Around 20000 text messages were sent to British Airways passengers cabin crew and cargo staff over August 10-14 alerting them of flight delays and cancellations caused by the terror-threat disruption.

Robert Thurner commercial director at mobile marketing agency Incentivated said: In addition there was a heavy volume of texts sent informing passengers that services were getting back to normal. He added: This is a perfect illustration of how mobile marketing enables airlines to communicate quickly and easily with customers by providing realtime travel information.

Chris Tombs said: I am really looking forward to joining the Timico team with its strong customer service ethos and highly experienced people.

Prior to joining Timico Tombs spent three years at Vodafone UK as enterprise customer manager. And before joining Vodafone he was director of Project Telecom for four years.

Tombs will be responsible for the operations and the ongoing development and growth of the business and will begin work immediately.

The three-month offer is the first multi-play bundles offer from Virgin since its takeover by cable company NTL in April. It combines NTLs two Virgin-branded services: Virgin Mobile and Virgin.net. More bundled offers will follow involving combinations of NTLs fixed line mobile broadband cable television offerings.

Any new Virgin Mobile customers that opt in to its GBP15 and GBP30 SIM-only contract tariffs can register for 12 months free broadband with Virgin.net. The offer allows speeds of up to 8Mbps and a monthly download allowance of 6GB.

A Virgin Mobile spokesperson said: It is the first bundled offer since the takeover and is intended to see how much interest there is out there. We are working on more bundled offers for the near future.

Customers can cancel their SIM-only contracts but are committed to re-paying the remainder of their broadband package in full.

Meanwhile speculation mounted last week that a private equity consortium is on the verge of bidding more than GBP10 billion for NTL. US buyout specialist Providence Equity was being tipped to head up any consortium of bidders.

The campaign covers TV outdoor and print advertising. The first phase of the campaign will tie in with the launch of the white Chocolate phone available in Carphone Warehouse. The second phase will coincide with the launch of the pink version in October and show off all three colour variants.

Mobile News understands that Carphone Warehouse will enjoy a two-week period of exclusivity with the white Chocolate phone before it is made available across all channels during early September. LG Mobile has not decided yet on the early destination of its pink handset.

At the same time the existing black Chocolate handset will be available on pre-pay for GBP149.99 during Q4.

LG Mobile will also launch new designs in the Black Label series this year including a platinum version of the handset with certain design variations.

In late July the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum (MICAF) was set up and launched a charter to help reduce mobile phone crime. Vodafone O2 T-Mobile Orange and 3 have all signed the charter as has Carphone Warehouse.

Carphone MD Andrew Harrison has been closely involved with the police in drafting the charter.

Ive been involved with the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police over this since 2002 to get an initiative to reduce crime up and running he said. They couldnt get to grips with why the industry wasnt taking it seriously enough. Ive taken it upon myself to liaise with the police.

The police registration scheme Immobilise which allows phone users to register their details so that stolen phones can be returned has been slow to take off said Harrison.

We launched Immobilise but its effectiveness has been called into question and the effectiveness with which the industry works together has been called into question.

He added: This sort of thing never gets its way on to the agenda of CEOs within the industry. So I asked if I could do something with a bit more power behind it.

Last week online auction site eBay announced a partnership with the National Mobile Phone Crime Unit (NMPCU) to ban listings for blocked or barred handsets.

The aim of the partnership is to clamp down on the number of stolen phones being sold. It follows a successful operation between the two to identify and arrest eBay users selling blocked or barred phones.

Forty-five stolen mobiles were seized as part of NMPCU raids carried out on the basis of information supplied by eBay. Thirteen arrests were made.

Detective chief inspector Mick McNally of the NMPCU said: Closing down this avenue for the sale of stolen mobile phones is a vital part of our campaign to halt handset theft – if thieves cannot sell the items the drive to steal them will be significantly reduced.

Harrison urged the rest of the industry to support the MICAF charter for ethical and for business reasons.

Behind every crime statistic there is a customer he said. Every one of those crimes has resulted in trauma that will stay with the victim a long time. We cant stand by and not take a stance on this.

He added that there was also a commercial aspect to the problem.

If you can have an impact on mobile phone-related crime thats going to have an overall effect on ARPU he said.

Its not unforeseeable for the government to say its too dangerous for under-16s to have mobile phones if they are at risk from crime.

He added it would have an impact on the added-value content the industry is keen to promote.

Mobile TV is only really useful in places such as buses and bus stops where people have time to kill he pointed out. But how are you going to persuade people to get a 400 device out on a bus if there is a risk of them being mugged?

The industry will receive an annual report on crime from MICAF. There will be a public report that shows overall performance and an internal report that names and shames charter signatories that arent pulling their weight.

We are trying to promote the fact that buying a stolen phone is no good any more said Harrison. We want dealers to think about phones that are handed in and whether they might be stolen. Dealers need to encourage people to register on the lost property database which enables the police to reunite lost and stolen phones with their owners.

