BTCellnets 100th country mark was reached with the signing of a roaming agreement with the network operator in Uzbekistan.

Vodafones 100th roaming partner was Togo Cellulaire of Togo West Africa. Vodafone also says it is the first operator in the world to roam with more than 200 operators. Its current status is 212 networks.

Meanwhile Orange says its offering of Motorolas L7089 tri-band phone means there are now 170 networks in 90 countries where Orange customers can make and receive calls. By the end of the year Orange says its customers can expect to use their phones on 200 networks in 100 countries.

Bob Fuller chief operating officer at Orange said:

Orange is serious about attracting the international traveller. Theres no reason your Orange phone should not provide the same convenience while you are abroad as it does at home.

Orange says its international call charges from the UK are 20 per cent lower than BTs standard rates and lower than Vodafone and Cellnets standard charges.

Because travellers abroad pay for the international leg of any calls they receive and are charged at international direct dialling rates Orange claims its customers pay significantly less for the international leg of incoming calls whilst travelling abroad.

Cellnet has responded with the OneRate system which levels out roaming charges across Europe using a specific OneRate phone.

The offer is being publicised through the Newcastle Building Societys first customer magazine which has gone out to 350000 people.

These include a memorable number freephone business number and the Personal Number Companys text-to-speech product called e-call which alerts mobile phone users about incoming e-mails and reads the messages to them.

The network is using a system from billing software company Kingston-SCL which adds a desktop publishing facility. This allows bills to be customised with individual details and sales messages.

The packs are available for 35 for most popular makes and models of phones. Fone Range says this is around half the price of selling them seperately.

He is Nick Wilson (33) who joins the group from international management consultancy firm McKinsey and Co.

Wilkinson has spent the last five years at McKinsey working on organisational and operational issues faced by companies in the retailing and packaged goods sectors.

Before that he worked at Unilever where he was in marketing and product development roles in the UK and Middle East.

The concession is being trialled at five top Shop sites the flagship store in Oxford Street Bluewater shopping centre Lakeside shopping centre Manchester and Liverpool.

The phones are displayed in a case which shows phones from each of the four networks as well as accessories.

Top Shops customers are in the 14 to 22 year age group.

Emphasis has been placed on fashionable accessories which is an area most mobile phone retailers have not exploited said Electros Gavin Simons.

IT Minister Michael Willis has unveiled new plans to modernise the law to lay the foundations for electronic commerce to flourish in Britain.

These measures include a consultation procedure on licensing new radio spectrum to allow broadband wireless services to be offered across the country.

A draft Electronic Communications Bill will include proposals to enable electronic signatures to be admissible in court measures to allow e-mail to be a legal substitute for hard copy (so that companies can communicate legally with shareholders etc and save postage and paper costs) and measures to simplify the process of amended Telecommunications Act licenses.

The Home Office minister Paul Boateng said that the Draft Bill would ensure that criminals did not get the upper hand in technologies such as encryption which were vital to e-commerce.

Encryption is a double-edged sword vital to the e-commerce revolution and at the same time exploited by criminals to often devastating effect.

Boateng said that their Criminal investigations are already being hampered by the use of encryption by drug traffickers paedophiles and terrorists.

Third-generation mobile phones will offer high-speed instant access to the internet giving users the ability to web surf and shop from handsets and devices that fit in the palm of their hand.

Initially only available to Vodafone customers for outgoing calls inbound mobile calls routed via the SkyPhone satellite to the fixed handset on board will be available next year.

Customers will not use their own handsets on board. Rather they will register for the service through their normal SP and be issued with a Vodafone Skyphone mobile connect card to swipe through the phone handset of the In Flight Entertainment System. The call appears on the customers normal itemised phone bill as a roamed call.

Barely a week after Vodafone announced their plans over in Slough BTCellnet announced that it will be offering BTs new Skyphone Mobile Connect card to all BTCellnets international roamers.

The network claims that the service safely extends GSM onto aircraft. In addition to BTCellnet BT has offered the Skyphone service which it helped to develop to other mobile operators round the world of which 20 have already signed up. The service is currently being trialled by over 2500 BT and BTCellnet executives.

Peter Richardson director of BT Cellnet Corporate Solutions said The number of international executives is increasing and businesses take on a more global outlook as is the number of long haul international flights. We are delivering a safe means for those people to be in touch with the rest of the world 24 hours a day regardless of whether they are on the ground or in the air.

Meanwhile an agreement between the GSM Association and SkyPhone means that GSM customers will soon be able to make charge originated satellite calls via special equipment on board aircraft which are then simply billed to their existing GSM account by their home network.

The new service called Mobile Connect has been made possible by an agreement with the GSM Association to use its world standard GSM billing protocol TAP (Transferred Account Procedures) to communicate costs incurred to customers via the GSM network in their own country (see related story).