Carriers grudgingly sign up for Nokia's services

By Tarmo Virki

PARIS (Reuters) - Telecom operators are not happy with top cellphone maker Nokia's (NOK1V.HE) push into mobile services, something carriers have seen as their turf so far, but one-by-one they are signing up for Nokia's offering.

On Thursday France Telecom's (FTE.PA) mobile arm Orange signed a deal with Nokia on a joint offering of mobile Internet services.

Nokia, which made about 40 percent of all cellphones sold in the first quarter, is the first handset maker to move strongly into the content space, such as selling mobile music or games.

"That's where a lot of our growth will be," Sol Trujillo, chief executive of Telstra (TLS.AX), said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris.

Nokia is set to invest billions of euros in building up a strong presence on the Internet services market over the next few years as the growth in the cellphones market has stalled.

"Everybody is coming to our turf," said Frank Esser, chief executive of France's second-largest mobile operator SRF.

"We have to innovate. To ask Nokia and others to stay out is not reasonable. We want to offer our clients the widest range of services."

Germany's T-Mobile TMOG.UL, the mobile arm of Germany's Deutsche Telekom, has said it does not like Nokia's plans, but this month signed a deal with it, agreeing to put the cellphone maker's Internet services portal Ovi on its handsets.