Staff Reporter

Orange comes in first for customer service in the contract and pay-monthly sector.

In the pre-pay sector Vodafones top place came with a score of 102 followed by Orange (101) and O2 and T-Mobile (98 each).

Orange has won the JD Power customer service rating several times over the past years.

The JD Power study is now in its fifth year. It looked at 40 different components in evaluating customer satisfaction.

The JD Power survey also noted that there is an increase in the percentage of new customers choosing contracts over pre-pay.

Among new users the number choosing to pay on a monthly basis increased from 12 per cent last year to 24 per cent so far this year.

The total share of pre-pay users has dropped to 65 per cent from 71 per cent in 2001 and contract users are up to 35 per cent from 29 per cent last year notes JD Power.

This move towards monthly payments should help to increase revenue for the phone companies because contract customers tend to make greater use of their service said JD Power director of European telecommunications Gunda Lapski.

The results of the survey indicate that nearly 63 per cent of contract customers use their mobiles more than 10 times a week compared with 24 per cent of pre-pay users.

Mloop questioned 40 network operators about their handset buying habits. It says up to 80 million handsets worth $5.5 billion are either sitting in warehouses unsold or need to be supplied to networks that have under-ordered.

The report says that certain lines such as the Nokia 8310 do not depreciate in storage as much as other models such as the Ericsson T68. In general lower-priced handsets were found to hold their value longer than their more expensive counterparts.

Mloop predicts that worldwide handset demand could grow to 415 million by the year 2006. This is 125 million more phones than the 290 million expected to have been sold by the end of this year.

Most of this growth will come from Asia. The UK is expected to experience more growth in replacement handsets than for new connections. Worldwide half of all phones sold are replacement units.

By 2006 nearly 90 per cent of all phones sold will be replacements says Mloop.

High-value handsets have experienced an increased level of price volatility as a consequence of a higher level of competition said Mloop chief executive officer Byron Rose.

The PDA Usage Survey has found that PDA owners commonly download the entire contents of their personal and business lives onto their PDAs leaving the information unencrypted and without password protection.

PIN numbers passwords customer details bank accounts credit card and social security details are just some of the highly confidential and personal pieces of information people are storing unprotected on their PDAs.

One in four users are not bothering to protect their PDA with a password even though over a third are using it as a business tool to store confidential corporate information and access their corporate networks.

Pointsec Mobile Technologies together with Infosecurity Europe commissioned the survey into PDA usage to find out the top 10 most common functions of the PDA and how well users are protecting the information stored on them.

The packages include online and face-to-face training for dealers as well as re:source magazine a quarterly publication designed to provide information about the mobile and IT market through expert opinion news trends and advice.

Hugh Roper managing director of the Hugh Symons Group says:

Margins are tight in the traditional mobile market. If a dealer can sell new products then he can add new margins and also go after new markets.

The online packages include a website that will give dealers a hassle-free way of connecting a customer to GPRS as well as other pages that offer advice on products and technology from the straightforward to the highly technical.

Roper continues:

Our products are designed to give dealers a broader product portfolio better understanding of the market and technologies and the ability to deliver ongoing support to their customers.

Because of our work with operators vendors and dealers we are in a position to help resellers to extend into new markets and capitalise on the convergence of mobile technologies.

The new services will hopefully demystify some of the more complex technologies that are out there and help them capitalise on the mobile computing opportunities.

The new Hugh Symons data scheme is supported by the UKs leading brand vendors and cellular networks.

These include Compaq iTouch Nokia Palm Pumatech Red-M TDK and Toshiba.

Roper says that the new packages will also be of use to IT dealers who want to make the move into the mobile data market.

The company is hoping to attract around 40 resellers to the mobile data scheme by the end of the year.

In an earlier County Court hearing Knights sued Vodafone for two invoices totalling over 12000.

It lost this case but was given permission to approach the Court of Appeal for a reduced figure of 1100; 500 for one invoice and 600 for the other. To win the appeal it only had to win judgment for one of the two invoices.

Knights has been pursuing a total of 120000 for work it claims it carried out for 3@Telecom between 1994 and 1997 before 3@ was taken over by Vodafone in 1999.

The 500 was a test case involving just a few of the invoices Knights claim it is owed.

Vodafone won its initial hearing against Knights in June 2001 but was forced to return to court after Knights appealed on the grounds that Vodafone broke Civil Procedure Rules (CPRs) by manipulating evidence in the initial court hearing.

Vodafone now faces a further court battle as Knights prepare to pursue the remaining 107000.

Knights proprietor Allan Knight says:

It has been a long journey but we remain determined.

We intend to pursue Vodafone through the courts and back to the appeal court if necessary to recover our total invoices of 107000 our breached four-year contract and damages for the destruction of our business and health.

In the recent appeal case Vodafone offered Knights 2000 to settle the entire 107000 claim.

Vodafone says the judge ruled in Knights favour on only one small aspect of the case.

A Vodafone spokesman said: The Court of Appeal found that the County Court judge could perhaps have drawn different inferences from the facts in relation to the first part of the claim and so awarded Knights 500.

The dispute is over connections made through two Rocom dealers Newcastle-based ITS and Wales-based Select Communications both of which went into liquidation last year.

King joined Alcatel from Panasonic two years ago. Last year marketing executive Paul Whitby was made redundant after 16 years with the company.

The remainder of Alcatels mobile phone sales and marketing team have been moved to the companys offices in Maidenhead.

Nokia shipped early software versions of the handsets to dealers despite Vodafones requests not to do so.

We had software versions of the 3310 that had a problem when used with a particular SIM. We havent seen the problem elsewhere said Nokia head of customer care Peter Rand.

This name is of course is almost identical to the name of the PocketPhone Shop retail chain it purchased in July 2000 for around 72 million. One 2 One dropped the PocketPhone name last October before the subsequent rebranding to T-Mobile. Ex-PocketPhone Shop employee Damien Druce then registered the name The Pocket Phone Shop Ltd on January 15.

Druce has been using a variation of the old PocketPhone Shop logo on the front of his store and marketing materials. T-Mobile found out about the resurrection of the name when Druce applied to become a T-Mobile dealer. T-Mobile told him it was unhappy about his use of The Pocket Phone Shop name. (Cont P8)

The news comes as a boost for retailers who have reported demand for MMS handsets over the Christmas period but have expressed dismay that customers can only send picture messages to phones that are on the same network.

People arent aware of the fact that they cant send messages across networks said Paul Hooper of Upland Mobiles. The advertising doesnt tell people this and it only becomes apparent when customers get home and send pictures to friends on other networks.

An Orange spokesperson said it was working hard to have cross-network MMS ready for the Spring:

There are a number of reasons we havent offered cross-network photo messaging. The networks all launched photo messaging at different times. Only now do all four networks offer the service to their own customers she said.

There are also some technical issues that need to be resolved because all four UK networks use a different infrastructure to deliver the messages to handsets. We need to test the handsets for interoperability in order to guarantee a good user experience explained the spokesperson adding: We are confident of full cross-network interoperability by Spring 2003.

Lack of MMS interconnect does not appear to have hindered sales. Vodafone last week reported that it had 90000 UK registered users to its live! service in the last quarter of 2001 (see P6).

Mobile messaging consultancy Mobile Streams chief executive Simon Buckingham said MMS was becoming the biggest success since digital handsets were launched.

MMS is an overwhelming success. The penetration of MMS phones is unprecedented compared with other technologies. Lack of MMS interconnect is not a problem. People can send pictures to phones on other networks via e-mail.

Buckingham says MMS infrastructure is not yet stable enough to support cross-network MMS.