Staff Reporter

At present owners must agree to ban mobile phones from forecourts as a condition of receiving the licence required to open a petrol station.

On March 14 the Institute of Petroleum met in London to discuss the danger posed by the use of handsets on forecourts. They found that worldwide there had yet to be an incident where use of a mobile phone was directly responsible for the outbreak of a fire.

This shows that there is no scientific basis for the banning of mobile phones from forecourts said director of campaigns Tom Wills-Sandford.

According to Wills-Sandford the repealing of the ban would also serve the more important function of helping to destroy the myth that mobile phones are dangerous in general.

The company is owned by Cityphone MD Barry Donaghey and his partner Paul Williams. A meeting of creditors has been called for April 2 in London where a liquidator will be appointed.

The companies going into liquidation are Britannia Airwaves Britannia Telecom and Britannia Retail which all used the trading name Talk 4 All. Britannia Airtime which traded as Talk 4 Business and Airtel has also failed.

The failure of Britannia is linked to the demise of Donagheys UK distribution business Pointgold. This went into liquidation last September (Mobile News September 16 2002).

At the time Williams was unsure whether the collapse of Pointgold would affect other companies within the Cityphone group. He hoped that they might survive.

Pointgold failed with debts estimated to be around 3.8 million mostly owed to T-Mobile. Rumours that Pointgold parent company Cityphone was in financial trouble had been circulating the industry for weeks before the collapse.

The collapse of the remaining Cityphone and Britannia companies has seemed on the cards. Neither Donaghey or Williams had been available for comment since the end of last year.

Cityphones troubles started when Donaghey admitted in September last year that the Cityphone empire was experiencing some financial problems. He blamed the groups store acquisitions.

Cityphone commenced its drive to build a nationwide retail chain in March 2000 when it purchased 18 TCL stores from KPMG the liquidator of the Kent dealer-distributor.

The shops were rebranded Talk 4 All. A year later Cityphone purchased 14 Cellularfone (CFL) outlets in Northern Ireland for 500000.

Within a year Cityphone had boosted its retail presence to 75 stores with the acquisition of 30 WAP Store outlets from RSM Robson Rhodes. The WAP Store went bust in January 2002.

A 12 million worldwide joint marketing campaign will promote the film and Samsung products. The campaign is likely to feature television and print media public relations activity product placement and consumer promotions.

The original Matrix film featured Nokia phones.

The deal goes beyond the simple product placement that Nokia secured. The Samsung handsets used in The Matrix Reloaded have been co-designed by film producer Joel Silver and will be available in the USA and possibly in the UK after the release of the film.

Samsung has worldwide promotional rights for the second and third instalments of the Matrix trilogy. The Matrix Reloaded is released on May 15 while The Matrix Revolutions debuts in November.

The agreement extends to the DVD/VHS releases of The Matrix Reloaded and The Animatrix – a collection of nine short films that inter-connect with the upcoming Matrix films – as well as the video game Enter the Matrix.

The Swindon service provider which has around 500000 subscribers was acquired by Vodafone last week as exclusively revealed in Mobile News (March 10).

Major shareholders managing director Nigel Bunter and chairman Ric Lee have gone. The companys new general manager is Tim Bean previously responsible for customer development at Vodafone. Bean also worked for Vodafone Retail when it was a separate service provider.

Vodafone director of customer management Joe McLoone said business as usual was very much the message coming from the network regarding its recent acquisition. McLoone assured dealers that there would be no immediate changes and hinted that some of the Cellular Operation packages might last beyond the May review.

His declaration will ease dealers fears. Cellular Operations gave generous commission terms and dealers were worried that this would change when Vodafone took over with its bespoke tariffs being scrapped. The terms offered by Vodafone Direct are significantly less appealing.

McLoone said Vodafone bought Cellular Operations to be closer to its customers.

He refused to rule out the network acquiring any future service providers. McLoone said there would be no changes at Cellular Operations.

We dont want to tamper with something that has been very successful. We arent going to make immediate changes before we have looked at the business in detail. We want the people there to feel they can make the same decisions as they did before he said.

Vodafone is not disclosing the price it paid for the company but an industry source guessed the network would have paid at least 100 for each of the 500000 subscribers which could have netted shareholders Bunter and Lee 25 million each. But a debt provision would have reduced that price.

Cellular Operations turned over 240 million in its last financial year and employs around 600. It lost 12.5 million last year on top of a cumulative loss of nearly 6 million so Vodafone will inherit cumulative losses of 18.5 million.

Vodafone picks up accounts such as Ford Jaguar and the RAC and inherits the firms 7 million headquarters with call centre warehouse and distributions facilities.

It must be hard for Nigel and Ric leaving something they have spent years building up said McLoone. Considering all the work they have done it was very important to keep looking after customers in the same way and create a smooth transition – which has gone very well because Nigel and Ric put a lot of thought into it.

Despite the admission that the industry is facing some very tough challenges Carphone Warehouse is to push ahead with an ambitious expansion plan that will see the number of stores rise from 480 to 550 in a bid to increase its overall market share.

