The network is now paying between 50 and 300 on top of its regular consumer commission packages to independent dealers who connect customers to its new business tariffs.

3 informed independent dealers of its SME tariffs and commissions at a series of training days last week (see Sharp End P18).

3 told a training session of 20 independent dealers of its plans. Business tariffs are the same as its consumer tariffs except that the VAT is excluded in the advertised price.

The registration process differs as well. Dealers have to fill in a registration form via email instead of through 3s normal online registration process.

Raj Dooa of RD Communications in Tolworth said:

The commission is great and the dealer back-up is based in Glasgow instead of India which is positive. It is an issue that 3 wants dealers to manage the customer. If O2 or T-Mobile told me that I wouldnt have problem because they have a track record. But it is labour intensive and 3 isnt reliable.

It is passing the buck. Well take the pain. We can tell a business customer he will save money by going with 3 but as soon as a call drops out that customer could lose business himself.

Thats the reason businesses remain with Vodafone.

Matt Chambers manager of the Phone Chamber in Eden Bridge said:

3 wants us to sell it to the business market. Its really positive news. Its great value: more than twice the minutes that T-Mobile offers at the same price.

You have to be careful though. You have to tell the customer there is a reason the 3 price is cheaper Otherwise you risk losing them forever if the coverage cuts out.

The registration process is a bit more work and the credit check takes a bit longer.

Its good news the call centres are based in Glasgow instead of Delhi.

A 3 spokesman confirmed:

We have set up dedicated customer service team and a dedicated dealer support line both based in Glasgow.

O2 the technology partner for the Live 8 concerts received just over two million entries for 66500 pairs of tickets to the Hyde Park concert in London on July 2 and not the 70 million that the Evening Standard claimed.

An O2 spokesperson said: The Evening Standard in London stated that we were going to make a profit of 70 million from Live 8 which is completely incorrect.

This is gutter journalism and the paper has since retracted its story. It calculated that we were going to make 10p from every text and that 70 million people would enter for tickets. That is wrong on two counts.

We do not stand to make any money from Live 8 at all. The entry cost of 1.50 goes to charity. We are charging the customer 10p so that customers can receive a text back confirming that they have entered. But Vodafone and Orange are charging 12p for that service.

We also cover the cost of two more text messages: one to confirm a win and one as a reminder to pick up the tickets. Those are cross-network too.

The Evening Standard estimated that 70 million people applied but the reality is just over two million people entered. It got the figure from the number of text messages sent on New Years Eve which is around 50 million.

The Live 8 competition is one of the most successful text fundraising exercises ever conducted in the UK claimed O2

We coped very well said the O2 spokesperson.

All the mobile phone networks made sure that they were ready and could cope. There was a surge in text messages after the service went live and it continued as a steady stream until lines closed.

Harvey Goldsmith one of the main producers on Live 8 spoke with O2 head of sponsorship Paul Samuels about ways to get the tickets out to customers quickly and free of charge.

All winners had been notified yesterday by a free text message sent to their handsets.

The Lions game is being released across all top tier mobile phone networks to coincide with the Lions seven-week tour of New Zealand ending in a three test series with the All Blacks.

He was formerly on the management board of O2 with responsibility for operations in Germany Ireland the Isle of Man and The Netherlands.

He has also served in senior management roles at FirstMark Communications Vodafone Airtouch International and Marakon Associates as well as an independent director at a number of telecoms and technology companies.

Nokia head of marketing Simon Lloyd said:

Nokia had flown in and met [club owner] Roman Abramovich. It was a done deal as far as we were concerned. It was a big surprise to me when we were with [Chelsea chief executive] Peter Kenyon on April 20 to sign the deal and he told us that Chelsea had decided to go with Samsung instead.

It dropped on us like a bomb. We were close to a deal. We had been in talks with Chelsea since before Christmas. We were in negotiations until the week before the Samsung deal was announced.

Lloyd maintained that the deal collapsed because Chelsea misled Nokia on its international rights to Chelsea content. Nokia believed that the deal covered global content rights only to find at the point of signing that four markets – Macau Taiwan Hong Kong and Singapore – were excluded from the deal.

