Staff Reporter

3 has finally expanded its 3G handset range with new additions from NEC and Motorola.

The operator which has just celebrated its first birthday will offer its customers the NEC e616 and e313 and the Motorola A925 doubling the range of handsets available on its VideoTalk price plan.

The NEC e313 will also be available to customers of 3s new pre-pay offering ThreePay for 99.99.

The announcement follows an aggressive marketing campaign to kick off the launch of ThreePay as the network tries to establish itself firmly in the mobile broadband market before the other networks roll out their 3G services towards the end of the year.

While others may not have video mobiles that are ready 3 now has a portfolio of five handsets available said 3 sales director Marc Allera.

All handsets have built-in cameras can capture still images and video clips and are able to support a range of messaging formats.

The NEC handsets are both dual-band and the Motorola A925 is tri-band. The A925 a PDA that runs on the Symbian platform and the NEC e616 both support Bluetooth.

At the same time 3 has launched Today on 3 which it claims is the UKs first live video mobile news and entertainment channel.

The new channel will be updated throughout the day and will feature the latest footage available on the network from breaking news and football goals just after they are scored to music videos and film clips.

Today on 3 will give 3 customers access to an average of 72 minutes of daily footage on their video mobile including clips from Sky Sports MTV DJ Pete Tong ITN and the Barclaycard Premiership.

3 customers just hit the triangle key on their phone to access the service. It will be free to view with access to clips available to download or stream from 25p.

3 chief operating officer Gareth Jones said:

Today on 3 represents the culmination of a years experience of how our customers interact with our services.

Every day we learn more about what our customers enjoy and how and when they want to use our video content.

Today on 3 puts this into practice – combining our leading sports news and entertainment content with the mobility power and immediacy of video mobile to create the UKs first live video mobile news and entertainment channel.

This is just the start for Today on 3: it will continue to evolve and develop in order to meet the changing demands of customers.

(See Analysis P8)

Recruitment ads in the Sunday Times are offering salaries of 150000 to 250000 for the jobs as well as 100 per cent bonuses and 500000 to 1 million from the Groups wealth-creation scheme.

The 20:20 ad calls for a sales-led managing director with the enormous competence gravitas and unquenchable ambition to orchestrate our expanding global operations.

But the ads could be just a punt to lure high-fliers currently looking to move.

A Caudwell Group spokesperson told Mobile News:

The ads in the Sunday Times were nothing new or out of the ordinary. Caudwell Group is in a continuous trawl for the best possible senior management talent to run or develop new businesses or extensions of existing businesses.

The Caudwell Group in fact runs tempting management recruitment ads continuously. The company hopes the people who respond to the ads could become candidates for all parts of the business.

The phone also has integrated camera and push-to-talk facility.

The GSM Association expects to see 3G services launched by another 40 operators by the end of this year. Conway predicted there would be more than a billion GSM mobile phones in use by the end of March.

Solid foundations are in place for successful migration to 3G. Twenty-five operators are already delivering 3G services to customers in 17 countries he said.

He went on: Improvements in the supply of dual-mode handsets capable of delivering seamless inter-operability between GSM and 3GSM will provide the catalyst for the launch of at least another 40 3GSM services in the year ahead.

At the end of 2003 there were 970 million customers using GSM technology a number that is growing at the rate of 15 million per month. Almost half of GSM mobile phone users reside in Europe and Scandinavia (425 million). The Asia-Pacific region added 70 million new users during 2003. China added 42.8 million users.

T-Mobile took on 1.2 million new users including 161000 on contract. But a cull of inactive pre-pay customers means T-Mobile ended 2003 with fewer customers despite a good second half of the year.

Virgin Mobile added 506000 new customers in Q4 taking Virgins quarterly tally above O2 for the first time in six months.

O2 added 430000 new subscribers just eclipsing Vodafones 422000.

Orange only recorded a figure of 278000 net new connections. 3 announced in mid-December that it has 210000 subscribers a net gain of just 55000 since the summer attributed to stock shortages.

T-Mobile managing director Brian McBride said:

We had a strong second half to the year. Our Q4 promotions were strong and were out early in the market.

We have the highest pre-pay revenue and the second largest contract revenue per customer. The change in our commission structure has been reflected in high-quality customers joining the network. We are happy but not complacent.

