Just when you thought news flow was slowing down on Apple’s iPhone partners in Europe, out comes more:

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—Peter Erskine, the CEO of O2, yesterday defended Apple’s insistence on sharing call revenue with operators, arguing that a deal to sell the iPhone would still be advantageous. “If sharing revenue brings a bigger pie to the table, then we’ll be happy to share that pie…The revenue-sharing model will play an increasingly important role in the future of converged communications.” (from The Times) It’s not an outright confirmation, of course, but it’s worth noting that no other operators in the UK, particularly CEOs, are talking as freely about iPhone advantages as Erskine is here. (And will any other vendors start to ask for revenue shares on services over their devices, I wonder?) Still lots of guessing about when and actual announcement will be made.

—Meanwhile, others are speculating that a leaked internal memo at O2 UK, which informs staff about an impending upgrade of the GPRS network to EDGE, is confirmation that O2 is preparing to sell the iPhone, which runs on EDGE in the U.S. (here’s a link to the TrustedReviews site containing a screen shot of the memo)

—UPDATED. Today Apple said it would be holding a news conference in London on Tuesday, the 18th of September. No mention of the content but given the current swirl of news, people think it will be related to iPhone deals, potentially across all of Europe.