So says a survey on mobile phone theft from CMG the IT solutions company which specialises in mobile business and advanced security.

A third of respondents said that they would be willing to pay a one-off fee of up to 20 for extra security that would make their phone useless to thieves and help to cut the mobile crime rate. Three per cent even said that they would be willing to pay up to 100.

A quarter of respondents said that they had been put off from using their phone in a public place because of the potential for theft.

However 45 per cent said they didnt have any form of security on their mobile phone at all.

Less than half of all respondents had PIN-protected their Sim card.

Only 34 per cent had registered their phones serial number with a network operator which would enable the latter to disable the phone in the event of a theft.

Most respondents (69 per cent) believed that it was the role of the operators rather than the customers to register the phones serial numbers.

But 82 per cent went on to say they believed that operators handset manufacturers retailers the police and the Government had a responsibility to work together to reduce mobile phone theft.

Around 67 per cent of the UKs population currently owns at least one mobile phone said Peter Maathuis director of corporate communications at CMG.

But while the issue of theft is clearly documented the solutions are less well recognised.

We need proactive effort by all the interested parties be they manufacturers or retailers into making the safety of the customer a priority.

There are security solutions already available in the market; we need to communicate these to the customer so that theyre aware of all the options available to them.

Vodafones new Watford concept store was the first to offer Intecs on-site repair service. Customers can bring in faulty handsets for a wait-and-collect service.

We have been planning to move our repair service directly into the consumer arena for some time said Intec business development director Charlo Carabott.

Vodafones new concept stores have provided us with just the retail environment we were seeking. Its customers will be offered a fast turnaround on most repairs often while they wait.

Our accreditation with 16 handset manufacturers enables us to carry parts provide repairs and honour warranties on most popular makes of phone.

Our scanning technology means that we can quickly identify circuit water damage and provide certification for insurance claims adds Carabott.

The new service is called Axxentuate and allows businesses to view all their details from individual calls to overall summaries.

Users can see call statistics and graphs and chart how their bills change from month to month on Axxents website. Axxentuate will be made available to key clients from next month. It works on all networks.

Creditors will hear a full statement of the defunct companys affairs and appoint a liquidator.

Mloop called it a day when its seed capital ran out its planned flotation was abandoned and it was unable to raise any further private finance.

Founder CEO Byron Rose was the main investor. He and his company Fonexco lost 1.5 million.

Other backers included Carphone Warehouse chairman Charles Dunstone.

The main thing that caught us out was the state of the current market and the (slow) speed with which network operators adopted the new way we proposed to transact business said Rose.

However several distributors who tried to use the mloop service reported that online transactions took too long to complete and there were further difficulties because mloop acted as a broker and never owned the product it was trading.

Phones International managing director of distribution John McFarnon said:

I was surprised mloop had gone (into administration) because of the high profile of the people involved.

But I was more surprised at how difficult it was to deal with them. It was impossible to make a transaction.

Mloop never seemed to be aware of whether it had the stock or not.

The process took so long to complete because it never owned the stock. It was merely acting as a broker. So mloop never knew when the stock was going to be released to the buyer.

(see full story P20 and White Lines)

Provisionally entitled If its nicked its knackered the campaign follows Octobers agreement by all four networks to blacklist stolen phones making them inoperable.

The new 2 million campaign will launch in February in London before rolling out across the country. Large retailers such as The Carphone Warehouse and The Link have already made financial contributions to the campaign as have the networks and numerous handset manufacturers. Now Dunstone is calling on independent dealers as well as distributors to back the campaign.

I urge as many as possible to get involved he said.

This campaign will make a significant impact on the reduction of mobile phone crime and will continue the good work we have seen across the industry through 2002.

He went on: There is a now an industry responsibility to communicate the message to as wide an audience as possible that stolen mobile phones will not work. It is something that affects us all.

According to those behind the campaign 40 per cent of street crime is related to mobile phone theft. Since the blacklisting of stolen phones there has been a dramatic decrease in the sale of Sim-only packs – an indication that blacklisting is already preventing people from buying stolen handsets.

The campaign will run across billboards bus stops and buses. In addition there will be information posters that can be displayed in stores.

Southall-based 3G Global has threatened the network with legal action because company managing director Ahmed Khan has been receiving as many as 100 O2 alerts a day despite neither being on the O2 network nor ever taking part in an O2 promotion.

Khan says

I am not on O2. I have pleaded with them to stop these alerts but they are still arriving.

The alerts began in September last year. Since then 3G Global has contacted O2 on many occasions with no positive outcome. In fact after contacting O2 the number of alerts has increased daily.

As a result Khan now has the T-Mobile phone constantly turned off.

He says the phones number is well known to his contacts and he doesnt want to lose it.

But he says the large number of text messages that come over the air to the handset makes it impractical to use it.Khan says that he contacted O2 and O2 Online but that neither organisation was able explain why Khan was receiving the alerts. As a result Global notified OFTEL to lodge a complaint about the matter.

Jonathan Tarey of 02s Complaints Resolution Department eventually told Global that the text alerts were appearing because someone had registered Khans number as a diversion to an e-mail account.

Tarey said he had terminated the account and that Khan should not receive any more SMS alerts.

But wo minutes after the conversation finished Khansays he received seven more text alerts.

