Staff Reporter

Indiano Communications of India Vertica Media of Malaysia Greenbay and Quartel of the British Virgin Islands Litmus of Florida and Fast Way Holdings of Croatia received the hefty fines as well as being barred from operating in Britain by Icstis which regulates premium-rate services.

All six firms used Smile Telecom of Bury Lancashire as their British agent. A spokesman for the firm said Smiles only involvement was to put the companies in touch with operators providing premium-rate numbers.

The companies sent out text and voicemail messages telling the recipients that they had won up to 5000 and urging them to call a claims line.

But when recipients called the 1.50-a-minute number their prizes either never turned up or they received vouchers with conditions attached that made them worthless.

Qian Fu Changs Outside The Fortress Besieged which was a big seller in full book form has been cut down to 4200 characters and will be distributed as 60 chapters of 70 characters each.

Qian sold the SMS rights to the tale which is about illicit love among married people for 11100.

The publishers have high hopes for its success: China has 20 million mobile phone users who last year sent 220 billion texts – more than half of the total number sent across the globe.

Vodafone business partnerships manager Jason Rigby has U-turned on his decision to leave the network after 12 years.

Rigby was last week expected to take up his new post as commercial director of b2b service provider Alternative Networks one of his clients.

However an 11th-hour appeal by Vodafone sales head Ken McGeorge to urge him to stay succeeded.

I think they realised the role I had of dealing with service provision is quite specialised. That knowledge base doesnt exist elsewhere in Vodafone. They would have had to recruit externally to replace me and were probably going to have to pay someone else more than they were paying me he told Mobile News.

Theyve offered me the role of head of service provision although its actually the same job. The clincher for me to stay was that I have two young kids settled in school in Newbury. It was worth disrupting that for a move to London when their was a big difference in the packages but not now that the packages are the same.

Alternative Networks chief operating officer Ben Marnham was philosophical about Rigbys decision not to join the company:

We were surprised but its a competitive market and a business reality that happens from time to time he said.

Were headhunting for a new commercial director not necessarily from the telecoms industry. I know it was a difficult decision for Jason to make and that he decided to stay at Vodafone for personal reasons.

Jason and I have a close working relationship. In fact Im having lunch with him next week. The fact that hes not joining us doesnt affect our plans.

Marnham has recently put together a new management team at Alternative Networks with ex-Orange Thailand marketing director Rupert Townsend in a similar role.

Listed in the 2000 2001 and 2002 editions of the Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100 league table Alternative Networks claims to be one of the UKs fastest growing companies. It provides telecoms services for around 3000 small firms.

The company has offices in London Manchester and Bracknell. It was founded in October 1994 by friends Chris Wilson and James Murray and is described as Britains largest independent reseller of telecommunications services.

Weve added more than 1.2 million including Virgin Mobile customers growing our total customer base by almost 20 per cent to more than 14.9 million since the end of June last year said T-Mobile managing director Brian McBride.

Virgin Mobile had 544453 Q1 and Q2 new customer additions. Without the Virgin Mobile additions T-Mobile put on 718547 net new customers.

T-Mobile shouldnt do that anymore – it is very naughty of them to include our figures. Since the break-up of the joint venture we are a separate entity a Virgin Mobile spokesperson told Mobile News.

Weve had an ongoing problem with T-Mobile about this matter. These customers belong to Virgin Mobile but T-Mobile is using them to boost its own customer numbers. This isnt right.

T-Mobile defended its calculations saying the network always included all such wholesale figures.

Wholesale is a big part of our strategy said Elaine Devereux T-Mobile VP of marketing and product PR.

Virgin Mobile is one of our wholesale customers as is BT Telecom and we include wholesale figures in our financials. This is also the case in T-Mobiles operations worldwide. Other networks also include their wholesale figures.

Vodafone for one said it did not include the customers of its wholesale partners in its subscriber figures.

