The new service, Musicstore, has been made available to 3 subscribers on a trial basis in recent weeks but is now set for a full launch. The company has planned an extensive television, press and outdoor advertising campaign to push the service ahead of the allimportant Christmas market, the busiest sales period for mobile phones.

Graeme Slattery, head of music for 3 Ireland, said the site will initially offer a catalogue of 500,000 tracks at a price of 2 per track.

That's just over double the 99 cent per track that the market leader, iTunes, is charging.

"So far the 2 price point seems to be fair from what we've seen and people are embracing the service and downloading tracks, " Slattery said. One of the reasons offered for the higher charges is that 3 does not enjoy the same economies of scale as Apple, whose higher volumes enable it to sell at a lower price, according to Slattery.

He said the charges had not proved off-putting for the network's customers and pointed out that since 3 began offering a limited mobile download service in May, 40% of its Irish customers have been downloading tracks on a monthly basis.