They are two of four SPs whose licences are understood to expire in March because they have not performed to their business plan.

Vodafone head of business sales Ken McGeorge said four SPs have been told they have until March to sell their customer bases or hand them over to Vodafone (Cont P2) though he declined to name the SPs.

The other two service providers are believed to be AAC Telecom and Telecom Plus.

DCI chief executive Roger Frye (ex-Talkland) said: Its business as usual while we continue our negotiations with Vodafone. I expect these will be concluded by the end of January. The SPs that have lost their Vodafone licences have already been told so Im hopeful well retain ours.

I admit we did not perform to the business plan we put in front of Vodafone. But as one of the newest SPs we concentrated on building services rather than customer base so its a bit premature to measure our performance. We have been developing a lot of contract-related services that are now ready for market.

Cable Direct managing director David Witham-Perkins claims his company is still in negotiations with Vodafone to retain its SP licence.

Both parties are currently reviewing the situation but we remain a Vodafone service provider while these discussions take place said Witham-Perkins.

Admittedly a lot of our business is landline telephony which all goes through Cable and Wireless. But we are putting together a package to bring these customers a mobile offering and capitalise on our one bill capability. Id like to think any decision made was a joint one between Vodafone and ourselves.

Telecom Plus chief executive Charles Wigoder would not confirm or deny having received confirmation of Vodafones decision to terminate. Paul Ellis of Bedford-based AAC Service also declined to comment.

Meanwhile O2 has terminated the contracts of nine service providers whose customer bases were too small to make their continued support a viable proposition. O2 declined to name the companies affected.

The companies concerned received letters before Christmas.

O2s remaining service providers have all had their contracts extended until the end of March as negotiations surrounding terms and conditions are finalised. It is expected that all will remain O2 SPs.

A spokesperson for the network told Mobile News: We will support channels that attract high-value customers and focus on earning revenues from value-added services and reducing customer churn.

Nokia had been asked to mount an investigation into two handsets that burst into flames in Holland. Now a Sharp GX10 spontaneously burst into flames destroying the battery SIM card and much of the handset.

The phone belonged to Ealing electrician Steve Wing who had just recharged his phone in his car using an official Sharp charger.

Wing explained: After recharging my phone I went into a friends garden to do some work for him and placed the phone on a block of timber. Suddenly I heard this hissing noise coming from the phone. I turned to look at it and the back of the phone had gone red. There was smoke billowing out of it. I couldnt get any closer because of the smoke.

I left it in the sun but I cant believe that was the cause. I just consider myself lucky that I was outside when it happened and was not using it. It could have caught fire in my van while I was driving or in my house.

Wing called Sharp to complain. But after an hour of being told to call another number he gave up and called his service provider Singlepoint.

He says Singlepoint was no more helpful and actually tried to charge Wing 10 for a new handset. After he complained the Singlepoint waived the fee.

Wing is now using a Nokia 5100 and says he will not be returning to Sharp.

I tried to report the matter for an hour but I couldnt find anyone to talk to. Thats no way to treat a customer.

Nokias problem with exploding handsets happened when two phones caught fire in Holland. In each of these two cases Nokia claimed the problem was linked with third-party batteries. In this case however Wing is adamant he was using the correct Sharp battery that came with the handset.

Sharp senior product planner Matthew Tibbett said: This is the first time we have heard of any such problem. We havent had any reports of exploding batteries and we have used the same model in the GX10 GX10 and GX20 since launch. It could be that the battery is a non-Sharp battery. We would like to see the handset to carry out tests.

The trial was halted last Monday (November 10) after the case was dropped by VAT commissioners.

Details of the offences were not available at the time of going to press.

In a Customs operation codenamed Entree four men had all charges against them dropped by Customs for undisclosed reasons.

The freed men were named as Clive Lettman (40) Peter William Nicholls (53) Gary Anthony Blurton (42) and Thomas John England (56).

A Customs spokesperson confirmed:

Proceedings in Operation Entree were stayed in the public interest.

The news comes just a few weeks after Customs lost a VAT trial in Leeds crown Court (Mobile News October 20) when five defendants successfully cited an earlier case relating to a company called Bond House when it was determined that VAT does not apply to carousel fraud.

However Customs claimed the Operation Entree case was halted for different reasons.

The spokesperson added:

Operation Entree was dropped for different reasons from Operation Dundee.