In any event T-Mobiles results show that its base remains largely pre-pay (12 million) with 2.9 million on contract. Around 173000 net new contract subscribers joined in the first half of the year with 114000 signing up in the second quarter.

T-Mobile said it was the clear growth leader in pre-pay with 1.1 million net additions for the half-year (including Virgin Mobile) and 441000 for the second quarter. Contract average revenue per user (ARPU) grew by 2 to 45 per month. Non-voice revenues were 17 per cent of ARPU mainly from music and entertainment downloads.

Over the past couple of years T-Mobile has been driving away the old shadows of One 2 One said Paolo Pescatore senior analyst at IDC. These new figures particularly the number of new customers shows T-Mobile is up there with the big guns.

He went on: In terms of its services T-Mobile has done very well it has pioneered new services in sectors of the market particularly in music that have been very popular among consumers.

Being part of the Freemove Alliance will also help T-Mobiles reputation with corporate customers as it is now part of a much wider pan-European group – the only overlap is that Orange is also a member. T-Mobile seems to be heading in the right direction.

The Freemove Alliance was formed by T-Mobile Orange Telefonica Movile and Telecom Italia Mobile. l T-Mobile business sales director Simon Ainslie has been made head of business sales and indirect sales while online head Gordon Ballantyne is now head of direct sales and T-Mobile retail. Ballantyne worked with T-Mobile MD Brian McBride at Dell Computer.

The moves follow the resignation of consumer sales director Christina Meade.

A T-Mobile spokeswoman commented: The consumer sales director post was not axed. Christina Meade made the decision to resign from T-Mobile. Brian McBride then had to decide how best to replace her and decided that rather than recruit for her specific role he would split her duties between Simon Ainslie and Gordon Ballantyne.

Business sales director Robert Shirley and salesman Ian Muir have set up Communications Solutions Scotland to concentrate solely on business connections.

Shirley claimed a number of Mobile-One clients have now followed him to the new company.

We are doing 150 to 200 connections a month which is OK for a new company. Im happy with the way things are going so far he said.

No one was available from Mobile-One to confirm the current status of the dealership. Managing director Brian Hunter was unavailable for comment and the switchboard line appeared dead.

Mobile-One started as a web-based company offering online consumer connections. It then developed a business-to-business service in 2002 which was headed up by former sales director Robert Shirley who quit two months ago.

The first nail in the coffin was 18 months ago when the networks pulled 40 off commissions said Shirley. This hit the consumer side of Mobile-One hard.

Orange said that it had no wish to do football shirt sponsorship.

The content will include MMS club alerts live match commentary live chats with club representatives match highlights competitions text voting post match reviews and travel and ticket details.

As a result of the partnership the Orange brand will also appear on hoardings and match-day brochures at Chelseas Stamford Bridge stadium.

Chelseas shop will also sell

Orange phones and airtime as well as Chelsea-themed value-added services.

Mark Hird vice-president of

Orange multimedia operations said:

Oranges strategy is less about brand awareness and more about exploiting content and marketing rights to create new experiences for customers. We are already doing similar things with film and music and now were looking at football because its far and away top of our customers list of interests.

We provide services for all different supporters anyway but were now looking to team up with English Premiership sides to provide fans with access to exclusive content. It brings in this instance Chelsea fans closer to the club.

Plans are afoot to strike similar content deals with other Premiership clubs in the next few weeks though Hird refused to disclose which clubs are involved.

Weve been speaking to a lot of Premiership teams and putting across our vision about services and the way that mobile is going said Hird.

Chelsea is the first to bear fruit. We are looking for clubs with a similar ambition. We have no target number in mind. Whether they share our vision will determine the final number of clubs.

Hanson will distribute accessories for mobile phones PDAs and digital cameras to UK companies from RPS Europes new headquarters in Aylesbury Buckinghamshire.

Dealers are looking for other areas to make money on and theres so much crossover between phones PDAs and cameras he said. I want to play as much as I can on the Hanson name because it has such a good reputation within the market. Ora Telecom was the original accessories company.

