Software provider SEVEN said the announcement meant more mobile users would now be able to take advantage of push e-mail.

Henrik Voigt director and head of enterprise solutions at Sony Ericsson said: There is increasing demand for access to mobile e-mail on every level of mobile phone.

SEVEN developed its Always-On products to ensure that users with mass market Java-enabled phones now enjoy the same level of user experience previously only available on business devices like the Blackberry.

The service allows e-mails to be pushed directly to the device as they are delivered to the e-mail server. Further push e-mail handsets will follow.

The site will be accessed directly from the O2 Active portal allowing all O2 customers with a WAP capable phone and an eBay account immediate access to it. This will allow users to track sales and bids on the go.

Familiar ?My eBay features will be viewable from virtually any handset including ?items I am watching ?items I am bidding on ?items I am selling and ?items I have won. Users will also be able to bid for goods in real time.

O2 general manager of content Simon Dean said: eBay is the latest in a growing list of well-known brands that really appreciate the potential of converging their Internet services with mobile. Our experience with eBay on i-mode has shown us there is really strong demand for it from our customers who really want to engage with these types of services.

The move will mean that O2 Actives 6.4 million users will be able to select from more than 13000 categories just as they can on a PC and a fixed Internet connection.

Humphrey paid off the clubs debts last week cleared the board and installed himself as chairman and trustee. The club costs GBP4000 a year to run.

He has also changed the teams longstanding black-and-white striped football kit for a purple and yellow uniform reflecting its new sponsor Go Mobile.

Despite reaching the second round of the FA Vase in the 2003-04 season the club had no sponsorship last season and its players were voluntary. Humphrey has put its players on a wage and obtained 20 sponsorship deals through friends within the industry. He has also renamed its home a basic pitch and club house the Communications Stadium.

The club has gone bust. I sat down with the committee last week and agreed to help out. We want to get it into the football league said Humphrey.

The handset features i-mode which allows users to instantly access specific Internet sites as well as use i-mail and MMS.

LG Mobile sales and marketing director John Barton said: With i-mode the LG L343i provides access to a huge range of specifically convenient i-mode services.

The LG L343i also has an in-built digital camera with flash and 4x zoom as well as 40 polyphonic ringtones.

The phone is available to buy in O2 stores now.

The retailer has been promoting the cash for old mobiles scheme in its UK stores since February. The number of handsets reclaimed for re-use and recycling is 82 per cent higher than the same period in 2005.

Since February GBP85000 has been paid out to Argos customers trading in their mobiles in cash and Argos credits held in envirocards (an electronic preloaded payment card). The Argos charity partner – Help the Hospices – has also gained GBP18000.

Pete Petrondas founder of Eazyfone Group which runs the Envirofone scheme said: The success of our mobile trade-in scheme demonstrates how recycling electrical and electric equipment can be integrated seamlessly into normal consumer behaviour.

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.