Staff Reporter

Morris who will cover acquisition retention and growth of Oranges SME customer base will report to Orange Business Solutions marketing director Shaun Orpen.

Morris joined Vodafone in 2000 as operations director for Vodafone Marketing Services.

Morris said: The small and medium business is a challenging market to provide services for due to the diverse range of customer needs and I am excited by the opportunity.

Fans can sign up to their clubs official mobile content service whatever network they are on to get SMS and MMS downloads including ringtones club wallpapers and a WAP site.

This will give them access to match previews half and full time scores with commentary and analysis of the games. This season they will also be offered exclusive video content containing all the highlights 24 hours after the game.

O2 UK head of sponsorship Paul Samuels said: O2 is proud to be continuing its successful partnership with the Guinness Premiership as it enhances O2s presence in rugby at all levels from grassroots with O2 rugby class right through to the England squad.

Whatever we do in our sponsorship it is critical that we deliver additional value to our customers and the Guinness Premiership mobile service offers the most up-to-date and detailed information that any rugby fan could wish for.

O2 claims that its MMS alerts will contain pictures club and player stats and text making it the only service in the UK to offer all elements of multi-media messaging. In addition the Guinness Premiership micro site WAP portal can be accessed through the Sport section on the O2 Active service.

Fans will be rewarded for their loyalty with a season of O2 experiences – everything from having a chance to meet their rugby heroes win signed shirts or even train with the players.

Samuels said: We believe that with the Guinness Premiership and the activity planned to support the England rugby team we can continue to create awareness around the O2 brand and reward our customers by offering the best rugby experiences and services available.

Premier Rugby commercial director Jon Varney added: As the numbers of people following club rugby in England continue to grow O2s range of mobile services will help us feed the passion our supporters have for following all the Guinness Premiership news and match action.

Go Mobile managing director Iain Humphrey axed six under-performing stores following the departures of former Go Mobile chief Les Bennett and sales director Nil Naik to set up Mint Mobile in March.

The new stores in Driffield and Ripon are the latest in a series of eight store openings since Humphrey the founder of Go Mobile seized control of the retail chain.

Humphrey said:

Motivation was very low among staff within the company before we re-organised the team.

The number of stores came down to just 17. As some stores leases came up for renewal we chose to close them because they werent performing as they should have been.

After Les [Bennett] and Nil [Naik] left the morale within the company turned around.

The two new stores take us up to 25 in total. We have also employed a full-time refitting team so we have refurbished all the stores in England and removed all the network-related material.

Handsets drive sales among consumers and we have our own in-house team which has designed all the point-of-sale material around that.

He added: We will consolidate during the period up to Christmas get through January and February next year and then look to expand further.

Shebang Distribution the independent distribution arm of Humphreys Daventry business recently won a contract to supply JAG Communications. Humphrey installed Sellfone 3G Shebangs automated stock replenishment system in all 76 of JAGs stores over the summer.

Joseph Crowe (24) is charged with stealing mobile phones from two passengers on a train in June.

In another case two London men were accused of violently robbing a man of his Nokia in Bayswater West London.

Mohammed Ridha (20) was remanded in custody at the Middlesex Huildhall Crown Court.

He and a 16-year-old boy who cannot be named for legal reasons are charged with robbing Youssef Alazema last November subjecting him to force.

Vodafone is set to receive reprimand from the ASA over its Best in Britain bar none and Best in London bar none non-broadcast advertising campaigns.

The advertising watchdog has drafted a recommended course of action but not yet formerly sent out an adjudication on the matter.

O2 made the complaint objecting to Vodafones claim in the advertisement that it had the best call success rate in the country.

A source close to O2 said that the carrier thought the campaign did not acknowledge other performance metrics such as customer service. O2 also objected to the size of the small print on the advertisements which it said was not prominent enough.

According to the source the ASA has indicated that it is likely the complaint will be upheld.

Vodafone has refused to comment on the investigation.

Meanwhile Orange has been rapped by the ASA for misleading text contained within its Double talk double text promotional activity.

The network ran TV press and Internet promotions headlined: Now all customers old and new can get double minutes and double texts for six months on Your Plan 120 200 or 300.