Operation Dundee fell apart due to the indictment and Customs trying to amend it.

Operation Entree never went that far. We cant go into detail for sensitive reasons.

In another current Customs VAT trial codenamed Expire Customs says the defendants are due for sentencing this Friday (November 21).

Nokia launched a multi-million TV campaign in October comprising of three ads. Two of the ads feature a scene in Sighthill Glasgow – a grassy footpath – where Kurdish asylum seeker Firsat Dag was brutally murdered. A 26-year-old man Scott Burrell was jailed for life in December 2001 after being convicted of the offence.

A caption in the ad which promotes Nokias phone-cum-gaming console was branded insensitive for reading this is where I got a good beating with the murder scene in the background. (Cont P2)

Nokia said it pulled the adverts immediately after complaints from Mr Dags family and a local journalist.

We have apologised to the family and pulled the two advertisements Nokia spokesperson Mark Squires told Mobile News.

It was unfortunate the camera crew accidentally shot the background for the ad at the scene of this incident. We pulled the advertisements after a local journalist – who remembered the murder – notified us. We have not reused the offending ads by deleting the scene. The adverts were pulled completely.

He went on: If the camera had been pointed a few yards away this situation might not have arisen. We try to do research before filming but in urban areas it is becoming increasingly difficult to film locations that have not been the scene of a fight or incident.

The problem affects O2 pre-pay customers calling former O2 users who have since ported to another network as well as O2 pre-pay customers calling numbers recently ported on to the O2 network.

In both cases the billing system failed to recognise the change of network had taken place. So it (Cont P2) charged customers at old rates. At some times this was up to 18 times higher than the correct amount.

An O2 spokesperson said the mistake had not brought O2 any financial gain.

He claimed this was because certain pre-pay customers are receiving cheaper on-net calls while others are being charged for more expensive off-net calls.

This is a problem we have had for over a year which affects certain calls made from pre-pay phones on one of our pre-pay billing systems. While we are not making any money from the fault it is something that we are urgently trying to rectify added the spokesman.

O2 says that the fault only affected a small number of O2 customers. Work is being carried out on the billing system and the problem should be rectified in a matter of weeks.

The fault was uncovered by the Consumer Association but O2 says it has kept Oftel informed about the problem and of the technical steps it has been taking to rectify it.

More than 4100 P800 owners have signed an online petition lambasting Sony Ericsson and demanding a free upgrade to the pen-based Symbian user interface UIQ 2.1 that runs on the P900.

The scale of anger against Sony Ericsson is clear from some of the comments of the petitioners. Petitioner Matt Glover said: I feel used and abused by Sony Ericssons lack of support for this phone.

Another called simply Tony said: I just dumped my P800 on eBay. Ill never buy another SonyEric (sic) again. I may be jumping the gun a little but SE should have made a decision by now and publicly stated that the upgrade is in development.

That it hasnt means we are either ignored by SE or that SE has a poor customer-services/communications department. Either way its a company I no longer have time for.

User Chris OConnor (Cont P2) said: My P800 is full of bugs. Im disgusted Sony Ericsson is releasing the P900 without either fixing the bugs or offering a cheap upgrade.

The petition was started by Michael Andreasen head of IT for a Scottish veterinary wholesaler. He claimed the P900 is simply the P800 with the new UIQ 2.1.

Many people who purchased a P800 thought they were purchasing more than just a basic phone. The price of the P800 was getting into laptop pricing he said.

We all thought we were buying something that would receive upgrades in firmware to get the most from our expensive state-of-the-art hardware. We all feel like testers for the P900 who paid through the nose for the privilege.

It feels like Sony Ericsson is trying to milk its high-end users for every penny it can get by making them upgrade expensive hardware to get software improvements. Before the P900 was released I and many other people expected that the UIQ on the P800 would be upgraded to 2.1 at some point in order to improve many of the poor areas of the P800.

Andreasen says he contacted Sony Ericsson through its support forums but received no reply.

The P800 has UIQ 2.0. This is the very first version of UIQ for any device and as such it is far from perfect. Sony Ericsson has implied that P800 users could expect major updates in many key areas. Other than some trivial patches the P800 has not had any update that could in anyway be described as major.

Many would argue that upgrades are part of technological life and that the same upgrade situation happens with computers cars and most other products.

