The award was made in recognition of how the Manchester United alliance had been used by Vodafone UK to help meet its overall business objectives while achieving high levels of media coverage and awareness levels among football fans.

Vodafone UK marketing director Lance Batchelor commented:

We are delighted that our work with Manchester United has been recognised with this prestigious award.

We have always been more than just a name on a shirt. By working closely with United we have put an extensive support programme in place so that as many of the areas within the UK business can benefit from the commercial alliance as possible. This award recognised our achievement in fully integrating the sponsorship into our business.

Gary Brown 31 a carpenter from Ilford London is alleged to have abducted the girl in front of her mother outside St Johns Wood tube station on March 4 and then stole a mobile phone from a flower seller who intervened.

Brown was remanded on bail despite objections from the prosecution.

Vodafone is closing stores in towns that have more than one Vodafone shop.

They are Blackpool Huddersfield Wakefield Derby Colchester Coventry Maidstone Exeter Plymouth Ipswich Hull Croydon York Edinburgh Norwich Hanley and Bangor (Northern Ireland). Four of the affected towns have more than two Vodafone shops.

On the positive side Vodafone will open five new Experience stores this year with the aim of reaching a total of 313 shops.

Vodafones head of retail sales Richard Daly says the network is doing all it can to re-deploy affected staff elsewhere in the company:

Daly said. We are looking to re-deploy people in new stores or elsewhere within Vodafone. Some people may use the opportunity to move elsewhere.

We will refurbish some stores and are in the process of building four new experience stores.

Daly denied Vodafone had scaled back its retail plans.

We have never stated that we would build a chain of 340 to 360 stores he said. We have the right shape for a national chain now with 310 to 315 stores.

Vodafone Retail was formed by the merger of four chains. In some towns we inherited up to three stores. The market has changed and so has the function of the shops.

We no longer need more than one store in each town to service our 13 million customers and inbound roaming customers from overseas.

The news comes only weeks after The Link announced it was culling six shops in Central London and reflects the fact that the mobile phone market has reached saturation point in the UK with approximately 50 million customers.

When the network unveiled its handset and tariff packages in February it promised the first 20000 users on the Kit and Caboodle tariffs ( 59.99 and 99.99 a month) half-price handsets saving them 200.

People who chose the 3toGo plan had to pay the full 399 for the NEC 606 and Motorola A830 handsets. But 3 will now extend the half-price offer to the pre-pay option.

This is the first time a high-end handset on pre-pay will be available for the same price as on contract.

Dealers will still receive their 85 commission. 3 customers who paid 399 for 3toGo handsets will not receive any form of compensation.

3 has also extended the period over which it will be offering the half-price handset discount. The offer was to last until the end of April but now it has been extended until the end of May.

We are extending the period in which customers can sign up for a reduced price handset to take full advantage of the interest created by our first phase of advertising said a 3 spokesperson.

With the 3toGo offer we are reacting to the wishes of the market. A huge number of customers have shown interest in pre-pay but want the handset reduction. We always knew our Kit and Caboodle tariffs would be popular with high-users. With the 3toGo plan we have the chance to appeal to a customer who doesnt fall into this category.

The price of the Motorola handset has come down by an extra 74 to 125. It had cost the same as the NEC 606 but the Motorola has been an unpopular choice because it lacks video calls although it does offer video messaging. Unlike the 606 however the Motorola supports GPRS downloads.

3 has also started advertising for new store managers and staff for its stores within stores set to open within Superdrug stores before the end of April. The first stores are rumoured to be in Reading and Uxbridge.

3 has confirmed Fone Logisitics as its third distributor along with Avenir and Hugh Symons.

Vanguard paid 2 million in cash for all the assets and employees of the two PNC trading divisions including all 54 KJC shops staff and PNCs Corsley Heath head offices. Vanguard has also taken on a number of PNCs liabilities and debts.

Vanguards chief executive Paolo Fidanza said the company had no plans to redeploy any PNC staff saying the acquisition was a perfect fit.

We have no redundancies planned. Rather we plan to grow the business he said.

We are forming a group of companies. There is no overlap between KJC PNC and our own activities. The acquisition of PNCs fixed-line business and the KJC chain provides us with a full range of products and services.

He described Vanguard as a complete telecoms company saying we have an opportunity to offer a full range of services for our customers. Fidanza added that KJC shops would see immediate investment.

We are starting to invest in the shops with new levels of stock. We also want to create areas within the stores where we can demonstrate content.

We want the stores to offer more than just boxes. The stores will have areas to support business needs. We also want people to come in and experience things like games and ringtones.

We want to change the idea of mobile phone shops and take it to the next level. The shops wont disappear. There will be more acquisitions.