Initially RPS Europe will distribute a basic range of third-party accessories made in Hong Kong by RPS Industries. Hanson said that the emphasis would be on quality.

Were not doing any original products said Hanson. All the accessories are branded in Hong Kong and made by RPS. There is a lot of cheap rubbish out there. We want to try and position ourselves on the quality side of things.

There are so many instances of dealers buying accessories from Hong Kong which look OK in the catalogue but when they turn up theyre actually pink and work on the wrong voltage.

Were trying to instil a bit of confidence in the quality. Thats very important. Everything has passed quality standards. Were trying not to position the product at the cheap end of the market but launch it as a quality range.

Hanson said that RPS Europe has a stock of universal chargers for digital cameras and video cameras and styluses and screen protectors for a full-range of smartphones and PDAs.

A lot of the networks have warranty problems with phones getting scratched and damaged said Hanson. Dealers can sell screen protectors with smartphones for 3 and make a nice margin on it.

These chargers work on 99 per cent of digital and video cameras. It means dealers only have one product to put on display.

Were looking at different products that are slightly outside the phone market because there is so much crossover now. Phones are getting so small that people like to have them around their necks in a pouch. So were looking at slightly different types of retail outlet as well such as Top Shop.

RPS Europe will distribute to the networks and larger retailers to begin with. Much of its stock will be sourced direct from Hong Kong because the cost is lower and it is more convenient.

A leather phone case in the UK costs about 2. To buy it direct from Hong Kong costs a few pence. It is very attractive to trade direct with Hong Kong. The big advantage that we have is that RPS Industries has been around since 1996 and is a trustworthy company.

Malcolm Hanson retired from the business sedveral years ago after selling Ora to a management buyout consortium. He is now semi-retired and serves as a magistrate.

They will also be able to download full-length tracks to their phone without the need for a separate music-playing device.

The new services follow deals with multimedia developer Bounce Technology and music download supplier Chaoticom.

The Bounce system is called Fireplayer and uses the phone keys as a virtual mixing desk. Chaoticoms Music Player software lets full-length tracks be downloaded to a phone.

Downloaded tracks for Fireplayer will cost 3.50. Each downloaded song on Music Player will cost from 1.50 and the service offers more than 200 artists to choose from.

New artists and tracks will be added constantly.

Intek intends to have a retail presence of 40 stores in the southwest of England within the next two years.

Intek will appoint two new corporate sales executives this week. It is also looking to add two more staff to the web sales team and expand its training team. It is in the process of expanding Intek House its headquarters in Paignton Devon to accommodate new personnel and future appointments.

Intek MD Manny Hussain commented: I have interviewed heavily over the past several weeks to fill 10 positions.

We want to expand our retail base and establish ourselves as a substantial regional retailer. We need to have a presence in certain towns in the south-west of England in which we dont exist at present.

Intek which was in the running to buy fellow south-west dealership WestTalk before JAG took it over will consider buying out other retail chains to expand its presence according to Hussain.

If a company like WestTalk came along in the future we would consider a bid provided the money and the timing was right he said.

Users take a picture and add text. The picture is then transformed into a normal postcard and sent to the recipient. Both networks charge 1.50 per card plus the cost of the MMS. Images and text are checked for decency before being processed.

The Vodafone live! postcard service become available to its customers this week. Just like the service available to O2 customers it enables users to create and send a postcard without having to go to the local gift shop buy a stamp or even find a post box.

O2 said it was flattered by Vodafones response to its own postcard service:

It confirms there is a demand to turn photo messages into mementos. Over the summer we have seen a big increase in usage of our service as customers share their holiday moments in a more permanent way said an O2 spokesperson.

Vodafone promises delivery within two to three days. O2 aims to send the postcard out by first-class post the same day it is sent by the user.

A Vodafone spokesman said:

We produce services for our customers needs in the same way that O2 provided a pay-as-you-go service to its customers following Vodafones lead.