Andreasen argues this case is different because Sony Ericsson published a document in which it stated that there would be continual updates for the P800.

In The P800 for Enterprise Usage Sony Ericsson wrote: Since the P800 is an open environment new solutions will continually be developed by both Sony Ericsson and third parties. In most cases such new solutions will work on the existing product range even when successors to the P800 have been shipped.

I know companies such as Nokia dont give major software upgrades to its smartphones Andreasen conceded. But Nokia hasnt marketed its devices as being upgradable in the same way Sony Ericsson did with the P800. Nor have I seen any similar document coming out of Nokia.

The P900 has almost identical hardware to the P800 apart from the 65000-colour screen he argues even down to poor battery life. He also pointed out that the P900 uses exactly the same Symbian OS (7.0).

In fact all the real improvements come from the UIQ 2.1 upgrade and not the hardware he said. If UIQ 2.1 was on the P800 it would be 95 per cent the same as the P900. Any P800 owner who wishes to get these software improvements has to ditch their perfectly good hardware and spend 600 to buy practically the same hardware again but in a new box. This is just unacceptable.

Sony Ericsson marketing director Peter Marsden said the manufacturer wont be offering the upgraded UIQ for the P800 because there is not enough memory to allow the new system to run.

The new UIQ demands more internal memory which the P900 has but the P800 doesnt. Trying to install it on the P800 would cause problems with content such as calender and contacts. Also the 2.1 was written for a 65000-colour screen which the P800 doesnt have.

We try and act responsibly to our customers where it is technically possible. But in this case it isnt. We feel the P800 is still a quality product and I feel sympathy for these users – but then technically superior products are always being launched whether it is mobile phones cars or computers.

Details of the raid were revealed by Treasury minister John Healey in a briefing made at 11 Downing Street to personnel from the mobile phone and computer chip industries including representatives from Vodafone Nokia Motorola Siemens and Phones 4U.

Healey said Customs strategy to tackle missing trader and carousel fraud was on track and beginning to achieve results.

Figures released by Customs indicate that for example between March and May of this year the value of consignments of mobile phones from the UK to the Netherlands fell from 300 million to just over 30 million.

Healey said the government was on track in tackling missing trader and carousel fraud and is beginning to achieve results.

At least 44 traders had ceased trading since Customs began issuing warning letters under the extended security powers from section 17 of the Finance Act he revealed.

Also Customs investigators are currently working on approximately 100 MTIC (Missing Trader Intra-Community fraud) cases worth around 2 billion. Repayments to known brokers have fallen from a peak of 600 million in the second quarter of 2002 to just 100 million in the same quarter this year.

I do appreciate the sensitivities of those of you trading in the sectors that are badly blighted by MTIC and the fears that you as legitimate businesses may be caught up in a system designed to target serial VAT abusers said Healey.

But Don Mavin director of the VAT Investigations Team at tax specialists WJB Chiltern said Healeys speech was just Customs blowing their own trumpet.

In reality all they have done is moved the problem away from the UK. I dont think they can pat themselves on the back at all.

Huge amounts of VAT have been evaded. The amounts are so high they were affecting the balance of payments. Their main (Cont P2) success was preventing businesses from trading and is the main reason why trade has gone down.

Everyone was afraid of being made liable for someone elses wrong doings. Before the Budget measures Customs were completely unable or capable of dealing with this problem Customs werent watching the bad guys so an awful lot of legitimate businesses are facing substantial demands for lost VAT.

These traders were providing Customs with so much information. Customs should have used their resources more effectively and collated the information to spot who the bad guys are and to warn everyone they went for the soft targets which in most cases were the exporters reclaiming the VAT said Mavin.

The three networks are claiming that the results achieved by O2 were misleading. All networks receive the results and it is up to them to publish them or not.

O2 has been the only network to release the figures which come from 22000 test calls on each network in 70 cities and towns as well as A-roads and motorways. (Cont P2)

O2 had come top of the survey with an overall national call success rate of 99.2 per cent between April and September.

The twice-yearly Mobile Network Operators Call Success Rate survey comes from data submitted by the networks which is independently audited by the British Auditing Bureau Telecom (BABT).

The surveys started in 1999 and

Participation is is voluntary with networks are under no obligation to publish results.

