This follows the decision by Vodafone managing director David Channing-Williams to retire and relinquish the role of chief executive of Vodafone AirTouch in this country.

The development is a huge result for Bamford who had up to now been left out of the new Vodafone AirTouch board.

Bamford joined Vodafone in 1997 from W.H. Smith to work on the re-organisation of the Vodafone Group into the Retail Connect Corporate Value Added Services and Distribution sub-divisions.

Channing-Williams current role as managing director of the UK network company will be taken by Alan Harper who is currently Vodafone Group commercial director. Harper joined Vodafone three years ago from One 2 One where he was director of strategy. (Cont P2)

Channing-Williams has been at Vodafone for 14 years in roles that have included running Vodapage and Vodata as they were once called.

Having considered my future plans I have decided to retire early in order to spend more time with my family.

I intend to be involved in some new activities but in a non-executive capacity.

I will remain very close to Vodafone and I have agreed to work on a part-time advisory basis for the next two years.

A Vodafone insider scotched rumours that Channing-Williams had been pushed.

Thats nonsense. Chris (Gent) asked David to make a commitment to the job for five years.

David decided he didnt want to work 14-hour days for that length of time. Hes got 3.5 million worth of share options so who can blame him?

The dealers from London Bradford Reading Liverpool and Croydon are the latest named traders to receive notice that they in breach of the rules of the FCS (Cont P19)

A spokesman from O2 confirmed that this was the last regulatory hurdle and that the deal was almost certain to be completed by mid-February. The Spanish telecoms giant said last Tuesday that it was withdrawing the minimum acceptances condition it set in October after it had received acceptances from 62 per cent of O2 shareholders.

Telefonica offered 18 billion for O2 late last year.

In November O2 said group turnover grew 12 per cent to 3.6 billion in the six months ending September 30.

The freebie calls are available to customers up to the end of May who sign up for a Cellnet core tariff join First in Freedom or sign up for a contract by the end of June.

Customers nominate their numbers from their First for Families list. They can then make free calls weekdays between 7pm and 8pm and all weekend. The cost of the calls to the two chosen numbers will be credited to their account.

Cellnet will be promoting the Two for Free promotion with a heavyweight TV and press campaign starting tomorrow (April 7). In-store promotions will also be used.

O2s total customer base in the UK Ireland and Germany grew 17 per cent year-on-year to 25.7 million. Its total turnover grew 12 per cent to 3.6 billion over the period.

Erskine said: The consumer is the winner in an intensely competitive market. But we added more than a million customers in the past three months and Im sure people will agree that its we and Vodafone that are the winners.

O2 said that 55 per cent of its growth came through its direct sales channels compared with just 48 per cent a year ago.

An O2 spokesman said: We are more reliant on our own channels which is good because it cuts out the middleman. Its very telling that 55 per cent of our growth comes through our own channels – our retail outlets on the high street and our online sales routes. A year ago it was only 48 per cent. And the sales through direct channels are the customers who tend to stick with us.

He added: Were growing our overall base through all our channels. Because the brand is successful and we have had a series of very good quarters independent retail also benefits.

O2 UK added 702000 new customers in the first half taking the total active base to 15.086 million – excluding Tesco Mobiles base of 750000 pre-pay customers.

Contract customers comprised 45 per cent of subscriber growth for the period and accounts for 35 per cent of its total UK base.

* Meanwhile Vodafone said this week that its UK subscriber base reached 15.8 million in the six months to September 30 up from 14.6 million in the same period last year.

However UK revenue remained flat and UK ARPU was down 6.4 per cent from a year ago to 24.90 at September 30.

Vodafone said non-voice revenue had increased by 12.1 per cent driven by a 57.9 per cent increase in non-messaging revenue to 103 million.

It attributed the surge to the increase in volume of Vodafone live! devices 3G devices and 3G data cards. Vodafone said it had 3.9 million active 3G devices in the UK.

A BBC spokesman told Mobile News that it has now launched an investigation together with its technology contractor Siemens UK.

There are 300 BlackBerry users using the Vodafone network across the BBC he said.

The devices are issued to senior executives or staff who need remote access to their e-mails.

We were alerted to the problem when we had some complaints that BlackBerry users were receiving e-mails containing extracts from e-mails intended for other recipients within the body.

The spokesman refused to comment on speculation that the error had led to sensitive information falling into the wrong hands. I cant comment on that but what I will say is that things not going to the people for whom they were intended is of serious concern to the BBC. We had no choice but to suspend the entire service until we can be satisfied that it is secure to use.

