Staff Reporter

The new price plans are Firststep New Smartstep and Nextstep. Like the BTCellnet offering customers will automatically be connected to the new enhanced Smartstep plan but can switch to any other available price plan within 28 days at no charge.

After this initial period customers can migrate between pre-pay price plans for an administration charge of 7.50 unless they are moving to Nextstep where it will continue to be free.

The three price plans are aimed to appeal to weekend and evening users keen texters and talkers and heavy users.

Firststep has calls at 5p per minute for evening and weekend Vodafone-to-Vodafone calls rising to 10p per minute for national and local evening and weekend calls.

New Smartstep calls are 25p per minute for the first three minutes in a day. This drops to 5p per minute thereafter. Text messages cost 12p for the first three messages in a day and then 9p per message thereafter.

Nextstep is a flat rate designed for the high user costing 50p a day for 50p worth of calls and/or text. Local national and Vodafone-to-Vodafone calls cost 10p per minute and 10p per text message.

Handsets range from 79.99 to 199.99 and include models from Nokia Panasonic Sony and Motorola. All current top-up methods can be used by customers to credit their accounts. Existing allcalls customers may remain on the allcalls price plan or move to one of the new price plans.

The package will also include up to 5 of calling credit. This will be made up of 2.50 allocated to the handset and a further 2.50 on registration with the network.

Jay and Vimal Paus subsidiary Blue-I (formerly Fone Range Partnerships) which owns licenses to distribute accessories for Warner Brothers and Coca Cola will pay Paragon a goodwill payment of 300000 over two years to release its shares. Blue-I is also purchasing 100000 of stock and equipment. Paragon will go into liquidation within two months. Administrator Shay Bannon says creditors will be paid once outstanding money has been collected.

Paragon will remain in administration for another month or two and will then go into liquidation. The payment from Blue-I is deferred over two years. We cant pay creditors before we have collected the money in. We will start to distribute the money once we have enough to pay 5p in 1. It doesnt make sense to pay creditors in small amounts.

Paragon (ex-Fone Range) went into receivership in March after losing 708000 in the nine months to December last year.

7000 dealers will receive the pack by July 2 in time for launch of the film that took $36m in its opening weekend in the States.

The film will be shown in over 450 screens from July 6th giving it blockbuster status.

Ericsson products including the Bluetooth headset and R310 mobile phone feature heavily in the film.

Brand manager Lindsay James said Ericsson deliberately featured product in the film that consumers could go out and buy.

We learned a lesson from our involvement in the 1997 Bond Movie Tomorrow Never Dies because consumers went to stores looking to buy the special concept smartphone.

In Tomb Raider Lara uses everyday Ericsson products to complete her mission.

James said the promotion would raise Ericssons image after a troublesome year.

We are still selling phones. We want people to see we are a young funky brand.

Music and gaming will drive content in the future. We want to team up with Sony in the best possible position and we are strengthening our relationship with One 2 One.

The customised T20e phone features special Tomb Raider start up and shut down graphics and ringtones. Ericsson is shipping a Tomb Raider PC game handsfree kit and secret symbols in the pack.

It will sell for 89.99 on pre-pay or 19.99 on contract.

Consumers will be able to take part in a secret symbols collector scheme with specially branded merchandise and a Land Rover adventure trip as prizes.

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The TV radio outdoor and magazine campaign has the line We Include Everyone and attempts to show customers that they can have a one2one with anyone.

Everyone 100 enables users to call any UK network free from their monthly call allowance. The campaign is by Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

Following a recent survey by Peramon where corporate senior decision makers expressed their opinions on mobile internet technology deployment 47 per cent agreed that the most likely mobile technology to be deployed this year is actually SMS.

David Townsend Peramons managing director said:

Businesses should prepare for GPRS but while theyre waiting for the technology to deliver SMS can impact the corporate bottom line immediately. Many are overlooking the investment already made in SMS technology currently available in all GSM handsets. By taking SMS seriously businesses can drive down the cost of their mobile communication at the same time as increasing employee productivity.

They are Dudley Eustace (finance director of Royal Philips Electronics) Doug Dunn (president of ASM Lithography) and Simon Roper (former general manager of the Asia Pacific arm of CellStar Corporation).

Bredesen who worked for Philips after leaving Motorola is now chief executive of Swedish television company Tandberg.

He spent almost 20 years in the telecom industry starting at Siemens.

His is last assignment was sales director for Motorolas Personal Communications Sector.

A creditors meeting will be held in London this Thursday (June 15). Benefon UK managing partner Mike Crompton commented.

It wont affect future plans. If we cant work with Fishtank there are other agencies we can work with.

Crompton says Benefon is preparing to launch its new ESC handset which features built in GPS positioning software and downloadable maps.

In-Touch has its own business centres in Bournemouth Gillingham Southampton and Winchester and already supports franchise operations in Christchurch Lymington New Milton and Armesbury.

Product is to ship at a recommended price of 400 with connection and is to reach dealers by the end of the month.

Improvements to the Communicator over earlier versions include a new colour screen the ability to download music and video files from the web and full compatibility with Microsoft office software.

Nokia business development manager Mark Squires said We have over 22000 developers signed up to provide exciting applications for the non-GPRS compatible 9210.

We are targeting people that want to use the phone and its applications today. It is compatible with HSCSD (supported by Orange) allowing web access at up to 28.8kbps or 43.2kbps in Ireland. We dont feel GPRS is ready just yet.

Called Group Chat the service creates a virtual chatroom over the airwaves. It requires one of the participants to be registered by BTCellnet as a Group Chat chairperson.

The chairperson must be a BTCellnet customer. But the other participants can be subscribers to any mobile phone service and can take part using a landline or even when they are abroad. Each person will only pay for their own phone call.