Thats the view of Superintendent Eddie Thomson head of the National Mobile Phone Crime Unit (NMPCU).

The NMPCU in partnership with the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum (MICAF) has been campaigning to get an amendment brought into the Mobile Telephones (Reprogramming) Act 2002 for some time.

A bill was proposed to go through but got waylaid because of the general election.

Now it is back appearing this time as a subsidiary to the forthcoming violent crime bill meaning it could become legislation in a matter of weeks rather than months.

The current act makes it punishable by up to five years imprisonment to reprogram offer to reprogram or be in possession of equipment that would facilitate the reprogramming of a handsets IMEI number.

However Thomson says that although the act has gone a long way in helping the NMPCU to target and catch perpetrators as it stands each arrest has involved a lengthy police sting to ensure a successful conviction.

At the moment just offering or agreeing to reprogram a phone is not enough to get a conviction – we have to prove that the person had the capability to do that.

So its a case that we have to actually catch them in the act. We want the offer to be the crime.

Thomson draws comparisons with the current laws on ticket touting and drugs.

It is an offence to sell or offer to sell tickets unless you are licensed. Therefore if an illegal tout offers you a ticket he can be convicted whether or not he even had a ticket for sale on him.

Those same laws apply with drugs – just the offer to supply drugs is unlawful and we would like to see the same thing happening with the doctoring of stolen mobile phones. That way we would not have to spend so long on each case.

So far the NMPCU has carried out more than 200 successful operations.

But Thomson is convinced that if the amendment was in place this number would be significantly higher.

Weve carried out more than 200 operations but they have been resource-intensive he explained.

The change would allow us to carry out even more operations with those same resources.

MICAF chief executive Jack Wraith added: The efforts of the NMPCU in tackling this sort of crime has had a very positive impact since it was set up.

We have seen that year-on-year mobile phone crime has been driven down.

But if we can get measures in place to mean that the offices are using their time as effectively as possible that can only mean further reductions in this area which is great for the entire industry.

This is something we have pushed for and we are glad to see that ministers accept the need for action and recognise that changes to the current legislation are necessary.

Images of the devices have already appeared on the Internet. The Zoe handset is expected to retail for around $200 ( 110) and the Ellen will be $350 according to reports carried on the Internet.

We havent announced any products with those names so I cant say a lot about them commented Sony Ericsson marketing manager Richard Dorman.

Nothing that weve launched to date has fitted into that profile but as we have seen in the past months and years the whole area of pricing is absolutely key to driving the market.

Dorman acknowledged that Sony Ericsson had responded to the huge growth in pre-pay by launching the K300 and J300 handsets.

It is an area in which we havent been strong to date because of the legacy of the joint-venture he conceded. But cost is key and we are continually looking at it.

He added: From the products we have announced to date it is clear what our strategy is going forward – imaging music and entertainment. We have now launched the K750 and the W800 will be available in August.

We are launching handsets at a lower price point already. The K300 and J300 are available on pre-pay now.

Previously our products have appeared at that price point only towards the end of their lifespan said Dorman.

Sony Ericsson will be launching a range of handsets and accessories in London on June 13.

Customers can opt to try the service for a fortnight or have up to 25 voicemails converted.

SpinVox offers next-generation speech-to-text services for mobile phones. Users voicemails are delivered directly to their mobile phone through a SpinVox integrated push technology platform.

SpinVox won the Best Innovative Service category at the Mobile News Awards 2005 while CEO Christina Domecq has been nominated as a finalist for the 2005 UK Technology Innovation and Growth Award in the Technology Entrepreneur of the Year category.

SpinVox has also attracted the attention of some of the largest high street mobile retailers and distributors and has already signed deals with The Carphone Warehouse The Link KJC Mobile Phones and Hugh Symons.

4U Business head of marketing Peter Haddock said: In a fast moving business environment our customers needs are always changing and we reflect this by expanding and updating our products and services to ensure weve got the right offering for them.

He added: We are confident that SpinVoxs voicemail-to-text service is going to be very popular with 4U Business customers saving them valuable time and money while increasing their productivity.

Above all SpinVox makes voicemail simpler and more effective for both caller and recipient.

Deals will replicate those on offer through its direct retail outlets at Superdrug stores and through its direct telesales channel.

A 3 spokesperson said:

It should launch in the next two weeks. We have a great high street presence already and we have been doing sales direct over the phone for some time.

This is a natural extension of that. A lot of our subscriber base falls into the 18- to 30-year-old age bracket which is very comfortable with browsing and buying online.

The networks online sales pages will be accessible through its website.

On the high street however 3 has quashed rumours that it has bought up retail space from estate agents to extend its direct retail presence.

There is no truth in it. We are not looking at new retail space said the spokesperson.

The 3G network last week launched its cartoon Critters into cyberspace on the new version of MSN Messenger.

