All reporters and photographers at the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, as well as Fairfax Digital, will be equipped with these devices, which enable them to upload video, audio, pictures and articles while on the move.

"You'd probably find two years down the road that everyone would have something like this," said Mike van Niekerk, Fairfax's editor-in-chief of online. "They're an all-in-one reporting tool."

Up to 400 staffers could be affected by the new program, which could cost more than $500,000 for hardware alone – at $1300 per device.

Fairfax had been experimenting with this technology in the past year with its online editorial breaking news team. It seems the test gave full satisfaction to Fairfax.

This daring investment and focus on platform-agnostic coverage could prove to be a decisive business strategy in an industry faced with a structural decline in print ad revenues.

While Fairfax is prepping up reporters with mobile technology, the time could also be ripe for consumers to access news through their mobiles. The British communications regulator Ofcom based its analysis on four main evolutions in the market:
- 3G use has expanded to nearly 7.8 million connections in 2006
-  most mobile phones not have Internet capability
- costs of Mobile Internet access have decreased
- mobile operators are now offering services nearly comparable to fixed-line Internet service providers

Source: Brand Republic – The Australian News through IFRA Executive News Service