Apple has increased its European network of exclusive operator partners for its iPhone product, with the device going on sale today from O2 Ireland and T-Mobile Austria. Today’s launches add to previous regional deals with O2 UK, Orange France and T-Mobile Germany. The device is available from both new operators for €399 for the 8GB model and €499 for the 16GB model, all with an 18-month contract. Reports this week suggest Australia’s Telstra will be the next operator to announce iPhone launch details.

Meanwhile an iPhone hacker group – the iPhone Dev Team – claimed this week to have obtained and cracked a copy of the beta version of the iPhone 2.0 firmware. This would potentially allow users to run any application on the device, even those banned by Apple’s Applications Store, and may also mean Apple has lost the ability to terminate iPhones remotely. The freely available software development kit for the iPhone – which was announced last week and attracted 100,000 downloads in the first four days – at present only features an emulator for developers to test iPhone applications on Mac terminals.