The BlackBerry 7100v which has been designed in conjunction with Research in Motion will hit channels on October 1. Pricing will be similar to a voice-only phone with only one monthly access charge. Without voice it will cost 82.50 and have a monthly e-mail charge of 15.74 subject to a fair use policy of 6MB. On BlackBerry Anytime 100 it costs 82.50 with a monthly e-mail charge of 12.77 and a monthly voice charge of 18.72 (with 100 inclusive minutes).

The independent dealership beat off stiff competition including companies such as John Lewis and David Lloyd Leisure.

Caudwell Group chairman John Caudwell last week announced a new 5 million Phones 4U training academy.

The academy will be located on purpose-built premises in the Midlands and provide existing and new staff with customer and sales training. Caudwell also said at a Phones 4U staff conference in Coventry that he would make 500000 available to staff in customer service incentives.

Caudwell has recruited Bill Tolmie former head of training at Singlepoint to head up the new academy.

At the time of going to press final details had still not been revealed.

Phones 4U managing director Peter Green said: Its still a very new concept. Obviously the major relationship with the customer is had by the staff inside the stores. The aim of the academy is to continue to develop and enhance the people we have in the business and their ability to do a great job and realise their full potential.

The announcement comes on the back of Phones 4Us new 10 million advertising campaign created by 118 118 agency WCRS.

It features a fast-talking idiosyncratic American called Jack Marshall who demonstrates the problems people have when buying a mobile phone. The ad campaign comes after a 12-month customer service drive by the company. Phones 4U claims it will have recruited 500 new staff by Christmas and put 3500 others through training.

Caudwell said:

This campaign marks the start of efforts to cement significant recent improvements and build on them.

The Nokia shipment has never been recovered.

Lee Hadley 37 was the front man for a gang that organised the theft of a shipment of Nokias when they arrived at the airport aboard a flight from Madrid on October 3 2001.

Hadley of Cranford Close Stanwell collected the consignment using forged paperwork and identity documentation his five-day trial learned in July.

He was found guilty of obtaining the property by deception.

Hadley was not seen by police for some months and two earlier trials were aborted for various legal reasons.

Jailing him Judge Sam Katkhuda told him:

There is no doubt other people were involved and have not been caught. The stolen goods have never been recovered.

The consignment of mobile phones had been transferred from Madrid to Heathrow and that shipment was to be collected by Interken. But those goods were collected before the driver could get to United Airways to collect them. He continued: The person who collected them used notes and identity card. Nine skips of electrical goods worth 280000 were stolen and never recovered. That person was you.

This is made a little more serious by the fact that it was something that was obviously carefully planned. It was well-organised and it was well carried out the judge said.

The result is a tremendous loss to the firm that was expecting to receive these goods. You must understand that it is inevitable that for this sort of offence there must be a custodial sentence he concluded.

Earlier defence counsel Don Rogers said that Hadleys family had been devastated by what happened. He is not a career criminal with only two previous convictions.

Their jobs will be outsourced in future as part of a three-year campaign to make the company more efficient.

The redundancies make up more than two per cent of Vodafones total UK workforce of 9150.

The cuts were ordered by Vodafone UK CEO Bill Morrow who has been examining the business top to bottom in the six months he has been in the job.

A Vodafone spokesperson said:

We are operating in a very competitive market in the UK shaped by external factors such as regulation. It means we have to be very cost-conscious. We discovered we have duplication.

The spokesperson added: The staff are likely to leave the business by December. We will outsource work that is not core to the site or which Vodafone employees are not best at.

Staff have been offered the statutory redundancy package and assistance from on-site careers advisers.

Prints will be signed by the celebrities and auctioned on eBay with proceeds going to childrens charity Cancer & Leukaemia in Childhood research fund (CLIC).

Samsung launched the Elect programme two years ago to reach out to dealers and provide them with constructive continual support that is relevant and useful from training through to the point of sale.

There were tough market conditions – the independent sector was struggling to compete against the high-street multiples said Simon Walsh Samsung Mobile UK head of retail and distribution.

There was an increasing diversity of routes to market diminishing support for independents a lack of consistent support and a lack of direct contact with manufacturers. Samsung Elect was about bridging that gap.

Director of Samsung Mobile UK Mark Mitchinson said that the second phase has come about because Samsung Mobile had grown in reputation market share strength and stature placing it at the forefront of both the national and global mobile marketplace.

Mitchinson claimed that Samsung had raised the bar in handset design and was now going to do the same for dealer education and development.

We are offering a constant support channel for the dealer community that is radical reliable informative and user-friendly rather than sporadic and dated. Independent dealers can benefit from a two-way channel that offers product information advice education and incentives and also allows them opportunities to air their views.