A RIM spokeswoman said the problem was caused by a glitch. RIM has developed and tested a fix for an obscure bug identified in a service pack release for BlackBerry Enterprise Server she said.

She claimed the bug was isolated to version 4.02 and does not exist in version 4.03 or in other earlier versions. RIM said it was aware of a single reported incident of the bug and responded promptly with a fix.

The bug related to a rare conjunction of circumstances whereby v4.02 failed to properly compensate for an unusual memory allocation error generated by a companys mail server she said. It consequently appended a partial message to another e-mail.

Neither the original message or the appended partial message were ever exposed outside the companys firewall and the bug did not generate any external risk. Customers using v4.02 may obtain this fix from RIM or install v4.03.

See Webwatch page 20

The findings from mobile device management company SmartTrusts Mobile Trends Guide 2005/06 shows that consumers are struggling to keep pace with the rapid deployment of new handset features and data services as well as complex pricing structures and poor usability.

These problems have been compounded by growing instances of poor handset configuration and have led to lower than expected usage rates for value-added services such as picture messaging and mobile content downloads.

In fact the survey which was carried out by market research company TNS shows that just 43 per cent of MMS-enabled handsets have ever been used to send a picture message.

15 per cent of users have had problems when trying to use their operators MMS service said Tim De Luca-Smith communications manager at SmartTrust and author of the guide.

In a high percentage of cases the service simply didnt work because of poor handset configuration and network settings. There is a real need to make such services more intuitive and remove consumer concerns over reliability and pricing.

We live in a plug-and-play society and todays mobile users expect services to work first time every time. They dont want to be left wondering whether their message was actually delivered.

Huntingford 49 is CEO of Chrysalis Group which runs UK commercial radio group Chrysalis Radio and UK independent music publisher Chrysalis Music. The latter represents David Gray and Outkast among other artists.

Huntingford has been CEO since 2000 after spending a year as group managing director and five years as chief executive of the radio division.

Virgin Mobile chairman Charles Gurassa said: Richard brings top-level commercial experience and a strong financial background to the board of Virgin Mobile. We are delighted to appoint someone of his calibre as our fifth non-executive director.

FTI chairman Anthony Elliot-Square told Mobile News that the industry body had received more than 100 reports from traders that have been issued with a notice to close their accounts.

It started about 18 months ago when a number of our members started to receive 30 days notice from a range of high street banks to close down their accounts said Elliot-Square. There were no grounds given. A lot of them had substantial funds in their accounts and had been with the banks for a number of years. They were given this notice out of the blue.

Barclays Natwest and Bank Of Scotland have all closed accounts because they perceive the industry to be rife with fraud claimed traders.

One trader said: Only a few companies are still dealing with Barclays because it has this attitude towards the industry. I know that the Royal Bank Of Scotland and Natwest have also kicked a lot of traders out.

Last month Eurostar Group founder and managing director Peter Carnall was given 30 days notice by Bank Of Scotland Business Banking that it was closing the accounts of the Stoke groups distribution business Eurostar Telecom and its software business Eurostar Technologies.

Carnall said: Banks have a blanket policy of turning down and closing down small business accounts instead of reviewing each trader on a case-by-case basis.

Barclays said that it had no blanket policy towards the mobile phone trade in the light of carousel fraud. It said that it judges each customer on its merits and will close accounts in the event that it suspects fraudulent activity.

If we suspect someone of fraud then we have to be very careful because we are bound by regulatory standards said a Barclays spokesperson. But we havent imposed an overarching policy because of carousel fraud.

Natwest and Bank Of Scotland were unavailable for comment.

See feature page 28

Qualcomm is accused of violating European competition law by refusing to license patents it holds on 3G technology to competitors and over-charging on royalties for the licences it does issue.

Ericsson vice-president for IPR licensing and patent development Kasim Alflahi said: Qualcomm made commitments to standard-setting organisations that it would licence its technology on fair reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. In spite of this and in breach of competition law Qualcomm is charging excessive and disproportionate royalties. It means that consumers may have to pay more than they should for their handsets.

Qualcom has dismissed the complaints saying it granted more than 130 3G technology licences to companies including five of the six requesting an investigation.

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said: It is not surprising that the reported allegations come largely from entrenched 2G suppliers that have the most to lose from the enhanced and expanded competition in 3G.