Almost all of the stores on the hit list are in prime areas with top demographics surrounding them.

The Links Hampstead High Street shop is surrounded by outlets from Orange O2 and The Carphone Warehouse. Its Kensington shop is near the 3 flagship store.

The Link managing director Nick Wood has already said that two stores in Port Talbot Wales and Staples Corner London were closing but were being relocated.

But Wood again reiterated that the closed stores would be replaced by more suitable outlets.

We are always on the lookout for new stores to replace stores that arent doing that well. We make decisions all the time. We will still be opening more stores this year than we are closing.

We are maximising store revenue. We have more than 300 stores. Some are not the right size; others arent in the right locations; some stores are far too large. It just doesnt make sense to keep them open. But we opened our fourth store on Oxford Street at the end of last year and we have recently opened a store on The Strand.

Our store in Luton is a prime example. It was coming to the end of its lease. We found a better-sized store in a better site so we didnt renew the lease.

If we can relocate stores in better areas then we will. We are always looking for the most efficient stores in the best locations.

According to another retailer however while store rationalisation does go on all the time it is unusual to see so many stores in prime locations appear on the market at the same time.

On the credit side The Link opened four business centres in London in January for its The Link Business offering.

The centres are in Basildon Lewisham Hammersmith and Oxford Street and joined existing centres in Liverpool Manchester Leeds and Birmingham.

According to The Link there will be 14 centres by the middle of the year.

The centres are designed to attract and look after small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). In each centre there will be at least two business advisers trained to evaluate the particular needs of small-business customers.

But despite the growth GPRS still only accounts for less than one per cent of the worlds GSM subscriber base.

Many operators launched GPRS simultaneously with MMS accounting for the big jump in GPRS network launches in Q3 2002 said EMC research director Michele Scanlon.

GPRS service is now available on 147 networks in 58 countries and has 6.4 million subscribers.

With 4Mb of internal memory features include tri-band a swivel screen and a digital camera. It will come bundled with a hands-free set. European availability is expected in Q3

2dayuk will provide 3 with breaking regional news and pictures from its 15 offices across the UK.

This will include daily news stories general and local entertainment news as well as accompanying pictures.

The independent news agencies contribute their news content to 2dayuk which is identical to much of the content of the UKs national newspapers. It now delivers 100 stories every weekday ready for WAP and SMS.

3 marketing and strategy director Lisa Gernon said:

Our agreement with 2dayuk ensures we are providing our customers with up-to-the minute regional and local news from across the UK.

Celltalk came out of voluntary administration in September last year (Mobile News September 9 2002).

The Manchester-based company once Oranges largest direct dealer went into administration in February 2002 with debts of 3.2 million.

However Celltalk director Jess Meredith Watts said payments to creditors might well increase from this amount because there were too many unjustified claims. In the meantime he remains bullish about the companys prospects for the year.

Sales have been 250 per cent higher than our targets. There are still a number of challenges starting with the reduction in handset subsidies he said.

The new Celltalk is fit and ready to face these challenges. We are a proactive tele-sales company now. We dont wait for people to ring us. I would hate to be an off-the-page player or high-street retailer right now.

The company came out of administration after Begbies Traynor helped to slash Celltalks monthly overheads by half cut office space by 75 per cent and reduce staff from 120 to 40.

Celltalk also put together a plan that would see the company continue to trade as long as it paid 10000 a month every month for two years to meet its debts as well as half of any profit made above its 10000 monthly payment.

Celltalk directors who were owed 700000 and the holding company which was owed 1.2 million agreed to defer claims for two years.

The amount of surplus money available for unsecured creditors has fallen as a result of extraordinary costs totalling 65000 incurred to keep the company trading.

The company has now paid 225000 as part of the arrangement enabling preferential creditors to be paid a total of 145000.

These included HM Customs & Excise 77678 Inland Revenue 59707 redundancy payments 3908 and employees 375. This leaves 81359 available for unsecured creditors.

Begbies Traynor supervisor Paul Stanley had written to creditors explaining why the expected 30p dividend would be lower than originally forecast. It had been envisaged that the distribution would be in the region of 35p-65p.

Stanley added that the dividend had been reduced by the extraordinary expenses but indicated the final figure was subject to change because some creditors claims have yet to be agreed.

At the height of its powers in 2000 Celltalk had a turnover of 24 million and employed more than 200 people.