The ASA received 28 complaints criticising the ads for being misleading because they did not make it clear that existing customers must complete a certain number of months of their contract and must agree to sign up to a further contract to take advantage of the offers.

After the complaints were raised with Orange the network changed the wording in its ads but the ASA still considered the ads misleading.

An Orange spokesman confirmed the campaign had ended.

In the campaign which was shot in Hong Kong music has become illegal something that ladies who lunch can only enjoy behind closed doors. They gather in groups during the day pop the lids on their sonic canisters and enjoy.

However the sound police are never far away. They burst in with their oversized orange earmuffs and sound proof bags impound the canisters and take the women away but even the Police cant resist the allure of music.

Bob Fuller 3s chief executive reckons like 3s other ads in the series Dirty Music will get people talking. Music is an important part of peoples leisure time with 3G technology our customers can enjoy full-length music videos and tracks on their mobile something consumers would never have imagined possible a few years ago he said.

A through-the-line multi-media campaign will support the brand film to promote 3s music offering of tracks and full-length videos from major artists and record labels including Robbie Williams Britney Spears Kylie and the best indie bands.

The portal described by Airphone Distribution sales director Rob Whellams as the worlds largest cookbook is set to go live on Monday offering 6000 recipes from the countrys top chefs.

Access to the portal will be free. Recipes cost 50p each or 1.50 for a video download showing how to prepare the dish step by step.

UKTV will be promoting the service at the end of each days Great Food Live programme by encouraging viewers to text the name of an ingredient to the portal to receive a recipe based on the ingredient.

Airphone Distribution operations director Mark Watts claimed the deal was a major coup. UKTV Food has 7.2 million subscribers and as long as they have a WAP-enabled phone this will be open to all of them. Both Vodafone and Orange have expressed an interest in putting this into their menus.

Whellams added that plans were in the pipeline to launch other content portals on popular lifestyle topics such as music fashion gaming motoring and DIY.

The network has been widely promoting the scheme which enables consumers to use their home tariffs abroad with a huge marketing push and television advertising campaign.

Those ads could now take a more business slant with the introduction of Vodafone Passport on all Perfect Fit for Business tariffs. The free service means a business person can use their mobile abroad and only pay their UK rate plus a one-off 75p connection fee to make a call. The potential savings are substantial. For instance a call from Spain previously cost 3.75 under normal Vodafone World rates.

The scheme follows other services the network has introduced for customers to use when overseas including a Vodafone data tariff for 3G mobile connect card users abroad.

Mark Bond director of enterprise marketing at Vodafone UK explained that there was a business customer demand for using mobile abroad as if they were back in the UK and not worry about bill shock when they returned.

We understand that being in touch 24/7 with colleagues having a good value tariff and a clear idea of call costs is of critical importance to all businesses whether at home or abroad. Vodafone Passport will help business travellers to accomplish this and for any business with a subsidiary in a Vodafone Passport country there is outstanding value to be gained.

Vodafone Passport is available in Albania Australia Germany Greece Hungary Republic of Ireland Italy Japan Malta The Netherlands New Zealand Portugal Spain and Sweden. It is also available in France and Monaco on the SFR network in Switzerland on Swisscom and in Belgium on Proximus.

Sales assistant Susan Mokogwu (21) was instead sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid community service work and ordered to pay O2 compensation of 4849.77. She was saved from prison by favourable probation reports having earlier been told she could be jailed for the offences.

Mokogwu who worked at O2 s Oxford Street store was arrested on July 5 after stock discrepancies were found and police summoned. Her haul of 18 Nokia handsets some Bluetooth headsets and thousands of pounds of top-up vouchers has not been recovered.

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead was besieged by telesales callers.

The situation was so serious that a staff nurse notified hospital management who then contacted T-Mobile to complain.

T-Mobile distributed a stern email to its entire dealer and distributor base demanding such activity cease.

The email by T-Mobile channel communications executive Tim de Winter said: Calls are being received in many departments (consulting rooms emergency departments etc) are causing considerable disruption and concern and could potentially put lives at risk Please ensure all dealers stockists sales staff and call centres are aware particularly Indian call centres as these calls appear to originate from outside the UK.

The hospital said the cold calling had caused disruption but was pleased T-Mobile had acted to resolve the matter.

It was inconvenient for a short time but we were pleased with the speedy response said the hospital.