Snook last week told a national newspaper the hard-nosed businessman adverts were absolutely the worst things I have ever seen.

Snook described the advert created by ad agency Mother as very irritating.

They are about as far away as you can get from the Orange ethos and values as I could possibly imagine he added.

But Orange business solutions marketing director Cynthia Gordon said the campaign had been imm-ensely successful in raising awareness of Orange as a business brand.

In terms of instant recall it has cut through five times stronger than any of our ads in the past three years.

Snook who is currently non-executive chairman at The Carphone Warehouse is credited by many journalists with inventing Oranges slogan the futures bright the futures Orange.

In fact the phase was conceived by Oranges ad agency in 1994 – Wight Collins Rutherford Scott.

Hans Snook was the founder and CEO of Orange from the beginning until February 2001 when he stepped back to become special adviser to the chairman of France Telecom said Gordon.

But an advertising style that was appropriate eight years ago is not appropriate in the existing market.

The service has been on soft launch since April. The top-ups will be soon be available at all Moneybox and Co-operative Bank ATMs.

Vodafone and O2 users can access the service now. Orange Virgin and T-Mobile subscribers will be able to use the service shortly.

Electronic top-ups now account for nearly 40 per cent of the market.

Among the 50 staff who will leave the company at the end of the month is Ternhill Communications founder Matt Sandford.

He joined Project Telecom when he sold Ternhill to Project for 500000 eight months ago and was appointed as regional sales director.

His appointment had been announced with glowing tributes from Project Telecom chief executive Tim Radford. Sandford said he was disappointed that things hadnt worked out and now regrets selling his company.

Its disappointing to be leaving so quickly. I had anticipated being here for at least another five to 10 years. If I could have foreseen this happening I would never have sold. There has been some restructuring and the two regions for the Midlands have been consolidated. Despite achieving the highest number of connections in Q1 the company took the decision to make me redundant. A lot of other good people have also lost their jobs.

Radford was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.

The schoolboy 11-year-old Danny Gossage from Birmingham bought four handsets and a Nokia headset in two visits to a branch of Carphone Warehouse in Birmingham. It turned out that the boy had apparently taken 800 from a biscuit tin at his home in Great Barr Birmingham to buy the phones.

Three of the phones were later returned and a refund of 500 given to the parents. The fourth handset had been stolen from the boy.

The boys parents reckon that Carphone Warehouse staff should not have taken that amount of cash from a schoolboy.

A Carphone Warehouse spokesperson said: We have no plans to alter our sales policy as a result of the incident. We treat everyone as a customer regardless of age. We have no policy to prevent sales of phones to children.

The spokesperson added: We were concerned by the fact that the boy had such a large amount of cash to spend and staff contacted police to notify them. In any case we refunded the parents for the returned phones.

Exec Connect will be available from the end of 2003 in multiple versions based on Java Symbian or XHTML technologies depending on the users device. The service identifies and selects the fastest connection rate available to users.

Gerhard Romen head of sales and marketing for the Nokia One Mobile Connectivity Service said: The value of mobile technologies for enterprises is very clear.

Easy-to-use mobile technology can play a significant role in providing competitive advantage for organisations by enabling executives to gain secure access to e-mail and other resources and to efficiently interact with employees.

The e-mail claims to be word-of-mouth advertising and goes under the subject line Nokia Is Giving Away Phones For FREE.

It offers a free Nokia 6210 to those who forward the e-mail to eight people.

A free Nokia WAP handset is supposedly on offer for those who forward it to 20 or more people provided they send a copy to an Anna Swelan at a Nokia e-mail address. Nokia said it does not employ anyone by the name of Anna Swelan.

Nokia head of corporate communications Mark Squire said the hoax e-mail dates back to early 1999 and had nothing to do with the company.

Nokia is aware of a hoax e-mail stating that Nokia is handing out free phones to people who forward the e-mail. This chain e-mail does not originate from Nokia he stressed.

It is not customary for Nokia to use this type of direct e-mailing to promote our products or services. We have started to investigate the origins of the e-mail. However as is generally the case with chain letters and e-mails they are virtually impossible to trace and are very difficult to stop.

Despite the age of the handsets on offer the message is still catching people out.

The company said it could not prevent its name from being used in general e-mail messages. But it strongly discouraged anyone from forging the Nokia brand and said it would take action against anyone found doing so.

An attempt to force T-Mobile to accept trade unions in its network function staff failed last week when a workers ballot was defeated by 181 votes.

Leslie Manasseh deputy general secretary of communications union Connect said:

T-Mobile and its consultants have an outdated and ill-informed image of what trade unions are about. Connect members across the communications industry know the difference that working together can make.

Weve had a great deal of support throughout this campaign. It doesnt stop here. Employees in T-Mobile deserve a say in their workplace. They have the right to be consulted about restructuring.

