Openwave lands Telus music deal

Openwave today said its Musiwave platform will power Telus's new full-track music download service announced Monday, giving Openwave its first North American music deal after acquiring the French music portal in January.

Telus will launch a music portal with music content from EMI Music, SonyBMG, Universal Music Group and Time Warner Music, selling full-track MP3 downloads at $2.50 a pop over its new CDMA 1X EV-DO networks in its major Canadian markets and over its ubiquitous 1X networks in other markets.

Musiwave will supply its Secure Digital Container platform, which includes its digital rights management server and music client, to handle the delivery and copyright protection of the tracks traversing the network. The service in total will give customers access to 400,000 full-track downloads.

Musiwave has become the darling of the European mobile music world, having landed 20 carrier customers for full-track download portals and several other wireline portals. The Telus deal gives the Openwave's new music arm its first break in the North American market and its first CDMA customer. Both Sprint and Verizon Wireless have announced full-track music downloads over their EV-DO networks, Sprint partnering with Groove Mobile and Verizon linking up with Microsoft.