Nokia wanted to be able to provide operators such as China Mobile content to sell on Nokia phones according to Lloyd. But Chelsea already had a deal in place with TWI a provider of media management and delivery solutions which covered those markets. Lloyd claims Chelsea offered to renegotiate the TWI deal before pulling out.

It was a stumbling block for us he said. It was a totally different deal but we were still prepared to negotiate around it. We were still committed but Chelsea went quiet on us. Kenyon told us one thing. Chelsea promised something it couldnt deliver.

We are a bit bemused by the Chelsea turn-around. It was an opportunity that would have been nice if it had come off. There was a lot of potential for us in markets like China and Russia. But there are bigger and better opportunities out there. It isnt something were going to dwell on.

According to Lloyd Nokia is reappraising its brand.

Music is a big focus for us as is the youth market in general which football fits into. There will be more from us. Were just not going to sponsor Chelsea.

He said of the Samsung deal: Chelsea is going with a simpler more straightforward shirt deal.

The Chelsea-Samsung contract announced on April 25 is worth a reported 50 million over five years and eclipses the 9 million per season contract Vodafone has with Manchester United to become the largest in British football.

Samsung UK director and lifelong Chelsea fan Mark Mitchinson refused to comment on the size of the deal nor Nokias interest.

He said: There were other companies including other telecoms companies interested in Chelsea. But Samsung is a truly global brand. Asia North America and the Far East are very important markets to Chelsea and were already in those markets.

The partnership is more important for us than the amount of money we paid to get it and Chelsea isnt short of money anyway. The synergies between both companies work.

Samsung will leverage Chelseas existing relationship with Orange which revolves around content.

We havent yet discussed our relationship with Chelsea but it makes sense to take advantage of the Orange-Chelsea-Samsung triangle said Mitchinson.

We have got a five-year deal so we will look to establish a very strong relationship get access to the fans to Jose Mourinho and to the players in order to run incentives and sell more Samsung phones.

Mitchinson said that Samsung had been in talks with Chelsea FC for seven months. The deal was done on the back of a record quarter in which Samsung Mobile exceeded its targets by 50 per cent.

We will practically hit our annual target in the first half of this year he added. March was a record month in terms of sales. Mobile represents now between 65 and 70 per cent of the total business of Samsung Electronics UK.

Alex Keogh left 20:20 at the end of March. Last week he started his new role at the Cambridge-based distributor.

20:20 is a fantastic career platform but its a bit like steering a huge oil tanker – there is only so much personal direction you can give it he explained.

Its focus is on shifting handsets in bulk so building further bonds and developing new strategies is difficult. You can grow the base to a certain extent but thats all.

Any different direction wasnt possible because all it wants to do is bulk sell mobile phones. Ive always thought theres a niche market for UK distribution and thats where Live Telecoms approach comes in. Theres an element of service that you can draw upon.

Live Telecom is backed by Shelford Trading which Keogh claims allows it to stay competitive.

2005 is a big year for us he added. Weve had a couple of years getting to learn the UK market and now we have a fantastic team in place to be able to win big contracts and serve the accounts.

Live Telecom managing director Deniz Ali said:

I have known Alex since he was my account manager at 20:20. I was doing a few thousand units and spending a million pounds a month and I was always impressed with the way he dealt with things.

When he left 20:20 and an opportunity came to have him on my team I jumped at the chance. We are going through massive growth and he is the ideal person to help us drive the business forward and win new clients.

Intek paid 3000 for equipment it had ordered when the pair were still trading last year. The Caudwell Group had originally demanded 10000.

Intek stopped trading with the Caudwell Group in July last year after Intek managing director Manny Hussain discovered that Caudwell Group recruitment agency Cornerstone Resourcing was leveraging Inteks dealings with other Caudwell Group companies to recruit Intek staff.

Intek staff had gone through training sessions with the Caudwell Groups 4U Ltd prior to approaches by Cornerstone to three of Inteks sales team.

