Thomas had resigned from the PNC Telecom board on 24 June 2004. After that Nigel Etherington and Jeff Pack remained on the board until shareholders called an EGM on 24 August 2004 and assumed control.

District judge Rutherford ruled that a payment of 55900 was made to Thomas incorrectly on his resignation.

Thomas said: I got the company out of administration and sorted out a number of contingent liabilities. I had arranged for PNC to be reversed into Etheringtons frozen food company which would have transformed the business. When that was vetoed I resigned.

There was a technicality in the documentation. The judge ruled that the documentation was incorrect and I have paid the money back. That is the end of it.

Joe Case who holds a 26 per cent share of PNC Telecom alleges that he discovered a shortfall of 940000 in the company accounts when he took control on 24 August. Case claims that he is pursuing an action against all three former directors for 500000.

Said Case: PNC Telecom was a shell company. When I took over the board of PNC its funds had diminished from 1.04m to 100000. A payment of 55900 has been paid back plus costs. Now PNC Telecom is continuing its claim for the balance of approximately 500000. Our intention is to get that money back into the company for the shareholders.

Thomas responded by saying: Joe Case has made lots of claims. The only one that has held water is the one that went through the Bath County Court. I havent seen any official documentation about this claim for 500000 and if I do I will look at it.

The Vodafone Simply will be free on contract and 80 on pre-pay and will be made available through Vodafone stores the web and Asda.

The design of the new Sagem-made handset resulted after research showed that many people over the age of 35 wanted a simple phone.

Nick Reid chief commercial officer of Vodafones consumer business unit said: The product was two years in the making. It is specifically designed for customers over 35 years. There are 27m people in this group in the UK. Many want just voice and text. They like mobile phones but they just cant use them easily. They are not interested in complexity.

The Vodafone-branded device has five buttons each dedicated to a single task. A home button takes the user back to the start screen. A contacts button accesses names and numbers. A messaging button links to an inbox that gathers voice and text messages. A slide button provides volume control. A hold button locks the keypad.

The new design has a large high-resolution screen and a big keypad. A colour screen shows network signal battery life volume of the ring tone is and the users number.

A light flashes to signal the arrival of text or voice messages. The theory is that it resembles the functionality of fixed line answer-phones.

Said Reid: Handset manufacturing is subject to extreme complexity and is always moving beyond what this age group wants. Other operators are sticking with generic handsets. People of 55 and over are still using fixed line because they are intimidated by mobile. We aim to penetrate further into that age group.

Vodafone will advertise in Golf Monthly Radio Times and Womens Weekly.

Added to that up to 1m new users have been added in the last six months.

BlackBerry took five years to get 1m subscribers which it achieved in February 2004. This doubled in less than 10 months reaching the 2m subscribers in November 2004.

Jim Balsillie RIM chairman and co-CEO says the surge demonstrates the continuing momentum and expanding market opportunity for RIM and its partners.

Its an exciting time as BlackBerry continues to enjoy enormous success and rapid growth around the world he says.

With over 50000 retail points of presence accelerated geographic expansion and the anticipated addition of 100 new carriers in 2005 we are scaling our operations for the 5m and 10m subscriber milestones.

Dan Cuffley UK & Ireland director of retail distribution and MVNOs at Motorola said: We are highly selective in whom we appoint and we set the strictest criteria.

Avenir has an unassailable track record in its management delivery and customer service. It has achieved regular success in working with major manufacturers to bring new products to market and in sustaining sales growth. We are proud to welcome them as an official distributor.

Avenirs Managing Director Ishai Novick told Mobile News that becoming the fifth official Motorola distributor in the UK was an enormous breakthrough.

This is a major coup for Avenirs dealers giving them access to a high quality advanced range of products.

The appointment reflects a key Avenir objective of continually striving to find further ways of adding value to our customer promise by developing additional markets and offering new products and services.

Avenir Telecom UK posted an increase in sales of 67 per cent during the second half of last year.

It is the leading subsidiary within the international Avenir Telecom Group headquartered in France.

The Group which achieved a net profit growth of 60 per cent to 9.2m during the same period has distribution contracts worldwide with most of the major manufacturers.

The deal with Motorola in the UK says Novick is part of a move to extend this strategy into the Groups subsidiary companies.

Meteors parent Western Wireless said the company had received a number of offers from a variety of financial and strategic partners for its International asset portfolio but would not comment directly on specific territories.

Western Wireless is in the process of being taken over by Alltel which prefers to keep its interests US-centred. Deutsche Bank has been retained by Western Wireless to oversee the sale.

Early indications are that a deal to sell Meteor to the highest bidder could be concluded by the end of June 2005.

Current valuations suggest that to be successful a price tag of at least 206m to 275m will need to be on the table.

Meteor currently has more than 11 per cent of the Irish market with 376600 customers at the end of March.

Former monopoly telco

Eircom has long coveted the possibility of returning to the mobile arena after selling off its mobile arm Eircell to Vodafone in 2001 for IR 3.3bn.

There was also a a no-compete clause preventing Eircom from re-entering the mobile business.

But this clause has now expired and the company recently appointed Goodbody Stockbrokers and Morgan Stanley for advice on its potential bid for Meteor.

