NOKIA IS LAUNCHING its 'Comes With Music' service, which it announced last year, here in Blighty, giving people a year of unlimited access to the entire Nokia Music Store catalogue.

The deal is going be launched as an exclusive with Carphone Warehouse and be offered first only as part of a pre-pay 5310 XpressMusic 'Comes With Music' edition. This will operate just like a standard contract, but has the unlimited service bundled in.

For a change, the UK is the first country to get the new service, which even lets users keep the songs they've downloaded after the year is up.

A spokesNokia was a little vague on the details, but it looks like, for now at least, the service is only offered on this one deal and will not be available as a stand-alone service. In time, it is expected to be bundled with other music phones, for instance, marketing photos show 'Comes With Music' on the N81, but again exact details are unavailable at present.

There was also no confirmation if the service could be extended beyond a year without forking out for a new phone, or what it would cost to renew. The service has also come under fire for being encoded with Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM.

O2's head of content, Antony Douglas has come out saying that he will be, " watching Nokia's 'Come with Music' package with interest," since it goes head-to-head with O2's recently launched MyPlay service.

The official release date being earmarked as 2 October and Carphone Warehouse is apparently taking pre-orders now, although we couldn't find anything on the site about it.

The mobile phone chain will have the exclusive contract until the end of the year, but there are no details as to what's going to happen after that. µ