This enables users to view animations as well as text and still pictures. 3s Critters are available as emoticons and wallpapers.

The launch forms part of an integrated advertising campaign on MSN and includes banner advertising.

Its about getting people to engage with the brand. It is a good way to reach out to the relevant tech-savvy audience said the 3 spokesperson.

Prior to this people used to send smiley faces on Messenger. Now they can send dancing pandas with angry faces.

Nash spent eight years with Ericsson as UK and Ireland sales director before moving to Generation Telecom to head up the UK service providers sales and marketing activities.

I am still finding my feet but there is huge potential here commented Nash. I was looking for the right opportunity in mobile following the takeover of Generation Telecom by Vodafone.

Elite is a very strong distributor with more than 10 years experience in the industry. It has key agreements in place with all the top manufacturers and has just secured a contract for Vodafone pre-pay.

The new positions are based at the new Phones 4U headquarters in Newcastle.

Phones 4U is pushing for the top spot through its reputation for customer excellence. John Caudwell sees it as very important said a spokesperson for the company.

We are looking for a mix of in-bound and out-bound sales executives as well as customer care agents and new additions to the written complaints team.

According to the spokesperson this represents the next phase of the companys customer excellence initiative.

We have already recruited staff for the shop floor. This is the next stage of recruitment of customer service staff.

Phones 4U is understood to be paying new staff 20000 a year plus commission.

All 70 companies will now be sent a document outlining physical and environmental constraints.

T-Mobile UK managing director Brian McBride has criticised the proposed timescale and process.

McBride also expressed concern about the need to simplify the process and ensure it does not become too complex or expensive.

Vodafone pre-pay customers can now choose text packs for 5 15 or 20 giving them 200 500 or 675 text per month respectively. Pre-pay voice packs are available at 15 for 100 voice minutes per month and 25 for 200 minutes. Voice and text packs can run concurrently.

Until this week Vodafone customers received a daily number of texts and talk-time for a monthly fee losing them if they werent used each day.

A spokesman for Vodafone said: The new packs allow customers to use their text allocation at any time in the 30-day period.

The range of options available has also increased and voice packs as well as text have been added. The packs expire every 30 days and you can either choose to renew or let the pack expire. It offers more flexibility in how people use their phone.

The voice packs are also available with Vodafones Stop The Clock offer which gives customers 60 minutes talk-time for the price of three minutes on evenings and at weekends. A 15 pack could yield 33 hours of talk-time with Stop The Clock.

Thirty-day voice packs are available on Smartplus while the 30-day text packs are available on all pay-as-you-go price plans.

The move comes barely two months after Snook resigned as chairman of The Carphone Warehouse.

He replaces Lord Baker of Dorking who has stepped down from the role.

As non-executive chairman Snook will make strategic decisions but will not be responsible for the day-to-day running of the company.

This is an extremely exciting period in the development of the mobile phone entertainment sector he said.

The mobile phone is becoming a very sophisticated entertainment device a device that will in time rival portable music players such as the iPod. Over the next few years we will see this sector grow tremendously.

MonsterMob delivers 20 million downloads of mobile content each month It operates in 18 countries and is actively seeking opportunities in others.

See Business Watch page 16

Carphone Warehouse CEO Charles Dunstone said: Its no coincidence that weve chosen today to launch our new Fresh tariffs. The mobile phone business is not an airline business. The cost of phones and calls has been falling every year for the 15 years weve been in existence. There is a big market for simple low-cost no-frills everyday calls. Weve helped create it. Were the price and service leader. Well stay that way.

In the days following the launch of easyMobile Virgin Mobile issued a press release detailing the catches it had uncovered in the easyMobile offering. Consumer gotchas included a demand to spend 5 every three months or face a 75p per month standing charge and a 5 handling fee to leave the service. The facility to become overdrawn by up to 10 leads to a 50p text alerting customers to the fact and there are charges for voicemail retrieval.

Perhaps the biggest catch of all though is that easyMobile charges customers to top up. Its 1 a pop using the customer service centre or 40p if you do it electronically.

In the name of research we enrolled for easyMobile the day its website went live. Imagine my surprise to receive an e-mail from easyMobile CEO Frank Rasmussen a week later responding to the Virgin Mobile charges and offering a cut-price introductory tariff (see news page x).

Analysts Strand Consult think the spat will have several long-term effects. Unlocking phones will become a national pastime. An increased focus on cost per minute – hinted at in Dunstones rallying call – will mean that the best pre-pay customers will switch to web based MVNOs.

Strand Consult believes – perhaps a little unrealistically – that Virgin Mobile will launch a me-too copy of easyMobiles web-based offering which will strengthen the hand of both companies.

