Staff Reporter

Vodafone Orange T-Mobile The Carphone Warehouse and 3 have all launched flagship stores in Oxford Street. The new Oxford Street emporium means O2 now has 205 stores in the UK.

The new O2 store covers 719 sq metres on two levels. Customers will see demonstrations of O2 services such as media messaging O2 Active ringtones games and wallpaper downloads.

Sections will be dedicated to Arsenal O2s main sponsorship partner. The business area will have a conference room and an area offering Internet access.

A large interactive screen in the front window of the store will display special offers and images of passers-by to lure them inside.

Industry sources say Xtratel intends to sue Unique for non-payment of a batch of Tel.Me handsets purchased earlier this year. However Unique is said to be unhappy that Xtratel closed down its UK operations leaving Unique with unsupported handsets.

Unique offered the disputed handsets back to Xtratel but the importer refused to accept them.

Uniques managing director Angus Dawe said he was unaware of any legal action and expected to resolve the situation. He commented:

We have some issues with Xtratel as a consequence of them leaving the market that require resolving. I am sure we will come to an amicable solution.

Neither Tel.Me nor Xtratel was available for comment.

However the news was quickly overshadowed by O2 which claims to have added 255000 customers in the same period – swelling its customer base to 12.3 million users.

There was more good news for O2 in the revelation that half its new connections were on contract. The UK couldnt beat O2s German subsidiary however where 73 per cent of its 225000 new customers were on contract.

O2s figures also revealed an increase in subscriber revenues. Based on the figures from the past three months O2 claims its customers spend an average of 254 per year equating to 21 per month.

Post-pay customer revenue for O2 rose marginally by a solitary pound per year to 504 or 42 per month.

Pre-pay customer revenue increased to 128 per year from 121 – an average of 10.67 per month.

During April May and June 2003 Virgin Mobile claimed to have added 231554 net new customers. This is an increase of 35 per cent over Q2 last year and has lifted Virgins customer numbers by 61 per cent in the past 12 months giving a total of 2868666 subscribers as at 30 June.

The latest statistics show a near 200 per cent increase since June 2001 when Virgin signed up its millionth user.

This is the second hot quarter posted by Virgin Mobile. During the first three months of this year the virtual network added 253200 net customers more than the other five networks put together – well ahead of O2 (98000) Vodafone (76000) and Orange (1000) and light years ahead of courtroom rival T-Mobile which lost and disconnected 487000 subscribers.

Virgin Mobile said it expected a similarly strong ranking for Q2 2003 in a market which is experiencing very little growth.

The network says its financial performance during this quarter also exceeded expectations with half-yearly pre-tax earnings of 42 million compared with 16 million last year.

Turnover in the second quarter was more than 100 million.

VIRGIN MOBILE: GROWTH AT A GLANCE

231554 net connections in Q2 2003

2868666 total customer base as at 30 June

35 per cent quarterly year-on-year growth (Q2 2002 v Q2 2003)

1087584 annual user growth (up 61 per cent since Q2 2002)

42 million half-year pre-tax earnings

37 million half-year operating profit

102.2 million Q2 turnover

In a report entitled The Business Opportunity for Bluetooth in the NHS TDK said that pilot studies have shown that consultants using PDAs save more than an hour a day in paperwork.

Trials were carried out for six months at Bradford General Hospital and Royal Brompton hospital in London.

At present PDAs are used in a few hospitals in the US but none in the UK.

By using Bluetooth solutions or WLANs doctors and nurses can be given access to information wherever they are in the hospital said David Curl TDK head of publicity.

Such equipment would make it easier to transfer important data such as observation notes throughout hospitals and save valuable time.

The report also says that in the future Bluetooth wireless technology could reduce hospital waiting lists by providing consultants with remote access to the condition of both in-patients and out-patients.

Among other charges Nitin Bami (27) of Laurel Gardens Hounslow is charged with stealing a mobile phone five phone batteries and five cases all belonging to British Transport Police on or before 23 May at a police station in Whitfield Street Euston.

He is also charged with stealing a quantity of mobile phones valued at 600 from British Transport police between March 14 and May 23 and two mobile phones worth 200.

In all BT Openzone customers will soon have access to 1710 WiFi access points around the world including the 700 sites that are now available in the UK.

BT has an existing deal with TeliaSonera Europes leading WiFi operator. BT Openzone subscribers can use more than 660 TeliaSonera HomeRun points in Scandinavia France Belgium the US Thailand and London.

In May BT Retail chief executive officer Pierre Danon announced that the nets target to reach 4000 BT Openzone sites by summer 2005 had been brought forward to summer next year with sites located in places such as Hilton Hotels Roadchef service stations and BAA airport terminals.

Roadchef will install sites in all of its 29 locations by the end of the year.

BT also announced that a UK provider of specialist training and conference venues the Initial Style conference centre group will install BT Openzone sites in 10 of its 28 centres nationwide.

More than 100 major companies have signed up for BT Openzone. These include the BBC Carlton Communications Toshiba Scottish Enterprise Royal and SunAlliance John Lewis Microsoft and GE Capital.

BT managing director for products and enterprises Steve Andrews said: It was a logical step for BT to supplement this UK network with the first roaming deal to give WiFi access right across the US.

The figure is a rise of 10 million on the 45 million sent in May and takes the cumulative total for 2003 to 10 billion.

MDA chairman Mike Short put the rise down to interactive texting with programmes such as Big Brother and Pop Idol as well as the continuing popularity of person-to-person text messaging.

Developers manufacturers and corporate customers from companies such as Sun Microsoft Compaq Handspring Palm Symbian Toshiba Information Systems Siemens and Sony Ericsson converged for the one-day event at the Madjeski football stadium for a morning of presentations by Orange and partners followed by a product fair.

Orange also announced it had secured agreements with Nokia and Handspring to give developers access to the companies documents and toolkits via the Orange Developers Forum website.

Forum developer manager Anna Grundy commented:

This is a major step forward for the developer community. Application developers have traditionally had to approach manufacturers and operators individually to secure the necessary information and toolkits. Now the sharing of information and close cooperation allows developers to access information.

The Orange Developers Forum develops and tests new mobile voice and data applications within Orange.

Members get early access to new technology and special access to a library of industry documents and the opportunity to apply to trial new equipment.

They can also attend workshops on specific technologies or products and are given the opportunity to present papers.

The Association said that GSM Europe is currently working on a draft set of recommendations on spamming within mobile networks which covers several of the issues raised by the Commission.

The issue has global ramifications and therefore global solutions are needed to combat the problem commented an Association spokesperson.

The original ET under Warren Hardy had been Oranges biggest distributor before it went into administration last year.

But the MobiShop-backed company that bought ET failed to secure the contract when it took over.

The move now allows ETs in-house sales team to connect to Orange but does not extend to the distribution of kit or connections.

ET managing director John Drinkwater believes the move is a step in the right direction for the company.

Drinkwater said:

This is not earth-shattering news. It is a small step but a step in the right direction. It is a positive move in terms of having good commercial relations with Orange. I dont know if it will lead to a distribution licence but it is a stepping stone in terms of building relations.

When we first secured the take-over of European Telecom Orange told us it wasnt going to give us the distribution agreement because we didnt have a trading history.

It is now more than a year since we took control and this agreement is a significant step in terms of helping people see what our aims are. This is a solid company that has shown stable ongoing growth with sensible business plans.

The Orange agreement follows the award of an O2 distributionlicence to European Telecom in January this year. European Telecom is also a T-Mobile distributor.