However Harrison acknowledges that the initiatives so far do not address the main stolen phone trafficking problem which involves shipping them overseas.

We are not going to eradicate mobile phone crime overnight. People will still steal. But it does make it possible to shut off some avenues to sell stolen phones such as down the pub on eBay or at car boot sales he said. The next stage is to work with the government to promote what we are doing here overseas. This is a world-leading initiative and all of the commercial reasons to address this issue also apply in other countries.

Orange has announced plans to increase its high street presence to more than 340 stores after agreeing a deal in principle to acquire up to 47 new shops from O2. The deal follows O2?s acquisition of The Link and the sites are mostly Link stores.

Orange intends to refit the new stores to trade under the Orange brand in the run-up to Christmas. This will be followed by a major refresh to position the company?s retail operation as a combined mobile fixed broadband and TV provider proposition.

Orange vice-president of sales Mike Newnham said: 2006 has been a year of consolidation and building for the future and behind the scenes our retail strategy has been a major part of that. Were now planning to expand our footprint across Britains high streets to give our customers a taste of what the new Orange is all about.

The new stores will take Orange into 19 new towns where it currently has no presence and will increase its coverage in others.

Of the 47 stores 36 are former The Link stores and 11 previously traded as O2. As part of the deal Orange plans to take on around 250 former Link staff.

Vodafone has signed a deal with BT Wholesale to provide Vodafone-branded consumer fixed-line broadband services before the end of the year.

The service will be available to existing Vodafone mobile customers in the UK allowing them to buy bundled packages of mobile and broadband services.

Vodafone UK chief executive Nick Read said: This is a strategically important step in the evolution of Vodafones business in the UK adding that it furthered Vodafones strategy of providing a total communications solution.

The move is in line with the mobile industrys general move to open up combined fixed-lined and mobile services most notably by Carphone Warehouse with its TalkTalk brand ? overwhelming demand for which caused the company a number of customer service problems earlier in the year.

Carphone Warehouse (CPW) managing director of indirect distribution Stuart Henry has moved CPWs handset distribution arm Mobile Phone Express (MPE) to Crewe the home of rival distribution business 20:20 Logistics.

Henry has taken the decision to relocate and rebrand MPE after a troubled 12 months. Sources close to the situation suggested Henry was attempting to repair damage to the MPE brand while under former director of indirect distribution Steve Fraser who left CPW in June.

Henry declined to comment upon the choice of location.

Henry has closed down MPEs premises in Adderbury near Oxford which formerly belonged to Unique Distribution. Most of its staff at CPWs distribution centre in Wednesbury in the Black Country have been reassigned to Crewe. Henry said that MPE will retain a small core of staff at Wednesbury and move its sales team to Crewe.

MPE is likely to be rebranded as Hugh Symons although Henry is considering his options.

Henry told Mobile News: The MPE brand has suffered in the last 12 months and this is an opportunity to rebrand it. Hugh Symons is one of the options. Hugh Symons is a very well established brand with a lot of credibility in the industry.

MPE sales manager Phil Sambrook will be given a new role and head up the new Crewe base. Henry is also looking to recruit a new head of trading to look after the commercial side of independent distribution within CPW and to report into him.

Six MPE sector managers out of a total headcount of 120 within indirect distribution will lose their jobs.

Said Henry: The potential within the business is apparent but we need to introduce greater stability into the business for the sake of network and manufacturer and third party relations. We need to introduce better lines of communication within the business.

There will be rationalisation in the partners accounts team where we are cutting a number of sector managers with a view to consolidation before embarking on growth.

HTC has launched four Windows-based smartphones aimed at different market segments both consumer and business.

The HTC S620 is a slim 12.8mm thick handset with an integrated QWERTY keyboard aimed at email and messaging; the HTC P3300 is the companys first dedicated satnav PDA with in-built GPS and comes with Navigator 6 software from TomTom ? its preferred satnav supplier.

The HTC P3600 is a 3G multimedia compact PDA that is HSDPA-ready while the HTC S310 is a smaller messaging and Internet smartphone aimed at both business and consumer users.

HTC plans to release the phones under its own brand as well as in customised versions for network partners. First off the blocks is T-Mobile which will launch a customised version of the HTC P3300 as the MDA Compact III in several European markets.

The launch comes as HTC plans further European growth. It plans to extend its existing presence in Italy and France to Germany Scandinavia Russia and Spain by the end of the year.

Telecom services provider IDT has sold its consumer phone services business Toucan to Pipex Communications for USD37.5 million (GBP20 million) in cash and USD7.5 million (GBP4 million) in Pipex stock.

Under the terms of the deal Pipex will assume Toucans existing customer base and take on its staff.

IDT signed a deal with T-Mobile to launch a mobile phone MVNO under the name of toucanMobile in February 2005.