What of the traditional network operators? Two things might happen. Subsidised pre-pay handsets may eventually disappear much to the relief of all concerned. And the mass desertion of pre-pay customers foreseen in Strand Consults scenario will allow the operators to concentrate their efforts on rewarding high-spending contract customers.

And then there are the persistent rumours that Vodafone is planning to dip its toe in the MVNO market through an alliance with Asda.

No sooner had the ripples subsided from Franks e-mail (sent at 13:36 on Thursday 17 March) than a press release from The Carphone Warehouse landed in the editorial in-box at 16:03 the same afternoon announcing cuts to the cost of mobile calls and text messages on Fresh to 5p for all calls and 1.7p for all texts.

Dunstone noted: We made a commitment to customers that Fresh will always be the price leader and we are honouring that. In addition Fresh offers customers a personal service plus a great choice of handsets. This is all without the hidden costs that easyMobile launched with.

Industry analysts suggest that in the short term at least. Virgin Mobile will suffer most at the hands of easyMobile.

Simon East founder of the mobile photo-upload software provider Cogima commented: Virgin needs to decide whether it wants to be a cost-driven MVNO or if it would be better offering an end-to-end service going head-to-head on handset prices and slogging it out in the market as a real network.

Historically MVNOs have not been given full access to the data services offered by the parent network. EasyMobile is following that trend by differentiating on price. It is not interested in providing higher-end data services. Its selling SIMs not phones.

MVNOs are predominantly marketing outfits East observes and they trade on their brands with a value proposition.

The challenge for the established network operators is to come up with services that people want to use he said arguing that MMS has been an almost total failure for the networks because it didnt meet basic user needs.

I hope that networks will take the activity in the MVNO space as their cue to go out and do some basic customer research to find out what their customers want to do with the technology that is available.

Virgin Mobile corporate affairs director Steven Day doesnt see his network falling victim to easyMobiles success. I dont know who is going to be affected most – I guess there will probably be some impact across the board he said.

The Virgin Mobile brand is rock solid and has mass-market appeal. Easy has a good brand but just doesnt have our presence.

Day applauded Stelios and Easy for giving it a go however. Its good because their entry will stimulate activity in the market – and whenever that happens Virgin Mobile does well out of it. We dont fear competition. For the past year at least 3 has been chucking the kitchen sink at the market in an attempt to increase its base. Weve continued to grow and we havent been buying customers.

Virgin Mobiles distribution is now widespread with a strong high street presence. It does have a website but according to Day only 10% of net growth is down to the Internet.

The Internet is just one string to our bow Day claimed. It makes a valuable contribution but its not an integral part. Being a web-based offering is limiting. EasyMobile isnt going to be offering paper vouchers. A lot of its potential customers dont have credit and debit cards.

O2 has just reported 1.3 million net connections. Its fair to suggest that 10% of them came from the web. Fresh has achieved a total customer base of around 130000 since launch. Assuming easyMobile matches these it may cream off 130000 customers which is neither here nor there in the great scheme of things.

Day is convinced that sexy handsets drive sales and motivate the customer. People are turned on by size and sexiness not functionality and thats not the market Stelios has gone for. Virgin Mobile is skewed toward more toward fashion than the bargain basement end of the market.

If value were the primary driver Day claimed One 2 One would have cleaned up years ago and kept its dominance. Before T-Mobile they were always 20 per cent cheaper whichever way you cut it.

Day insists that Virgin Mobile is good value for money. We dont need to cut prices because we are already cheaper he claimed (though he was speaking before easyMobile announced its introductory 6p voice minute and 2p text offering).

Other networks can beat easyMobile too said Day. That gives the lie to easyMobiles primary claim that it is the cheapest. Once you remove that the rest collapses like a house of cards.

Carphone Warehouse CEO Andrew Harrison questions easyMobiles apparent obsession with Virgin Mobile. It ought to be looking at all MVNOs he said. After all we went some way to spoiling its launch with new Fresh tariffs and subsequent announcements.

He adds: Start ups are always prepared to spend money to get their first customers. But the price cuts easyMobile has announced so soon after launch makes it look as if it is a bit desperate. If it was attracting customers in quantity with its initial offering it would not have cut its rates. I dont believe easyMobiles prices are sustainable at this level.

So whats the thinking behind the new aggressive Fresh?

Fresh has been in our portfolio for quite a long time says Harrison. For a while weve been working with T-Mobile on a new package that would enable us to be more competitive. Weve also put a lot of investment into stabilising the platform which will enable us to add a significant number of customers.

Harrison said he would be positioning Fresh in the low frills sector which he claimed has great appeal to a significant number of customers who just want to make cheap voice calls and are not interested in GPRS or picture messaging.

A lot of people are going after the low frills sector. We must serve all sectors of the market and we intend to become market leader in the low frills space. We dont intend to let people from other industries come into this marketplace and turn the economics upside down.

See WebWatch page 52