Ian Robinson of O2 distributor MoCo Cell Link said orders for O2 SIM cards rose 20 per cent. Unique Distribution joint-managing director Angus Dawe said O2 business was surprisingly strong.

John Drinkwater managing director of new O2 distributor European Telecom said he had seen a moderate increase in demand. He expected more as dealers worked out the advantages.

The decision to delay the introduction of cuts was taken to continue to encourage business connections.

For many companies April is the end of the year and it was thought better to introduce the cuts in time for the start of the new financial year said the network.

O2 was going to join Vodafone Orange and T-Mobile in cutting 40 from its commission payments following the Competition Commissions investigation into termination charges. But cuts of 40 will not be introduced until next month.

Ironically O2 was the most vocal of the opponents of the Competition Commissions findings and had warned that it would have to cut subsidies and delay its roll-out of 3G services.

However a spokesperson admitted that some or all of the stores could be closed in order to turn its ailing German operation into profit.

We have said we will make the German operation profitable by the end of the year. We intend and hope to keep the stores open a spokesperson told Mobile News.

We have not announced any closures yet. However it is an option we may have to consider if we havent turned into profit by the end of the financial year.

The Carphone Warehouses financial year ended on March 30 but executives wont be announcing the final figures until June.

The future of The Carphone Warehouses German operation has been in the balance since the company reported last year that the market in Germany had proved to be very challenging with an increase in losses.

The company said losses in Germany and Belgium would not be permitted beyond the end of the financial year just ended.

A number of the companys stores were closed to reduce losses but in November CPW admitted more work needed to be done to stem the losses.

T-Mobile announced that it had secured MMS interconnect with Orange saying an agreement with Vodafone would be announced shortly.

Orange said it has full MMS interconnect with the other GSM networks. That leaves Vodafone and T-Mobile as the only networks without full MMS interconnect. Despite the claims that MMS interconnect is available however none of the GSM operators has yet announced an MMS interconnect with new 3G operator 3.

An Orange spokesperson said Orange didnt have an MMS interconnect agreement with 3 as it had not been able to obtain 3 handsets for interoperability testing.

The networks claim that MMS interconnect will increase sales and usage of MMS handsets.

O2 managing director David McGlade said: Enabling customers to send and receive media messages across the different networks is one of the most critical steps towards widespread MMS adoption.

Customs is refusing to repay substantial amounts of VAT owed to traders in perceived high-risk industry sectors in an attempt to halt missing trader fraud estimated to cost 2.75 billion a year.

Customs are desperate to stem the haemorrhage of public revenue. They are unable to catch the criminals directly but seem intent to end the fraud even if it means penalising legitimate traders said Dennis Knowles VAT partner at Deloitte & Touche.

The scam takes place where the trader disappears without paying VAT due to Customs.

This missing trader fraud is now seen as a greater threat than alcohol or tobacco smuggling. Sophisticated fraudsters send the goods round a loop of companies in the UK and Europe with the goods sometimes being sold by the same companies hundreds of times in a scam known as carousel fraud.

Customs latest tactic which began in June last year is to refuse to repay VAT due to companies within risk industry sectors until each transaction in a series has been proved to be genuine. This can take many months.

If Customs is not satisfied that all of the transactions are genuine it refuses to repay VAT to legitimate businesses that either sell the goods within their own legitimate business or export the goods and qualify for a VAT repayment.

Even where traders have complied in full with Customs requirements repayments have still sometimes been withheld pointed out Deloitte & Touche.

Affinity Wireless is a subsidiary of Affinity Internet Holdings. It went into receivership two weeks ago.

Following the appointment of Kroll as administrator the mobile side of the business was sold to the two networks and the High Wycombe service provider while the fixed-line business was sold to Impelo Ltd.

Vodafone paid an undisclosed sum to secure the 95000 pre-pay and 5000 contract customers that Affinity had on Vodafone.

A spokesperson for the network said: Vodafone will honour the credits currently held by the former Affinity pre-pay customers and the customers will now be administered in-house. The contract customers will be managed in-house for an assessment period of four months during which Vodafone will seek appropriate long-term solutions for them.

O2 announced it paid an undisclosed sum to the administrators for the right to contact the 2700 O2 customers who had a contract through Affinity.

The network subsequently contacted the customers via SMS to advise them to call O2 to sort out their situation.

Generation Telecom was unavailable for comment at time of going to press.