As well as the store expansion the company is to more than double its budget for the training and development of branch managers.

A spokeswoman for the company commented:

We have announced that we are planning to open around 100 stores across the group this year. We have not broken down this figure but we are concentrating on the UK France and Spain. It is too early to say how the split will be made.

She added: The fact that we havent retracted this plan since our initial announcement is a good sign and shows the confidence we have in the market.

The company also outlined its first annual plan for new fixed-line service talktalk.

The target for the year ahead is 200000 customers. Achieving this goal would see the companys retail gross margin grow by five per cent.

Branch managers of the retailers smaller stores have had their quarterly bonus payments cut in half while managers at larger stores have seen their bonuses increase (Mobile News March 10).

Nick East of North East Communications in Elgin north Scotland set up www.boycottcaudwell.com after becoming tired of the way the group was carrying out business.

Two weeks after setting up the website he and the host company both received a letter from Eversheds saying the site was defamatory.

The letter added the tenor of the websites content is that Mr Caudwell and the Caudwell group of companies are untrustworthy and operate in a manner which is dishonest and unfair.

Eversheds gave East 24 hours to remove the website.

The site listed all the divisions addresses and contact numbers of the group as well as alternative companies to deal with.

It also ran links to negative stories about the group on sites such as BBC Watchdog which ran a report on 1000 complaints received against Caudwell airtime division Singlepoint.

At no stage did I write anything that was untrue. Before creating the website I took my time to avoid including anything that was libellous or untrue said East

East was motivated to produce the anti-Caudwell website after catching representatives from Caudwell retail arm Phones 4U handing out leaflets for its store directly outside his shop .

Other dealers had experienced the same sort of treatment so I knew I wasnt alone he said. 20:20 Logistics and Dextra heavily target the independent retailers for business. I thought it was awful that with one hand the Caudwell Group works with independent dealers and with the other it plans to hurt those very dealers who are its customers.

I didnt publicise the website. But in the two weeks that it was live we had nearly 1000 visitors.

East says that the website wasnt set up and operated with malice and that he just wanted to highlight what was going on.

The Caudwell Group declined to comment.

The range to be shown at CeBit includes the T610 (a 65000 colour-screen mobile phone with in-built digital camera) the T310 (colour-screen phone with a strong gaming edge) and the T606 and T608 – CDMA phones with mobile entertainment and imaging features as well as integrated Bluetooth.

Also on show was a flash accessory for the T610 (MPF-10) and a Bluetooth music hands-free device (HBM 30) as well as updates for the recently released P800 including a new grey-coloured handset and an online applications shop.

Sony Ericsson managing director UK and Ireland Philip Rambech said: With the T610 we offer a strong imaging phone which also has a sleek and lightweight design.

We have seen a great uptake of mobile imaging among consumers and we are now in a position to take this to the next level.

With the T310 we further strengthen our position in the MMS mass-market phone category. With these new products we are now able to put forth a strong offering to all aspects of the market.

Rambech said the T610 will be pitched at the same mid- to high price point targeted by the T68 on its release.

The T68i will remain on the market due to its popularity while the T310 will be at the affordable end of the market.

The basic voice and text T100 handset will target the mass-market entry-level area of the market.

The T310 which is available this month comes with the exclusive Tony Hawks Pro Skater game embedded in the handset with new levels available for download while the T610 comes with a ring tone composer. It should be on the market in the second quarter of the year.

The T610 moves us on from the T68. The flash attachment was something that our customers had pushed strongly for and the integrated camera gives customers all they could want in an imaging handset said Rambech.

Also trumpeted at the release was the joint ventures QuickShare concept an MMS-linked feature focusing on the ability to take and send messages quickly and simply.

(See Sharp End P50).

Its the company he previously snubbed to take the job at 20:20.

Whellams joined 20:20 barely weeks ago and was made associate sales director (Mobile News March 10) with responsibility for developing new business with the networks for the distributor.

He had been set to join Unique but opted for 20:20 after he was made an offer he couldnt refuse.

Unique Distribution confirmed last Wednesday that Whellams had in fact now joined Unique in time to join other Unique executives on the companys stand at CeBIT.

Whellams was made redundant from Trium in February when Mitsubishi pulled out of the UK. His last deal for Trium was to sell thousands of handsets to Unique.

The network has done a deal with

Zeppotron the comedy and entertainment arm of Endemol UK to provide comedy content for its third-generation mobile multi-media and communications services.

Zeppotron will be providing 3 with content including video audio text animation and graphics.

Uniting the two leading titles and two teams of experts will help What Mobile play to its strengths as the best consumer magazine in the market. The sale has been necessary because Ive moved to work for Motorola. But at least the pain of parting with What Mobile has been cushioned by knowing it is going to the best possible home. Its a fitting time to hand What Mobile over to where it can be nurtured and built upon.

When What Mobile started the most optimistic network forecasts were for eight million mobile phone users in the UK. Today there are 45 million users.

By the time the May issue comes out What Mobile will have tested measured and reviewed around 400 handsets.