Peter Lynch Eircoms chief financial officer is said to be leading takeover discussions which could result in an offer in excess of EUR350m for the wireless network.

This will not be a one- horse race. There has also been an expression of interest from Irish entrepreneur Denis OBrien.

Although there has been no official confirmation OBrien is unlikely to miss any opportunity to return to the auld sod having created and disposed of Esat Digifone (now known as O2 Ireland) in 2000 after selling EastDigifone to BT for 2bn.

He is currently riding a wave in the Caribbean controlling the Digicel group.

It is the first time a football club has enabled worldwide access to its official content. All these fans can now visit the clubs official website or its WAP address to buy official logos player pictures football kits or ringtones.

The promotion which will see Coco-Colas entire UK stock being branded will run from mid-May to the end of July with 5000 ringtones or music downloads to be won every day through a daily draw.

Entrants can participate by SMS or web and winners can choose a monophonic or polyphonic ringtone or music download as their prize.

They can even choose what music they would like from thousands of ringtones or the hundreds of thousands of tracks available to download from mycokemusic.com.

As a reward for entering all participants get a CokeTag – a music identity service created for Coca-Cola using Shazams technology that allows users to identify and buy music and in this case choose this music if they win in the daily draw.

To use CokeTag entrants to the promotion dial 62345 on their mobile phone and hold their handset close to the music.

Once dialled the call automatically ends after about 20 seconds.

An SMS is then sent to their handset giving details of the artist and title which they can then go on to choose as their prize in the daily draw or if they dont win choose to purchase.

Additional CokeTags are being charged at 25p rising to 50p after the promotion.

All ringtones and downloads bought are being charged at 1.50 and poly ringtones will increase to 3 after the promotion.

A London Underground spokesman told Mobile News that more than 60 organisations have formally expressed interest which was way above the number that LU expected to receive.

The closing date was the end of April but due to the continued high level of response LU has decided to extend the deadline to 23 May.

In March Mayor Ken Livingstone announced that London Underground was interested in looking at the possible introduction of mobile phone services.

These would cover new technology services such as DAB digital radio DVB digital video broadcasting and wireless Internet on the Tube.

Income generated for London Underground by this venture would be reinvested in the Tube network to fund further improvements for passengers.

London Underground does not currently intend to provide coverage on Tube trains underground but if feasible mobile phone services and the additional technologies could be extended across the network to include tunnels and moving trains at a later date.

Commenting on the appointing easyMobile CEO Frank Rasmussen said: Sandy has exactly the right profile for the job. He is very experienced and has extensive knowledge of the UK market.

He will be responsible for all the marketing responsibilities in the UK.

EasyMobile is expected to embark on a high-profile national advertising campaign.

It launched the first stage of its ad campaign this month on tubes trams and buses in London Manchester and Birmingham.

Industry consensus is that easyMobile has so far failed to live up to its launch hype.

As its 3G offering the Korean manufacturer has created the Z105 a clamshell phone with a built-in rotating digital camera colour screen 40 polyphonic ringtones videophone and video streaming. It will be available in May.

It has also launched its first megapixel camera phone. The P730s integrated camera function offers seven different still-image sizes and a digital zoom feature. A twist-and-flip design allows users to take photographs when the handset is opened vertically and also when the LCD is rotated to a horizontal position. For moving images there are separate controls for pause brightness and detailed zooming and up to 100 minutes continuous recording time.

Samsung is hoping to repeat the success of the E700 its hugely popular clamshell camera phone with the E800 and E810.

However the manufacturer is moving away from the clamshell in favour of a slide-up design.

Ender Yavas head of product management for UK wireless said: The E800 features a 65K colour screen built-in VGA camera wide screen 64 polyphonic ringtones and several user-friendly features like photo Caller Line Identification- we believe it will be the phone to have this Christmas.

It also features a 180-degree rotating lens and a small mirror for self-portrait pictures.

The D410 is another slide-up handset. One touch of the phones screen display reveals the keypad power buttons and other features.

It includes a VGA camera wide screen 64 polyphonic ringtones and several specialised business functions allowing users to check e-mails share and exchange vCard and vCalender functions and information through an IrDA port and record reminders using Voice Memo.

However Samsung has not overlooked the popularity of clamshell designs.

The Samsung P510 is a clamshell camera phone that opens and closes with one touch.

The P510 has a digital VGA camera that includes a three- five- and 10-second timer option which allows users to take six nine or 15 consecutive shots in high-speed or normal mode. The phones multi-shot feature lets users choose the best image to keep or save them all for a stop-motion effect.

A new addition to Samsongs fashion range is the X450 clamshell. The handset weighs just 79 grams and includes a 65K colour screen. It includes 40 polyphonic ringtones a personal organiser four embedded Java games MMS and storage for up to 1000 phone numbers.

The i700 is built around Microsofts Pocket PC Phone Edition and includes Pocket Office for Business Needs. It features Windows Multi-Player for multimedia file playback and MSN Messenger.

Other offerings included the i500 camera phone with Palm OS 5.2 enabling users to continuously connect to the Internet and the D710 slide-up mobile based on Symbian operating systems with a built megapixel camera.