Staff Reporter

From November 1 Shebang is paying 30 commission to its dealers for each new connection to the Severn Trent Telecoms service.

Shebang managing director Iain Humphrey has been trialling the service through retail chain Go Mobile for three months and reckons he has added 200 new connections per month.

It is an additional income for dealers at no extra cost to them said Humphrey. It is another communications service that independent dealers can offer to their clientele. We have been connecting through our own retail stores and have been adding in excess of 200 connections per month across the whole group.

Shebang saves up to 1300 per quarter on phone bills too. We felt it was a great proposition for dealers. Were offering upfront commissions to dealers who give customers the opportunity to save on BT bills.

Shebang and Severn Trent Telecoms are offering three landline tariffs: 4.99 per month for unlimited off-peak calls to local and national landline numbers; 12.99 per month for unlimited anytime calls to landline numbers; and a 25 monthly business tariff per line for anytime calls to all landline numbers.

Humphrey claims customers will also save up to 25 per cent on their BT bill for calls to mobile phones. It is not a contract-based service so customers are free to exit from the deal when they like.

Shebang is offering the package to dealers that have already signed up to its Sellfone 3G stock-auditing system from November 1. It will make it available to its entire dealer base from January 1 and hopes to introduce ongoing revenues within six months.

Ahuja made the statement at the European Technology Roundtable Exhibition in Cannes two weeks ago (Mobile News October 15). Since then 3G manufacturers have remained strangely reluctant to comment about the alleged problems of overheating.

Major 3G handset manufacturer NEC declined to comment at all. Samsung also remained quiet on the subject. Motorola was one of the few manufacturers to raise its head above the parapet.

In response to the furore Motorola marketing director James King said:

All Motorola handsets are designed and manufactured to strict industry and internal standards and are rigorously tested. As part of the process of launching any new product we work with our network partners to ensure that we meet all approval process and test requirements.

Nokia director of corporate communications Mark Squires was also unusually shy merely stating:

This is not a problem that affects or has affected any of our 3G products so we do not feel we can comment further.

Siemens refused to be drawn into the debate. Siemens brand marketing manager Chris George remarked:

Im going to refrain from commenting because we are not really involved in this sector as yet.

From a 3G perspective we have only had the U15 – which was essentially a Motorola chipset not a true Siemens product. I dont think it would be too fair for us to weigh in with a comment.

He added: We wont be launching any more 3G handsets until next year.

LG general manager of communications Andrew Mullen backed up previous comments by LG marketing manager John Bernard who said he didnt know what Ahuja meant by overheating and that LG handsets do not get too hot.

Mullen said: Mobile phones get hot because everything that requires power heats up to a degree. But our phones certainly dont overheat. So this is not an issue for us and we dont believe its an industry issue either.

Reactions from Oranges rival networks were also muted although a 3 spokesperson said: There are teething problems when you launch any new network – we know from experience. However 3 now has well over a million customers on its network and a choice more than seven handsets with more to come this year. This just shows Orange has got a lot more work to do.

T-Mobile UK managing director Brian McBride dismissed Ahujas claims altogether however. He said he had not come across any overheating 3G handsets.

Ive been trialling a few devices. I havent found that theyve been overheating. The main things I noticed is that you dont get great battery life and the handsets are slightly larger than 2.5G handsets.

An O2 spokesman said: We are undertaking ongoing trials with a variety of 3G handsets. We have not had any issues with handsets overheating.

Vodafone declined to comment:

We cant comment about something which wasnt said by us or about us regarding a service which we have yet to launch said a spokesperson.

Virgin Mobile was also reluctant to speak out: We havent made any announcement about 3G services or handsets yet and do not wish to get drawn into a debate on the merits of other networks handsets or services in the meantime said a Virgin Mobile press officer.

O2 said that it had disconnected 100 Expansys customers after Expansys failed to pay its bills. Expansys denied that it was late with its payments but confirmed that its customers had been disconnected for a brief period.

O2 said that it re-connected the customers the next day after Expansys made the relevant payment but has refused to renew its contract with the retailer beyond February 2005.

However the Manchester dealer claimed that it had itself taken the decision to terminate the relationship with O2.

Expansys managing director Roger Butterworth said: There is absolutely no truth in the rumours whatsoever. We were a virtual service provider for O2 but it didnt suit our business. We switched from a service provider relationship to a reseller one.

Our business is pan-European and O2 couldnt provide us with that capability. O2 cant even offer service to us in Ireland.

A hundred customers were cut off when the contract finished because O2 cut them off at about 5pm. We couldnt get them reconnected until the next morning.

But O2 claimed it was not sorry that the relationship ended.

Expansys is a very small reseller not a service provider of O2 with fewer than 700 O2 customers said a spokesperson.

We informed Expansys last February that we would not renew its current contract. This was part of a strategy to reduce small resellers and focus on more strategic partnerships the spokesperson continued.

Butterworth said this was O2 putting its own spin on it.

The agreement was as a virtual service provider he said. We sent out bills on Expansys paper. O2 billed us.

The decision to stop that relationship was made in June not in February. How O2 chooses to represent it is its own business. It was a business that didnt work for us and we took the decision to end it.

Butterworth added: We now have deals to act as a reseller for Vodafone Orange and T-Mobile alongside our regular business of selling phones. The fact that we are still a reseller for O2 is just a vestige of the virtual service provider relationship we had before.

Joint-branded areas will offer Nokia camera phones and printers to print out photos taken with them.

The concept was trialled in the Tottenham Court Road High Street Kensington and Leicester branches of Boots. The scheme will be rolled out to 50 more stores by mid-November.