After Hussain had failed to receive written assurances from 4U Ltd that it would not be party to Cornerstones recruitment strategy he severed ties with all Caudwell Group companies.

Because we severed relations there were financial matters outstanding with regards to equipment said Hussain. The Caudwell Group claimed we owed it 10000 but it never apologised for their actions and so we were never going to do business with it again. We stopped trading because of the groups actions.

We can now do what we want safe in the knowledge that it cant access our information and use it against us.

At the time of going to press there had been no comment from the Caudwell Group.

Meanwhile Hussain told Mobile News that Intek has completely overhauled its staff recruitment and training processes.

Nine months ago we hired a new human resources and training manager Kristen Birt and she has completely changed the way we hire and train staff he said.

Birt added: Previously we were pretty standard – wed advertise and applicants would have to attend two interviews before being hired. Wed give them a basic induction and then throw them into a trading shop to learn on their feet. We still advertise in the same way but rather than holding individual interviews applicants are seen in an informal group assessment.

Suitable candidates spend a day on the job in one of Inteks retail stores where both sides can see if they are suitable for the role.

The first batch of nine new recruits completed their inductions this week.

The South West-focused dealership has also opened new stores in Cheltenham Newton Abbot and Trowbridge taking its total to 24.

More explicit images will be available only to customers who prove they are over 18. The images will also be available online to non-Virgin Mobile customers.

Virgin BITES marketing manager John Conlon said:

Adult content is the unsung accelerator of every new communication technology from Polaroid to cable television and the Internet and we expect this service to be popular among our audience.

Priority is being given to safety security and protection with our robust age verification service.

Images will cost 2 each to buy plus the network download rate.

See page 14 and White Lines

He is Mark Watts – the former director of Unique Distributions Unique Games subsidiary.

Watts will set up the Activefone mobile content brand for the groups Airphone Distribution company.

He joins the Airphone Distribution board as operations director. His appointment follows the arrival at Airphone of ex-Unique head of business development Rob Whellams (Mobile News April 8).

Activefone will target network operators application service providers and large portals building an original technology platform that it claims will completely revolutionise mobile content.

Its an incredibly exciting development said Watts. We are in the process of building a variety of entirely new types of application and we already have commitments from a number of celebrities who will be central to the new concept.

We are specifically going outside the existing content arena which focuses heavily on the youth market and will be promoting to a slightly older audience. While it has plenty of disposable income it is one that has remained largely untapped.

Airphone managing director John Forde added: Mark has a knowledge of the content market that is second to none. This together with his expertise and dynamism gives us exactly the qualities needed to drive Activefones development.

Watts has been involved in mobile content for more than 10 years. Prior to his period with Uniques games operation he had been sales director of mobile games company Mforma worked for content specialist 7.24 Solutions and was part of the Orange retail management team.

The manufacturer embarked on a new strategy last February to make its phones more appealing to consumers after criticism that handsets were too business-focused.

General manager Graham Carter admitted that the change slowed up production resulting in a loss of market share as rivals such as Samsung edged closer to market-leader Nokia.

Our market share is quite low at around one per cent said Carter.

During the past year it was as high as four per cent and we had been hoping to see it go up to five or six per cent by the end of last year but certain factors have made it drop. One of the key reasons was that we had a delay in introducing the X700. In addition the change in product strategy towards visual styling meant that we were delayed in introducing the new range.

Carter described this as a lull but said that Panasonic was now just releasing the first of its new products and would hopefully be moving forward.

Every time you change strategy you are going to lose time as you regroup and work out where you are going he added. Unfortunately thats what we suffered from over the past year.

Carter believes the new products will regain the companys lost market share. The X400 which is our thinnest clamshell yet has just become available for 100 on Vodafone pre-pay he said. The X400 is very affordable and an extremely thin camera phone featuring all the latest technology including Java for savvy consumers.

In September Panasonic will launch its flagship handset for 2005 the VS7 the manufacturers first two megapixel camera phone.

These handsets are doing very well in all of the focus groups that we know of and everyone we have shown likes their look and feel he said. We have got a lot of hopes in these products.