This is the first time that more than one network has chosen not to publish the survey data. The networks raised their objections after O2s results were announced

A Vodafone spokesperson said:

For comparative performance data to be of real value for the public it has to be representative of consumer experience and matter in a way that can highlight genuine differences between operators.

As the overall standard of mobile networks has improved the current results may no longer be able to meet these requirements.

Vodafone has reluctantly come to the conclusion that the data risks giving a misleading impression to customers and has therefore chosen not to publish the data.

Orange said:

Orange withheld its results because we dont believe the survey reflects actual usage patterns. We have called for an independent survey to be carried out by an independent third party.

The survey results do not allow consumers to make a valid comparison. We want information that helps consumers choose.

O2 replied:

We are determined not to let anyone take the shine off our achievements. We have always published our figures even when we havent come in first.

O2 said the high level of connection rates were a result of the 100million invested over the last year the deployment of 20 advanced network features to reduce the number of dropped calls and more frequent and vigorous network testing.

Oftel said:

The methodology used this year is exactly the same as in previous surveys.

We are disappointed that the other three networks have decided not to publish their results. We issued a consultation document on November 19 with the explicit purpose of trying to stop this kind of dispute from arising.

Comparable material is useful for the consumer to have. That said operators are completely within their rights not to publish their results.

John Joselyn sales director of

Telecom Plus has died after suffering a heart atack.

Joselyn (47) was chatting to colleagues at a 20:20 dealer hospitality event at the Bedford Autodrome last Tuesday when he collapsed.

A 20:20 Logistics spokesperson said: We are all completely devastated by what happened and our thoughts and deepest sympathies go to Johns family friends and work colleagues at Telecom Plus.

John collapsed in one of the hospitality suites inbetween events. Everything possible was done and the para-medics fought hard to revive him. Unfortunately he did not respond and we were told that he had died by medical staff at Bedford Hospital.

We had organised the Jonathan Palmer day as part of a sales incentive and immediately called the event off as soon as this tragedy occurred as a mark of respect. John was a well known and respected figure in the mobile industry and will be sadly missed by everyone who knew him.

Joselyns brother-in-law Chris Evans of Kiss Communications described him as one of the nicest and most generous men you could meet.

Joselyn began his career in the mobile industry at Motorola before spending a brief period as a mobile dealer at Kiss with Evans. In early 1990 he joined Peoples Phone managing the dealer distribution channel. He became sales director and oversaw the opening of over 180 shops in less than 18 months.

Following the purchase of Charles Wigoders Peoples Phone by Vodafone in 1997 he moved to Samsung for a short while. He rejoined Wigoder as sales director at Telecom Plus which is now a leading multi-utility and telecoms provider.

Said Wigoder:

John was the epitome of a true gentleman in all of his dealings and anyone that knew him personally will have been so impressed with his zest for life honesty and integrity in everything that he did. We have all suffered a very deep personal loss with Johns passing.

The funeral will be held in the Tring area towards the end of this week. Anyone wishing to attend should call Chris Evans on 07768 735736.

Customs and Excise will from the end of next year no longer be able to launch their own prosecutions for suspected VAT fraud.

An independent Customs and Excise Prosecutions Office (CEPO) will take over Customs prosecution cases. Customs is currently responsible for prosecuting VAT and duties fraudsters. But these powers will be transferred to CEPO the new body recommended by Mr Justice Butterfield in July following an investigation into failed cases involving Customs and Excise. CEPO will be accountable to the Attorney General and will function in the same way as the Crown Prosecution Service with a focus on VAT and duties. However the removal of prosecution powers from Customs should not mean that fraudsters fear it any less.

Tax specialist firm WJB Chiltern has warned that Customs investigators will remain ruthless in seeking out the fraudsters. WJB Chiltern director of VAT and customs investigations Don Mavin told Mobile News:

The new regime should mean that people who have committed offences will be prosecuted successfully. There should be fewer failed cases and more successful prosecutions.

He went on: It wont mean that Customs investigators are any less active and aggressive than (cont P2) before. The independence of the new body is important. To date Customs solicitors have not been sufficiently in control of their cases. Customs lawyers have been too heavily influenced by investigators.

He concluded: The new body should ensure there are fewer breaches of procedure and guidelines. CEPO will decide independently whether to proceed with cases and how to proceed with cases. The arrival of CEPO is welcome but it has been long overdue in coming.