Fidanza refused to compare Vanguards purchase of PNCs fixed-line business to the Carphone Warehouses purchase of Opal Telecom however.

We saw an opportunity to get in to the fixed-line business. We estimated that premium-rate content business is worth 1 billion per year. We aim to provide content for 3G handsets.

The acquisition of PNC gives us a network to deliver that content and a billing system.

PNC founder Geremy Thomas slammed the decision by PNC board members to sell the company so cheaply having recently battled to rejoin the board in order to prevent this.

I tried to safeguard the interests of shareholders but failed Thomas admitted.

His move was rebuffed by PNC chief executive Ian Gray who claimed that Thomas blocked all attempts to sell the company earlier in the year leaving PNCs board with no other options.

We had higher offers for PNC earlier in the year but Thomas blocked these said Gray. We had other options open to us including fundraising but again these were blocked.

Suppliers were starting to cut credit lines. The sale to Vanguard was one of our last options. I am a shareholder. I have lost money but that is business.

Gray also confirmed that PNC would continue to battle former chief executive Darren Ridge on misconduct charges (Mobile News April 22).

The accounts also show that Virgin Group sold 22990506 worth of Virgin Mobile handsets airtime vouchers and other stock items.

At the end of last year Virgin Mobile had net liabilities of 159.7 million (down from 161.7 million in 2001). Bank loans and overdrafts amounted to 6.9 million.

The virtual network also sold 11.7 million of pre-pay airtime vouchers. This was well down on the 26.7 million the year before reflecting the current emphasis on post-pay connections.

Virgin Mobile outperformed the targets of its business plan by some margin during the year said Harris Jones chairman of Virgin Mobile Telecoms.

The company consolidated its position as a credible alternative to the traditional networks. Over the course of the year Virgin Mobile attracted more net new customers than Orange O2 and Vodafone.

Alluding to the court case in which T-Mobile unsuccessfully attempted to trigger a no-fault termination of its joint venture agreement with Virgin Mobile Jones went on:

Unfortunately towards the end of the year disagreements between the shareholders and between T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile were escalated to the High Court in two separate cases. The prospect of further legal action remains for 2003. I am thankful for the ongoing support of our banks and employees during this time.

(see White Lines P48)

A trading statement to the City noted:

During the first quarter of 2003 intense price competition in the business market from certain mobile network operators has resulted in higher levels of churn lower than anticipated growth in our customer base and a reduction in average revenues per customer.

In addition connection commissions paid by the network operators have been cut significantly in some cases by more than 50 per customer. Network operators may seek to implement further reductions in commissions later in the year.

Project predicts profits should match those it made last year.

Management will take all actions necessary to ensure that the company continues to grow rapidly to take advantage of opportunities to further develop the business and to deliver an expanding range of products and services said the company.

Called FaceWave the technology allows users to create messages by choosing from a library of faces including well-known personalities cartoons and even animals and then dictating their personal message into the mobile phone.

FaceWave then animates the face to make it speak the message which can be previewed by the user and sent as an MMS.

Users can animate the faces they create on their mobile handsets simply by adding a voice message or typing in a text message. The message is converted to speech and performed by the animated face.

Customers will soon be able to use their own still photos celebrity caricatures or even an animated hamster to get to grips with what may be the next national craze.

Customers download the xmail software from the O2 website (www.o2.co.uk/xmail) and get secure access to their business data in minutes. Data is delivered to the xda in real time without the need for cradle synchronisation.

Customers can sign up for a free 10-day trail of xmail. After that they have to pay a 9.99 monthly subscription for the service exclusive of airtime or data usage.

Virgin Mobile now has more than 2.6 million customers in the UK and expects to sign up its three millionth later this year.

The good news for Orange was that its contract customer base swelled by 54000 subscribers while its pre-pay base dropped by 53000 overall. The network still has some nine million pre-pay customers representing 67.8 per cent of its total customer base. Oranges customer base now stands at 13.3 million customers.

Orange was also cheered by news that its customers were generating more revenue.

Oranges average annual revenue per user (ARPU) based on the latest Q1 figures indicated an 18 rise – from 245 to 263.

Contract ARPU was strongest rising 21 to 263 while pre-pay ARPU rose by just 4 to 125.

Data revenues per customer rose sharply over the past 12 months rising 30 per cent to 39 per user.

Orange chief executive John Allwood claimed the networks SPV smartphone was responsible for substantial increases in Internet and GPRS access in the UK.

Allwood said SPV users browse the Internet on their phones for an average of three hours per month.

Virgin on the other hand said its users generated an average 136 per year higher than Orange pre-pay and claimed that its users accounted for a quarter of T-Mobiles total SMS traffic.

(Virgin into profit – see P6).