The networks all recorded strong growth in data services. O2s data revenue increased to over a fifth of all network revenues. The number of text messages sent by O2 customers in Q4 exceeded two billion.

Q4 total connections

1. T-Mobile 707000

2. Virgin Mobile 506000

3. O2 430000

4. Vodafone 422000

5. Orange 278000

6. 3 55000

Q4 contract connections

1. Vodafone 181000

2. T-Mobile 161000

3. O2 145000

4. Orange 116000

5. 3 55000

Total active Subscribers

Dec 31 2002

1. Orange 13649000

2. O2 13053000

3. Vodafone 12691000

4. T-Mobile 9955000

5. Virgin Mobile 3644000

6. 3 210000

Total 53202000

He will still be based in Newbury and will report to international boss Julian Horn-Smith. Darbys role includes managing Vodafones relationship with Verizon and exploring opportunities in Latin America.

Darby is being replaced by Bill Morrow who has been in charge of Japan Telecoms fixed-line business.

Morrow an American has spent 23 years in the telecoms industry. He worked in both fixed and mobile for Airtouch and has most recently been responsible for Vodafones shareholdings in Japan.

Darby joined Vodafone three years ago from Coca-Cola. He said his biggest challenge at Vodafone had been to get the company to move away from being technology-based to being customer-based.

Ultimately customers are not interested in technologies like MMS. GPRS or WAP. They are interested in what a proposition will do for them. An example is Vodafone live! which was a genuine customer proposition behind which was WAP GPRS and m-Pay said Darby.

He added that it was vital for the dealer channel to now accept they had to concentrate on pursuing higher-spending customers who could be retained.

Independent dealers are important to Vodafone. I keep telling the ones I meet that they need to align to where Vodafones focus is.

The winners will have to move on from selling off-the-shelf solutions that seem to be just voice. We will all have to get better and better at selling more bespoke solutions and invest more in customer support and training.

The Retail Manager Share Option Plan follows an announcement by Phones 4U boss John Caudwell last year that he planned to incentivise Phones 4U managers with bonus windfalls worth up to 1 million each.

All 510 CPW store managers have been awarded 10000 share options. Around 32 area sales managers get 20000 options. Four divisional managers get 30000 options.

The options are priced at 144p per share. They can be realised from January 2007. The plan is open until the end of the year so employees promoted to these positions within this time will also qualify.

Extra share options can be earned through an incentive programme.

But poor performers are penalised. Next January the bottom 25 per cent of managers will lose half their share options to the top 25 per cent of performers.

Thus top managers could get a windfall of 37000 each if the share price rises over the next three years to 2 in 2005 2.50 in 2006 and 3 in 2007. The top area managers would get 72500 each and the top divisional managers would collect 109000.

The poorest-performing store managers would still get 3900 each while the bottom area sales managers would land 7800 and divisional managers would collect 11700.

This share option plan has been introduced for three reasons said Carphone Warehouse retail managing director Jonathan Hook.

It rewards our existing retail managers and it incentivises our retail managers based on individual performance and loyalty.

He went on: We will be opening more than 100 stores in the next year and new management opportunities will arise.

This plan is a fantastic career progression inventive for everyone working towards becoming retail managers in the next 12 months said Hook.

The Carphone Warehouses share price has risen from 95p to 146p since last March.

The event is organised by The Carphone Warehouse and sponsored by Vodafone T-Mobile O2 Nokia Siemens Unisys and Smart Trust.

Advance will see the network sharing customer relationship management data with qualifying dealers and providing them with dedicated backroom support staff and helpline numbers.

Fifteen direct independents (DIs) have been invited to join O2 Advance based on their having reached or exceeded performance criteria set by the network in five different areas.

At the launch in Surrey O2 UK sales director Mark Stansfeld said: O2 Advance is not an exclusive club. Those DIs here today have earned their place on the programme because of their performance but the programme is open to all our DI dealers. We have been very open about the criteria they need to satisfy if they are to join.

(Full report page 16)

The company claims to be the first UK network operator to do so and plans to extend the trials to smaller business customers.

Vodafone currently has 3G capacity in London Manchester and Birmingham as well as along the M4 corridor. The network predicts a 30 per cent population coverage for its initial commercial introduction of 3G services in spring 2004.