Staff Reporter

The SME and corporate indirect and dealer sales channels are apparently left unscathed.

The purge was ordered by group financial director Craig Gibson who took a close look at the department and decided there was too much wrong to be put right.

Caudwell Group managing director Tim Whiting denied that as many as 200 jobs would be lost but said the field sales teams were being streamlined.

We dont yet know if jobs will go and I wont comment on numbers. The only jobs that are going at the moment fit with the natural turnover of a business. Certainly nobody is leaving who is performing well.

Whiting claimed that the group was in the middle of a process to optimise the efficiency and performance of the corporate sales teams across the group.

He added: We have a corporate sales force for mobile and a corporate sales force for fixed and they are selling to the same customers. It could be done more efficiently.

The City & Guilds Vocational Rich List compiled by Sunday Times Rich List author Philip Beresford ranks the wealth of those who have built their fortunes on a vocational qualification or apprenticeship.

Said Caudwell:

If you want to be a doctor or a solicitor or a dentist then you need to go to university. If your ambition is to be successful in business you have to be prepared to work hard understand your markets and just get out and start selling your product or service.

My City and Guilds qualifications taught me to be very analytical and disciplined on how to make projects succeed.

This was very important when I started out in business and has helped me and my businesses to be the success they are today.

Caudwells first job was as an engineering apprentice at the Michelin Tyre Company in Stoke-on-Trent in 1970.

He followed that with jobs sweeping pottery floors working at a steel factory and as a nightclub bouncer before becoming a car dealer.

Said Beresford:

Sales at his Caudwell Group leapt 45 per cent to just over 2 billion and profits rose to 30.4 million in 2002. The remaining operations should easily be worth 800 million. With sale proceeds added plus another 75 million for assets such as his 10 million Staffordshire mansion Caudwell is now easily worth 1.28 billion.

You guessed it – theyre O2 promo girls working hard at the O2 Wireless Festival in Hyde Park last week

Interoperability with other networks means Virgin Mobile customers can interact with users on both Vodafone live! and Orange World chat rooms as well.

Another chat room themed around the latest news and gossip is available exclusively to customers of Virgin Mobile .

Virgin Mobile BITES product manager John Conlon said:

It is going to be very popular mostly for music sports and flirting. The difference between our service and the chat room services offered by other operators is that we will have different themed chat rooms and live event rooms.

So we will get celebrities like Green Day in there to chat to their fans for an hour-and-a-half.

It is a chance for customers to meet other people in differently themed rooms.

The BITES chat room service will be moderated by French mobile community company Freezer which will ensure that every message posted is monitored.

Said Conlon:

We want to make sure that nothing abusive or racist is posted and most especially we will ensure the service is not used by paedophiles for grooming purposes.

Paedophiles are known to use chat rooms to meet people. We are working in conjunction with the Government and the IWF so that it is safe and so users can chat comfortably Conlon explained.

Age verification processes are in place to stop under-18s accessing adult chat rooms.

After leaving Vodafone Beddoes took on senior positions with TIW and Dolphin Telecom. While at Vodafone he received an OBE for his services to the telecommunications industry and was also invited to join the Royal Academy of Engineers.

We thought Phones 4U was going to cave in but it hasnt yet. The supporting evidence it submitted is practically non-existent. It has requested copies of all my job applications since I left [in November 2004] in an attempt to prove that I am just after the money he told Mobile News.

I have submitted 12 job applications none of which have been successful. It is the first time in my life I have failed with a job application. Phones 4U is not providing references or not providing the correct ones.

King who is currently employed at a call centre and earns 7.50 per hour worked at Phones 4U between April 2003 and November 2004.

He claims he was subjected to unfair treatment throughout his time at Phones 4U despite turning branch 114 in Milton Keynes into one of Phones 4Us top performers.

He also alleges that at that time Phones 4U area sales director Bob Cardell and area sales manager Wayne Massey were abusive and threatening towards him.

King implies that the performance of the Milton Keynes branch under his stewardship highlighted to the Phones 4U management the lack of success of the area managers.

It made them look bad. My colleagues said that I was doing a cracking job and that I had showed them up. Our success raised questions about their prior performances.

The hearing runs from July 8 to July 15. Phones 4U declined to comment.

Korean manufacturer LG is also launching two open-market variants of existing models as it looks to expand its distribution deals this year and move away from network-specific deals.

The new B2100 is an entry-level candybar device that will be available across all networks at 70- 80 on pre-pay. It includes a camera and is available from this week.