Mitchinson went on to say that Samsung took the protection and support of the retailer community very seriously. According to the manufacturer feedback from UK dealers was crucial in shaping the next phase of the Elect programme.

Phase two sees the launch of a revamped dealer website that has so far cost 1 million. This will give access to products accessories point-of-sale material and marketing campaigns. There will be downloadable TV and press adverts high-resolution product images and online ordering.

Walsh said the investment in the project was huge and the manufacturer would be putting a further 1.1 million into the Elect programme over the next 12 months.

We closed down our previous website two months ago. The new site is Samsungelect.co.uk. This will be the primary source of communication and will provide the most reliable and up-to-date information immediately.

The site will also contain information about Elect Rewards which will allow dealers to earn reward points and redeem them against a variety of business-related Samsung products such as handsets monitors printers and laptops.

Elect Rewards works on a points system whereby dealers get 10 points for every Samsung customer they connect and register to the Samsung Fun Club.

According to Walsh there are extra points to be earned for hitting monthly and annual targets. There is also the opportunity to earn extra points if the dealer becomes a Samsung Elect Plus member.

The target we are setting for dealers is 10 Fun Club connections which is easy said Walsh. If they hit this every month over the year they would earn 5000 reward points which could be redeemed for 2000 worth of equipment including a TFT flat-screen TV a laser printer a digital camera and a display unit.

There is no limit to the number points they can earn and redeem against a number of products. Dealers at the roadshows say this is the first scheme of its kind.

For the second phase of Elect Samsung has also beefed up its online training.

Samsung UK training manager Sam Woolhouse explained that there are two sections on the web site. One will feature information about new handsets that dealers and novice sales people can access to familiarise themselves with kit before it goes on sale.

The site will also host online exams to test dealers about their product knowledge. A single training session should only take a maximum of five minutes to complete.

Walsh believed phase two of Elect would be a hit with dealers.

Im sure Elect will prove to be very popular among dealers he said. When we launched Samsung Elect no one was paying attention to the indies. Phase two takes this attention to a different level.

Other manufacturers have tried to follow us. Siemens has quite an attractive website giving dealers basic information.

But it seems to be more about PR than substance.

We are listening to what the independent channel wants and we are meeting their needs. Elect is a work in progress. Nothing is fixed. We will amend and change it when we get feedback.

The global trade association represents more than 660 GSM mobile operators serving some 1.1 billion users across 208 countries and territories.

GSMA aims to drive success for our operator members said GSMA CEO Rob Conway. With its insight into mobile handsets Nokia can make a major contribution to the success of many of our initiatives.

The dispute is now settled said Sendo CEO Hugh Brogan. There is a monetary compensation to Microsoft which has relinquished its four per cent stake in the company and will no longer be a shareholder nor have any activity with Sendo.

Sendo formed a partnership with Microsoft in 2001 to develop the Windows-based Z100 smartphone. At the end of 2002 Sendo said Microsoft took information gained during the development of the Z100 and passed it to Taiwanese company HTC. HTC then developed Oranges SPV in partnership with Microsoft. The doomed Z100 never made it to market.

Just over a year ago Sendo said it was suing Orange as the circuit board of the SPV smartphone allegedly infringed a Sendo patent. The action was dropped after Sendo sold a number of its patents and intellectual property rights to computer company Texas Instruments.

Brogan said: We set out to defend our intellectual property and right the wrongs against us. We would have preferred to have brought the Z100 to market but weve moved on.

O2 says it has lost 2 million in revenues after billing 125000 customers up to two-and-a-half months late.

The network has been migrating customers to a new billing system over the past three years. But it hadnt charged 125000 customers for calls and data transferral beyond their regular monthly fees between July and early October this year.

O2 has advised incorrectly billed customers they will be charged for the discrepancy at a discounted rate. The discount will cost O2 2 million. A payment plan will be offered to people struggling to repay the backlog.

We didnt charge 125000 customers for calls that were made outside of their bundles said a spokesman for O2.

We have now identified the error sent out a letter and offered a 25 per cent discount on those calls as a goodwill gesture. We havent over- or under-billed anyone. We have just been late with processing the bills.

The spokesman said that O2 admitted the gaffe was a random hiccup.

He said: We have fixed the problem and re-processed the bills. It affects less than one per cent of ourcustomer base.

As part of total revenues of 4.5 billion it is relatively small. We admit there was a problem. But it is now fixed. It is a massive three-year programme to migrate everyone on to the modern new system.

We have many customers and there is a high degree of complexity. But we certainly wouldnt expect this to happen again.

O2 expects to complete the migration towards the end of next year.