Handsets stocked include the Nokia 6600 6670 7610 and upcoming 6630. Nokia imaging business manager Mirko Aksentijevi commented:

This is a step forward for the mobile imaging market. Boots is the ideal partner to bring mobile imaging to the mass market.

The commercials will be seen in the UK to support Virgin Mobile Bundles a range of products offering customers a selection of voice minutes text messages and picture messages.

The ads were directed by Bryan Buckley who directed the Christina Aguilera The Devil Makes Work For Idle Thumbs commercial.

Virgin claims its the first network to allow unused minutes and messages to carry over for another month.

The Japanese authorities want prepay phone sales stopped on the basis that they aid criminal activity. Pre-pay comprises 10 per cent of Vodafones 15 million customer base in Japan.

Paolo Pescatore senior analyst at International Data Corporation said:

It would certainly put a spanner in the works because Vodafone is trying to increase its market share in Japan.

Historically Vodafone has found that market pretty tough. Pre-pay has greatly contributed to the growth of the mobile market as a whole so any ruling like this would be an inhibitor to adoption.

If pre-pay makes up just 10 per cent of its market share over there then it would not be the be-all and end-all but it would mean that Vodafone has to be more competitive in other areas to draw customers.

Japanese MPs could vote to ban pre-pay phones during the current parliamentary session. It is thought more likely that MPs will turn in a more lenient ruling instead however.

Pescatore added: There is a lot of concern about pre-pay in Europe as well. Carriers are encouraging customers with 10 and 20 extra airtime to register their details when they sign for pre-pay.

In Italy pre-pay customers have to register their name and address with identification.

Vodafone senior group communications director Jon Earl commented:

Its not clear that legislation in Japan will be enacted on this basis. We are only at the proposal stage. It is too early to say which way the market will go. We just have to follow the proposal.

Vodafones rival in Japan NTT DoCoMo said earlier this month that it is obliged to take a socially responsible action over the matter.

TTG Europe sales and commercial director Graham Pollard and marketing director Ross Sampson resigned last week ahead of yesterdays AGM.

TTG group finance director Julian Synett said:

Ross has been talking to us for some time about the fact that he would like to return to a marketing consultancy position rather than remain on the board full-time.

He came to us as a consultant originally and agreed to go on the board after the reverse takeover 12 months ago. Graham has been with us for more than two years and has helped us to transform the business. He also wanted to pursue his other interests.

We wont be replacing either of them at board level. We do not see the marketing role as a board position. If we do recruit it wont be to a board position.

Grahams responsibility was as general manager of the Dutch business. Again we will probably look to recruit a country manager but it will not be at board level said Synett

Synett added that TTG is unlikely to recruit for the new positions until the new year.

According to some dealers its keypad dents and loses its sheen.

The V3 has been the subject of much hype in the industry for its sleek design. Motorola has spent 4.5 million on its Q4 advertising campaign with 1 million of that sum devoted to a cinema campaign around its new headline act: the V3 RAZR.

However some dealers with stock of the V3 are experiencing problems and say customers are already returning the handset.

Matt Chambers of The Phone Shop in Welling said:

Weve had quite a few problems with them. The shiny metal keypad seems to react adversely to sweaty fingers.

The metal dulls and looks like aluminium does when it rusts. Also if you press the keys too hard especially with fingernails it dents the metal. After a few weeks they look rubbish. Weve had lots of customers come back to return them.

Mehran Mehmood of Fonevision in Wimbledon was more forgiving however. He said: The camera used to freeze with the first batch we had in and the screen display turned into gibberish. They have sorted that out now. You just have to be gentle with it. Its a novelty phone. It isnt made to be hard-wearing. Its delicate. Drop it and it will break in half.

Motorola marketing manager James King responded: It hasnt been reported back here. These are rumours at this stage so I cant comment. We are selling the product faster than we can get it in. There are a lot of back-orders.

A salesman at the Mobile Phone Centre in Docklands said: It is far too early to say if it has problems. Weve only sold three. Problems with the phones probably stem from the software version and source. We only source UK-specified V3 phones made in Korea or Germany and havent had any problems yet.

Responding to speculation that demand for the V3 would persuade Motorola to reduce the price of the handset to capitalise on the Christmas market King said:

We always said that the V3 would be in limited supply so there should be no surprise that it is scarce. It wont come down in price for Christmas.

We planned it as a premium product. We will review the volume and pricing of the V3 before Christmas in time for next year but we certainly wont see any dramatic change.

20:20 Logistics is currently the only distributor holding the V3 but King says that agreements with Elite Telecom and other distributors will be in place soon.

The tycoon said the abiding memory was of torture and torment with more crashes and punctures and the worst weather he had experienced on a ride.

There were some genuinely scary moments of near misses with artics on a dual carriageway during a very nasty storm in particular said Caudwell.

The riders from the Stoke business fraternity were also hit by a virus that forced them to rest for half a day.

The annual league table ranks the UKs one hundred fastest-growing private companies.

Founded by its managing director Gary Corbett in 2000 Opera Telecoms sales have grown 432 per cent every year from 294000 in 2000 to 44.2 million in 2003.

Opera runs premium-rate phone lines and mobile phone promotions for organisations such as GMTV and Express Newspapers. It recently launched Britains first commercial MMS soap opera FanTESStic about a female DJ working in Ibiza.

Opera Telecom also runs a service texting the storylines of soaps such as Emmerdale and Eastenders and supplies mobile content to Vodafone live! and Virgin Mobile among others.

London-based Isis Telecommunications came 50th in the Fast Track 100 table.

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