Staff Reporter

The hope is that the new centre will enable 3 to resolve customer queries more quickly. The new unit will employ 40 staff .

Mehran Mehmood director of Wimbledon-based dealership Fonevision commented:

Its something the network had to do. Customers complain that the customer service is poor all the time. The people in India do their best but if you dont speak very clearly they dont understand. So its about time – 3 has come good.

Ellis Dunning the director of Talksense in Borehamwood was also pleased about the news.

Its excellent he said.

The team in India are getting better and dealing with issues more quickly as they gain more experience and knowledge. But this is a big step forward.

Its great news for us but it would be good if they set up a call centre for the customers as well.

Speaking at a dealer event in central London last month (see Page 27) 3 UK sales director Marc Allera said 3 commissioned quarterly surveys and performed extremely well in every area except customer service.

Two new dealer incentives also launch this month.

Prize draws will be held on a weekly basis with each sale of a 3 handset equating to a raffle ticket and winners taking home a variety of unspecified electronic kit.

Also up for grabs are around 100 skiing trips in the new year based on the volume of sales up to Christmas.

3 also said that it would launch a basic business package to help dealers sign small businesses to the network and at least eight new handsets will be made available before Christmas.

3 will launch a no-frills proposition aimed at the small business market place this year some time.

Called The Real Business it will be based on current price plans but will include extra dealer support one part of which is the new customer service team in Glasgow.

New credit checking and registration processes for small business customers will be put in place as well

(See full report P27).

Vodafone service provider Enable Communications (for-merly WaveTech) has been bought by Centrica as part of a 43 million deal. No changes will be made to Enable Communications staff or premises. Centricas telecoms division One.Tel which has an existing customer base of 1.1 million will acquire 10000 mobile customers 238000 residential fixed-line customers and 11000 business fixed-line customers following the takeover.

Centrica Telecommunications has around 1.5 million customer accounts under the One.Tel and British Gas Communications brands.

Asif Aziz head of voice services at Centrica subsidiary One.Tel said:

Weve bought Telco Holdings and all the companies within that including all their customers assets and capabilities. The name Enable Communications will continue to operate.

Centrica acquired Enable Communications parent company Telco Holdings last week for 43 million in cash.

Centrica has also taken on 1.2 million of debt. Vodafone has transferred Enables SP licence to Centrica which will run the mobile division exactly as it was under its former parent company.

A Vodafone statement said: Vodafone has agreed to transfer the SP licence to Centrica based on the strength of the strategic relationship already exists between Centrica and Vodafone and assurances that Centrica will maintain the SP business at its current level.

Sir Roy Gardner chief executive of Centrica said: This acquisition will enable us to reinforce One.Tel as the major alternative for BT customers and support our efforts in the B2B market.

Enfield-based Telco Global Group was set up in 1996 and provides fixed and mobile telecoms and Internet to residential and business customers. Telco is also a major distributor of international pre-paid phone cards.

And big grovels to T-Mobile and The Carphone Warehouse who won the Network Caller and Mystery Shop that week and didnt have their week of first place glory publicised.

Our impressive screw-up was even more galling for Carphone Warehouse whose sales star Miah garnered an unprecedented 100 per cent score of 30 points out of 30.

If youd like to see an Acrobat PDF of the articles e-mail us at editorial@mobilenewscwp.co.uk.

MoCo Business part of dealer distributor MoCo Cell Link is on the recruitment hunt after signing up to be a 3 direct dealer. Said MoCo director of business sales Dave Burrell:

We were previously putting all our 3 connections through Unique Air but weve seen a real change in 3. The network has got over its initial teething troubles and presents an attractive option for us right now. Our main push will be through our telesales department which sells directly to consumers. 3s tariffs are very competitive and it should do well for us.

MoCo Businesss field sales division is pulling in around 2500 connections a month.

We have just clinched a deal for 400 connections for a building company in the north.

MoCo Business won part of the Governments Central Buying Consortium (CBC) contract in May and says that it has now landed around 7000 of the 14000 possible connections despite competition from the other two CBC bid-winners T-Mobile and O2.

We are now the largest connector of BlackBerrys for O2 said Burrell. We have just connected 300 BlackBerrys for the CBC alone and are trialling them with other 3G services.