According to the financial document that Archos released this week, SFR is the only big telecom company to have announced the HSDPA partnership to cover France thus far, but Archos says they are counting on releasing the HSDPA devices with at least two other HSDPA telecom providers before the end of the year.

Who might those other two telecom partners be? Does Archos have advanced talks with someone in the USA thus far? I think it would probably be one of the US telecoms that is not ATT which has this exclusive deal with Apple for the iPhone. So I would think any of Sprint, Verizon or T-Mobile could potentially be a good telecom partner to launch the HSDPA device in the USA at attractive prices. Especially, as far as I know, in the USA you have to have an agreement with the telecom provider to even be allowed to use their HSDPA network, in the USA, you cannot have a product and put any HSDPA SIM card in it for it to work.

How about telecoms to cover other countries in Europe? Does Archos have advanced discussions going on with a german telecom? How will it connect in the UK? I would say that an agreement with Hutchinson Whampoa would be a good way to cover the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Austria, Hong Kong and Australia in one device distribution and content monetization agreement with Three. Something could go on with telefonica for Spain?

In any ways, I hope that Archos can quickly get nice agreements in place with HSDPA providers to cover every country in the world that has got HSDPA networks. Or at least that any HSDPA SIM card could be used in the remaining countries where there wouldn’t be a distribution agreement in place yet at the initial release of the HSDPA products.