Apple's relentless quest to spread the iPhone to every corner of the universe has officially nabbed yet another carrier. Movistar has been announced as an official partner for Spain, though no clues have been given about the launch date -- a common trend with the iPhone carrier partnership press releases as of late, we've noticed -- and the best that interested parties can do right now is sign up to be notified when more information becomes available. Any suckers out there want to bet us that they'll be launching the EDGE model? No?

[Via Engadget Spanish and AppleWeblog]

Seems a little bizarre that AT&T would choose to launch white and lime over this more conservative choice -- but they did, and our Mexican friends get to reap the benefits. The blue variant of the GSM Centro is available via Telcel and Movistar -- exclusivity's apparently not an issue here -- and offers specs that are otherwise unchanged from its international cousins. Eh, on second thought, we think we like the white better anyway.

[Via IntoMobile and Palm Infocenter]

Stung with apparently widespread, systematic technical problems on its cell networks, Ecuador's taking measures to clamp down on a pair of foreign firms that together control some 96 percent of the nation's market. Porta -- a unit of Mexico's America Movil -- and Telefonica's Movistar have been told that they've got a couple choices: either allow the government to snap up more control over the airwaves, improve reliability, and lower costs to consumers, or scram. Both carriers are due for renegotiation on their contracts, giving the government gobs of leverage. What's more, Porta's under official investigation for its service failures (for which it's facing sanctions) and has to have its network in tip-top shape by next month, so it's all just a little hairy at the moment. Officials are pressing the carriers to contribute one percent of their revenue to a fund set up to provide service to Ecuador's poor; we're certainly not professional negotiators here, but if we were Porta or Movistar right now, we might go ahead and agree to make that happen if we wanted to stick around.