We urge employees in T-Mobile to exercise their legal right to join Connect. Workers have told us they want to make a difference. Were still here to provide the means for them to do that.

T-Mobile employed American labour specialists TBG Consulting to persuade employees to vote no in the ballot.

The ballot had been organised by Connect and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) following a recent growth in individual union membership.

The unions had been looking to give T-Mobile workers a greater say in company restructuring and how it would affect workers lives and working hours.

The two unions sought an application for statutory recognition to the Central Arbitration Committee but withdrew the application after discussion with T-Mobile. A less confrontational voluntary ballot was agreed upon.

TBG used focus groups and interviews with employees during which the companys preferences were made clear.

However Connect alleged that T-Mobile misrepresented the unions in order to persuade workers to vote against the ballot.

To win over 40 per cent of staff would have had to vote with a majority in favour of union representation. Around 570 people voted but the ballot failed by 181 votes.

Fuller left Orange in October 2000 after the network was taken over by France Telecom. He then spent seven months running the cable division of digital media and telecoms group Telewest before returning to Hutchison to spearhead its 3G activity in Italy.

Fuller has joined the main board of 3 UK but he also remains a main board director of 3 Italy. Meanwhile 3 Italy CEO Vincenzo Novari has been appointed a main board director of 3 UK.

Fuller shares the UK CEO responsibility with current managing director Colin Tucker who has now been appointed deputy chairman of 3 UK. Tucker and Fuller worked together in similar positions while at Orange.

Hutchison Whampoa managing director Canning Fok said: These new front-line arrangements reflect the transition of 3s businesses from development to operating stage.

Meanwhile 3 has this month been opening concessions within its Superdrug store chain.

The new stores will be concentrated in areas where the 3 network is strong including Sheffield and the Greater London area.

Last year Fok said 3 would have around 100 stores by the end of 2003. As yet the network only has three solus 3 stores however and a spokesperson for the company said that the focus was now on the Superdrug stores.

Superdrug stores with 3 stand concessions will have new window displays featuring the distinctive giant 3 branding currently used in 3s standalone stores.

Hutchison Whampoa paid 835 million to Dutch chain Kruidvat for the Superdrug chain.

The statement Bank loans and overdrafts amounted to 6.9 million needs clarification. The 6.9 million represented the finance charges in relation to bank loans and overdrafts (i.e. bank interest).

As at December 31 2002 Virgin Mobile had 13.1 million in its bank account and had a loan of 95 million owing to its banking syndicate.

The statement The virtual network also sold 11.7 million of pre-pay airtime vouchers also needs clarification.

The numbers quoted relate to airtime vouchers distributed by T-Mobile on behalf of Virgin Mobile and represents only a small portion of Virgin Mobiles overall voucher sales. The numbers decreased as voucher sales were brought under the control of Virgin Mobile.

Overall revenue increased from 173.8 million to 287.7 million. The statement Virgin Group sold 22990506 worth of Virgin Mobile handsets airtime vouchers and other items represents the value of handsets airtime vouchers and other items sold by Virgin Mobile to Virgin Retail (Megastores V-Shops) not the amount Virgin Group or Virgin Mobile sold to customers.

Until now the scheme has been limited to a select group of high-performing cherry picked dealers who had to meet stringent criteria such as having a direct business sales business sales force and an in-house business customer service centre.

Orange now realises that there are not enough qualifying dealers to fill the gaps. It wants its distributors to support smaller independents by hosting the direct sales teams and customer support centres.

This will enable smaller dealers to enjoy the benefits of being part of the scheme without meeting all the criteria.

Orange has laid the groundwork for this plan by appointing four distributors in a group of nine new members to the scheme. EBS Midland Netcom and Anglia Telecom are distributors whose direct sales teams will to join the scheme.

None of the distributors will be allowed to extend the scheme to their dealers for the time being.

The other five new Orange Business Specialists are Telecommunications Direct Fonetrader Mobileshop.com A1 Communications and Phone In.

This takes the total number of Orange business specialists to 31 which Orange claims cover 65 per cent of the country.

Orange head of sales Stuart Henry says distributors will play a part in a third phase of the scheme. He told Mobile News:

We are looking at a number of distributors to join the Business Specialist scheme. We always said we wanted a network of dealers to cover the entire country.

The distributors could appoint smaller dealers in areas where we have gaps in our network of Business Specialists.

Meanwhile former Orange trade marketing manager Richard Henson has joined T-Mobile as channel enablement manager to develop new data and business products

Henson was heavily involved in the Orange Business Specialist scheme and had a hand in Oranges hard nosed businessman adverts.

He is being tipped to spearhead T-Mobiles drive for the SME market. He joins T-Mobile after a short spell at Unique Distribution which he joined after being made redundant at Orange at the beginning of the year.