Khan told Mobile News

We have lost a considerable amount of business because of this matter. I am currently paying for the T-Mobile Precept Max service but I cannot use the service due to the harassment from O2.

At the time of going to press O2 was unable to comment.

The 12-24 age group had their phones for an average of 17 months while 35-44-year- olds kept theirs for an average of 21 months.

A significant number of people have a pre-pay phone that they bought during the boom of 2000. They may be nearing the time when they wish to upgrade said Derek McInnes head of TNS TeleComTrack division which carried out the research.

These are mass-market consumers most of whom bought when phones were cheap. Their actions will have a significant impact on the market for the networks as they try and upgrade pre-pay customers to more profitable contracts.

However a third of these pre-pay customers are in the older age group who tend to hold on to their handset for longer. Mobile manufacturers and retailers must find ways to encourage them to upgrade McInnes said.

We have been asked to point out that this is not the similarly-named Colin Jones (above) who was managing director of CellStar UK and Yes Telecom.

This means that anyone caught changing handset IMEI numbers owning or supplying the necessary equipment with the intent to reprogramme IMEI numbers could face unlimited fines or five years in prison from September.

The Bill becomes law at around the same time as all four UK operators will finally be able to share a central database of mobile phones that have been stolen.

If a customer reports a handset as stolen to the network the stolen handset IMEI number will be registered on the networks Equipment Identity Register (EIR) which is a database of stolen mobile phones.

The network can then bar the handset from working on the network even if the user puts another Sim card in it.

Vodafone and O2 agreed to install EIRs on their networks at the beginning of this year (Mobile News February 18) after the Home Office sought ways to reduce mobile phone robbery.

Without making the reprogramming of IMEIs an offence thieves would have been able to give the handset a new identity and bypassing the networks bar.

The Government believes the passing of the bill will help reduce mobile phones robberies which it believes were the sole target in 31 per cent of all robberies and snatch thefts in London.

O2 security boss John Cross welcomed the news.

This is a welcome step in dealing with stolen mobile phones. The statistics we have compiled indicate that 80 per cent of handsets reported stolen disappear said Cross.

We are confident that the disappearance of these handsets is due to the reprogramming of the IMEI numbers.

Cross agrees that the law will not prevent thieves from reprogramming numbers outside the UK.

We have to do things one step at a time. Many people outside the UK are looking at the measures we have put in place. We hope that the success of these measures will ripple outwards to other companies overseas he explained.

We have now established an equipment identity register (EIR) on the O2 network which went live last week.

This will enable us to bar handsets that have been reported as stolen from using the network. We are on target to share our database of stolen IMEI numbers with the other operators in September.

Initially the EIR will only be accessible to the mobile phone networks.

Cross says retailers and distributors may later be able to access this information and possibly register handset that have been stolen but not registered to any network by a customer.

Eventually the infrastructure will grow to include any lost or stolen handset. We do not have an infrastructure in place to support that now but we are thinking about it.

We want other interested parties to have access to the EIR. I encourage other parties whether they be retailers distributors or independent dealers to talk to MICAF to see how they can get involved in the fight against crime in a non-competitive environment.

Cross says that the sharing of stolen phone IMEI numbers across the industry could address other crime such as burglary ram raids thefts from cars and the import of stolen phones re-entering the UK with reprogrammed IMEI numbers.

As a network we have to be cautious because barring calls can affect our contractual arrangement with a customer. We have to ensure that we can legally bar the phone number he said.

Cross reveals that O2 has had to reject 50 per cent of insurance claims for what he calls customer mistakes.

In some cases the customer has found their phone and failed to tell us. Other customers have tried to put in an insurance claim for a different model of mobile phone to the one that they originally purchased from us.

We want to reassure customers that are victims of crime. At the same time we want to send a message to those who commit crime by robbery or false claims that the industry and the police will not hesitate to take appropriate action if there are deliberate actions to put in false insurance or theft claims said Cross.

Michael Wei Hung Fung (25) was accused of stealing customers exchange phones and abusing their credit cards in a 1500 swindle.

He was bailed at Horseferry Road Court until August 14 for probation reports after magistrates warned him they will be considering various punishments including prison.

Fung of Chalt Court Thornton Heath pleaded guilty to the theft of five mobile phones worth 1043 at The Orange Shop at Victoria Station. He also pleaded guilty to three offences of using Oranges systems to top up his own pre-pay phone.

The prosecutor told the court Fung started working at the Orange Shop last November. But he was on duty at the Oxford Street branch where a customer bought a phone by credit card.

Later that day Fung used the Orange systems to transfer 220 from the customers account to his own phone account. He did the same six days later to switch 130 to his account from another customer and the same on April 15 to gain 100 from another customer.

On April 10 a customer bought a pre-pay phone from Fung but returned it later to say it did not have a Sim card. Fung told her the card was in the box. But it transpired he had used it in phones which he stole at the shop.

The stolen phones had been either taken from the shops stock or were kept by Fung when customers left them in exchange under the buy-back or upgrade schemes.

Instead of registering the phones back to Oranges inventory he simply kept them for himself.

Fung was caught when records showed he used the phones either on his own Sim card or the card taken from the box sold to the earlier customer.

Police searched his house and found the stolen phones. Fung admitted the offences and expressed remorse.