has 37% and 13.7% ownership by the Swedish and Finnish states, respectively.

Shares in France Telecom sank on news of the deal.

France Telecom and Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERICY), an industry leading vendor, enabling mass market adoption of 3G solutions worldwide, have entered into a patent license agreement under France Telecom’s Turbo Codes Licensing Program. Under terms of the agreement France Telecom has granted Ericsson a worldwide license to France Telecom’s seminal Turbo Codes patents for use in Ericsson’s third generation (3G) mobile communications products encompassing WCDMA to HSDPA.

Invented by Claude Berrou and Alain Glavieux of Ecole Nationale Surperieure des Telecommunications (ENST) in Brittany, France, Turbo Codes have been adopted by the leading third generation (3G) cellular standards, 3GPP (UMTS/W-CDMA) and 3GPP2 (CDMA2000), in order to provide previously unavailable error correction performance at commercially viable costs. According to industry analyst estimates 3G standards are expected to represent at least a third of all cellular users by 2009.

Turbo Codes are an innovative form of forward error correction (FEC), one of the fundamental building blocks of any type of digital communications with increases in network data capacity and power efficiencies close to the theoretical “Shannon limit.” These advantages combined with increasing bandwidth demands and the maturity of Turbo Codes technology have led to their adoption in a wide array of commercially available and successful communications standards including: cellular (UMTS, CDMA2000), satellite (DVB-RCS, CCSD), broadband wireless, and home powerline networking (HomePlugAV). The invention and inventors of Turbo Code have been widely recognized for this achievement with nominations and awards ranging from nominee for European Inventor of the Year 2006, to the award of the 2005 Marconi Prize, and recipients of the 1998 IEEE (Information Theory) Golden Jubilee Award.

“This agreement signifies our continuing progress with the Turbo Code Licensing Program and our efforts to provide this commercially successful and cost effective technology to 3G market leaders,” said Mustapha Tagredj, Patent Licensing Director for France Telecom. “As such, we are pleased to welcome Ericsson, a company shaping the future of mobile and broadband communications as the latest entrant to our Turbo Codes Licensing Program.”

France Telecom is committed to making the benefits of Turbo Codes available to customers implementing a variety of digital communication solutions as well as those customers implementing 3G compliant technology for which France Telecom’s patents are considered essential. In order to facilitate this process France Telecom established the Turbo Codes Licensing Program (TCLP) in late 2001.