Staff Reporter

Exec Connect will be available from the end of 2003 in multiple versions based on Java Symbian or XHTML technologies depending on the users device. The service identifies and selects the fastest connection rate available to users.

Gerhard Romen head of sales and marketing for the Nokia One Mobile Connectivity Service said: The value of mobile technologies for enterprises is very clear.

Easy-to-use mobile technology can play a significant role in providing competitive advantage for organisations by enabling executives to gain secure access to e-mail and other resources and to efficiently interact with employees.

The schoolboy 11-year-old Danny Gossage from Birmingham bought four handsets and a Nokia headset in two visits to a branch of Carphone Warehouse in Birmingham. It turned out that the boy had apparently taken 800 from a biscuit tin at his home in Great Barr Birmingham to buy the phones.

Three of the phones were later returned and a refund of 500 given to the parents. The fourth handset had been stolen from the boy.

The boys parents reckon that Carphone Warehouse staff should not have taken that amount of cash from a schoolboy.

A Carphone Warehouse spokesperson said: We have no plans to alter our sales policy as a result of the incident. We treat everyone as a customer regardless of age. We have no policy to prevent sales of phones to children.

The spokesperson added: We were concerned by the fact that the boy had such a large amount of cash to spend and staff contacted police to notify them. In any case we refunded the parents for the returned phones.

Among the 50 staff who will leave the company at the end of the month is Ternhill Communications founder Matt Sandford.

He joined Project Telecom when he sold Ternhill to Project for 500000 eight months ago and was appointed as regional sales director.

His appointment had been announced with glowing tributes from Project Telecom chief executive Tim Radford. Sandford said he was disappointed that things hadnt worked out and now regrets selling his company.

Its disappointing to be leaving so quickly. I had anticipated being here for at least another five to 10 years. If I could have foreseen this happening I would never have sold. There has been some restructuring and the two regions for the Midlands have been consolidated. Despite achieving the highest number of connections in Q1 the company took the decision to make me redundant. A lot of other good people have also lost their jobs.

Radford was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.

The service has been on soft launch since April. The top-ups will be soon be available at all Moneybox and Co-operative Bank ATMs.

Vodafone and O2 users can access the service now. Orange Virgin and T-Mobile subscribers will be able to use the service shortly.

Electronic top-ups now account for nearly 40 per cent of the market.

Snook last week told a national newspaper the hard-nosed businessman adverts were absolutely the worst things I have ever seen.

Snook described the advert created by ad agency Mother as very irritating.

They are about as far away as you can get from the Orange ethos and values as I could possibly imagine he added.

But Orange business solutions marketing director Cynthia Gordon said the campaign had been imm-ensely successful in raising awareness of Orange as a business brand.

In terms of instant recall it has cut through five times stronger than any of our ads in the past three years.

Snook who is currently non-executive chairman at The Carphone Warehouse is credited by many journalists with inventing Oranges slogan the futures bright the futures Orange.

In fact the phase was conceived by Oranges ad agency in 1994 – Wight Collins Rutherford Scott.

Hans Snook was the founder and CEO of Orange from the beginning until February 2001 when he stepped back to become special adviser to the chairman of France Telecom said Gordon.

But an advertising style that was appropriate eight years ago is not appropriate in the existing market.

O2 says it has sold 23000 BlackBerrys to corporate users in the UK Germany Ireland and the Netherlands. But individual users were precluded as in-house e-mail servers were required.

The new BlackBerry allows personal and small business customers to use the device without a special e-mail server. Instead the customer configures the BlackBerry to retrieve e-mail from their ISP via O2s servers.

Around 250 customers will trial the new BlackBerry for two months before it is offered commercially. No prices have been determined for the new product. The existing BlackBerry costs just 50.

In addition O2 has also repriced its GPRS PC modem card in response to Vodafones Connect card. The new O2 card will cost 99. It can be inserted into laptop computers for Internet access and mobile e-mail over O2s GPRS network.

Customers will be offered a GPRS starter pack which will include 50Mb of data free. After that they will be offered O2s Data 5 package which offers 5Mb of data for 2. Additional megabytes are charged at 1.20 each.

This follows Virgin Mobile calling off its advertising boycott of The Times after settling its dispute with News International

The new television advertisement sees a boy called Damien running the Virgin Mobile Red Academy. The academy teaches people that phones can be used to call friends. The adverts satirise the Orange Learn campaign in which another young boy this time called Dylan teaches sales staff how to best help customers.

Virgin Mobile had clashed with The Times two weeks ago following the papers refusal to run a Virgin Mobile advertisement highlighting the small print in Oranges 1p text offer (Mobile News August 11).

Virgin had wanted to run its advertisement the day after Orange had taken every advertising page in The Times to herald the launch of its Fair initiative – a move that was estimated to have cost 250000.

There have been high-level meetings between Virgin Mobile and The Times and it has assured us that The Times did not refuse the advertisement for commercial reasons said a Virgin Mobile spokesperson.

The Times said it had refused to run the Virgin ad because Virgin had delivered it too late. Virgin rejected this justification claiming that the paper had refused to run it because it didnt want to upset Orange.

A Legends Penalty Shootout will give visitors a chance to take penalty shots against celebrity goalkeepers including former Everton star Neville Southall MBE former Liverpool keeper Bruce Grobbelaar England keeper David James and ex-Wimbledon keeper Hans Segers.

Pictures of the winning shots taken with camera phones are e-mailed to the kickers PC.

The push on camera phones continues with a celebrity photo-booth where punters can have their photo taken with pin-up models or one of the football stars attending the show. Other attractions include an F1 simulator using a Grand Prix circuit.

Mobile News readers can qualify for two tickets for the price of one by visiting www.mobilelifeevent.co.uk

Hugh Symons Information Technology and Hugh Symons Mobile Data combine to become Hugh Symons Mobile Computing.

At present the Information Technology arm looks after Toshibas portfolio of notebook PCs and audio-visual equipment while Mobile Data looks after PDAs. The two departments will create a 50 million division.

Hugh Symons Group managing director Hugh Roper said:

We have been strategically positioning the business for the mobile computing revolution for some time and customers and suppliers have been instrumental in us taking this new approach to our business.

Vendors are looking for greater access to new markets and our customers are looking for greater access to new products. This initiative fulfils these ambitions and has the added benefit that we are able to provide packaged solutions for the channel.

Perfect Fit offers customers three easy steps to find a price plan that suits the way they use their mobile phone.

There are three types of plan – Anytime Daytime and Evening & Weekend – with a choice of bundled minutes.

Calls to other networks are now included in Anytime- and Daytime-bundled minutes and the cost of calling other mobile networks has been reduced (the highest rate is now 35p). Vodafone claims it offers greater flexibility allowing customers to change plans as and when their needs change.

This is all about giving Vodafone customers what they want. In addition to its simplicity and flexibility Perfect Fit reflects the evolving and diverse way we use our phones said Vodafone UK CEO Gavin Darby.

We have designed the plans around the findings of extensive research in our continuing drive to provide maximum value for our customers.