The dual-band F2400 a 2.5G clamshell is already available on Orange in grey and blue but LG has introduced a black variant that will be available across all the networks free on contract and around 119 on pre-pay.

It has a VGA flash camera 65k screen internal aerial external viewing screen and Bluetooth.

It is necessary for any manufacturer with ambition to play in a broader arena than just the networks alone said LG sales director John Barton.

The other successful vendors all have a broader reach than LG. In order to compete we will have to extend our reach considerably.

It is clearly important that LG moves in this new broader direction when the product range is right to do so. I dont think were far off being at that stage.

On the F2400 Barton commented: Its the first time anyone has seen this handset in black. The grey variant has just launched on Orange but were talking to the market about the black one across the board. We want it to be an open-market variant.

See Barton interview page 26

The woman allegedly used a false name and identification in an attempt to connect a Nokia 6680 to 3s Talk and Text 900 plan. Phone Doctors and 3 are putting together a case in order to prosecute.

Faisal Sheikh manager of Phone Doctors was alerted when he recognised the name she was using.

I recognised her as someone who had been in the previous week but she told me it was her first time in the store and that I was mistaken.

When I asked her for identification she produced a bank statement and a passport.

When I saw the passport I recognised her name instantly. I had been clawed back on a connection on the same tariff but with the Motorola E1000 by a customer with the same name at my London Bridge store on January 26.

While I was gathering the proofs for this connection two more connections on the same tariff – both Nokia 6680s – were made under the same name but in my Victoria store.

I asked my staff to start putting her connection through then I called Hugh Symons and the police from my basement repairs lab. After an hour-and-a-half she was arrested. Her name was not the same as on the passport and bank statement.

Hugh Symons told Sheikh that 14 connections had been obtained under her name through its dealers. He added: The networks need to provide us with better security in the connection process.

Hugh Symons sales manager Angie Simpson said:

We are putting information together so that 3 and Phone Doctors can prosecute. It would be nice to see something happen so that the networks could prosecute more easily.

Dealers reputations are at risk. We have to make sure that we can help them as much as we can. There is often a pattern to this kind of fraudulent activity and we look to warn dealers that are in the local area. The important thing is to pick it up as quickly as we can and flag it up to dealers.

The schemes were brought to his attention during his appearances on the new BBC2 reality TV show Dragons Den in which budding entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of possible investors including Jones.

Jones reckons he took 100 calls from ideas people in the week since the first episode aired and 10 calls from within the mobile phone sector. He is holding talks with two mobile phone entrepreneurs as a result.

Its very much based around stirring entrepreneurial spirit in the UK said Jones of Dragons Den.

There are a lot of budding entrepreneurs out there and this is a chance for them to pitch their ideas and maybe get some funding.

There are several ideas that I do actually invest in during the course of the series. I invested 75000 in an umbrella dispensing machine in the first episode and well over 100000 in a couple of other ideas. More than half of them are going extremely well but we finished filming a little over a month ago so its still early days Jones added.

For me its about real business ideas being thrown about and the opportunity to invest in them. Its also about being on TV and putting Phones International on the map.

The next episode of Dragons Den the third of six airs next Tuesday (January 18) at 8pm.

The thief used the phone to call overseas sex lines but managed to remain undetected because the handsets owner a woman named Bonnie So did not even realise the phone had been stolen.

The mix-up happened when So bought a new Vodafone contract handset while she was still in contract on her old handset.

Rather than use both phones she simply diverted calls from the old handset to the new one.

So had no idea the old phone was even missing until she started getting suspicious calls asking for Kenny.

She notified the police and Vodafone which suspended the line but got an unpleasant surprise when her phone bill came in a few weeks later with a whopping 15312 balance.

Vodafone said she was liable for the costs as she had failed to inform the network of the lost handset soon enough according to the terms of her contract.

However she complained to consumer magazine Which?. After the magazine took up her case the operator eventually had a change of heart and agreed to foot the cost of the bill itself.

A Vodafone spokesman confirmed that the customer was technically liable but that the operator had relented because it accepted that it should have noticed the unusually high spend.

We will look at these things on a case by case basis he said.

This certainly served as a lesson to us and as a result we have tightened up our procedures on credit to make sure this kind of high spend couldnt go undetected again in the future.

The spokesman stressed that it is a customers responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being of their phone.

What is important is that we mustnt set a precedent whereby customers think Vodafone is responsible for their call spend.