Cleartone makes radio comms equipment primarily for the emergency services.

Dolphin (which is a subsidiary of global wireless operator TIW) recently announced plans for a release of its ExpressNet service which offers integrated voice and data mobile communications over a seamless network to cover the UK France and Germany by the end of next year.

Vodafone now has five stores operational across the province.

The new Coleraine store was opened with music from DJs at local radio station Q102.9FM in a live-three-hour link-up giveaways and competitions. As a special promotional offer the Coleraine store was selling the Alcatel One Touch Easy for 99.99 with 12 months line rental 30 minutes airtime a month itemised billing leather case and in-car charger.

Also in June the store was offering free connection with 100 free off-peak minutes with any Motorola phone bought on a 12-month contract.

Vodafone (NI) is the Northern Ireland subsidiary of Vodafone Group.

This new store in Coleraine highlights our commitment to making Vodafone more accessible to our customers said Vodafone (NI) general manager Byron Bramwell.

With our latest store opening more customers in Northern Ireland particularly in the north and west of the province will have direct access to Vodafone and advice offered by our staff.

Dextra reckons it now has a 25 per cent share of the UK original accessory market which it values at 90 million up from three per cent share in January 1996 when it was set up as a specialist accessory division within the Caudwell Group.

The company says it has also seen a 256 per cent increase in sales orders in the past year and now delivers an average of 1000 orders a day and up to 500000 accessories a month.

The next millennium will see Dextra become a global specialist in accessory distribution said Dextra managing director Richard Slee.

Dextra is also now Vodafones main accessory supplier sending more than 40000 accessories into 245 Vodafone stores and recently won a three-year contract with BT Retail as the sole supplier of accessories into 120 stores.

Dextra has spent 250000 this year in information technology systems to improve service delivery.

Dextra says it is now the UKs largest accessory distributor for Nokia Ericsson and Motorola. It has also set up new partnerships with Samsung and Maxons accessory divisions as well as Psion Dacom and BT EasyReach the consumer paging service.

The UMTS video calls took place in a mobile survey vehicle and a stationary environment. They were made at data transfer rates of 394kbps which is three times faster than ISDN and 40 times faster than current GSM mobile data speeds.

Orange is currently trialling W-CDMA as its air interface technology in line with the European standard for UMTS.

Phase one of the trials will be completed next month with core network trials ending in November.

Orange intends to deliver mobile commerce rapid internet access and advanced information services on its existing network and through the next generation of technologies to provide customers with a wider range of services said Orange group director of commercial activities Richard Brennan.

Orange chief operating officer Bob Fuller commented:

Orange is the most advanced of all the UK operations in preparing for the third generation of mobile telephony. We are excited by the possibilities that UMTS offers.

Sales from the site are now equivalent to those generated by a large Carphone Warehouse store. Direct customer contact to the site measured by the number of e-mails received has increased 200 per cent since the TV commercials started showing the address.

Installation of a new Compaq 7000 server has increased speed and improved stability of the web site.

Experienced internet and mobile users can now bypass the step-by-step product information pages and go directly to the products they want to buy.

Once we had made a few tweaks here and there and added some new services we knew we had a web site which would deliver second-to-none service so the time was right to give it a bigger profile said Carphone Warehouse group marketing director Lesley Angus.

The results are remarkable in the light of recent research which indicates that although over a third of UK companies believe e-commerce will open up new markets only a fifth have actually seen an increase in sales she added.

The Carphone Warehouses web site was launched last November. It cost around 500000 to develop.

The Nokia 8850 is a dual-band GSM 900/1800 mobile phone weighing 91 g and having a volume of 70 cc. Its features include voice dialling.

The phone was unveiled at the CommunicAsia 99 exhibition held in Singapore last week.

With the introduction of the Nokia 8850 we are confident that Nokia can once again live up to expectations. The Nokia 8850 will be received with great excitement by our most demanding customers said Nokia Mobile Phones president Matti Alahuhta.

Nokia chief designer Frank Nuovo said:

The Nokia 8850 exhibits further refinement of the form we introduced with the Nokia 8810 last year. The overall balance finely tuned shapes and unique selection of materials clearly position the Nokia 8850 in premium class.

The cover is made of a combination of aluminum and magnesium. The Nokia 8850 incorporates an internal high-performance antenna and internal semi-fixed battery. Voice dialling allows the user to store up to eight voice tags in the phone memory. The 8850 also supports predictive text input which enables users to type messages with greater speed and convenience. The phones built-in dictionary assists in quickly picking up the right word.

A picture Messaging facility allows users to send graphics attached to a short message. The new phone also comes ready-made with a set of default pictures that can be sent to any other Nokia 8850 or to a Nokia 3210. More information and pictures can be downloaded from Nokias website where the user can also design new pictures.

Standby time of the Nokia 8850 is up to 150 hours and the talktime is up to three hours 20 minutes depending on the network conditions. There is a built-in vibra alert and the phone supports all three wireless voice codecs HR FR and EFR as well as the extended GSM bandwidth the EGSM band.

Also due out from Nokia in the fourth quarter is a high-speed data terminal called The Nokia Card Phone 2.0 which is said to quadruple usual data transmission speeds over digital networks.

The Nokia Card Phone 2.0. is a PC Card with a built-in GSM phone supporting High Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD) and enabling data transmission of up to 43.2 Kbit/s without data compression.

The statistic comes from interviews with 150 people in mobile phone outlets nation-wide.

At least 76 per cent of people interviewed said they only visited one shop before making their purchase decision.

However although sales people influence a third of all purchases they could influence far more as half of consumers questioned said they didnt have a brand in mind when they went into the store.

This says EMS Chiara suggests that they believed the sales staff would help them make their decision.

Out of the 33 per cent respondents who said they were influenced by sales staff only 27 per cent were women. Other factors that affect sales are advertising (six per cent) promotional deals (16 per cent) friends recommendations (10 per cent) low price (16 per cent) ergonomics (13 per cent) and other reason (six per cent).

The research has also identified that 43 per cent of people bought a mobile phone because its the norm to have one. And 56 per cent of females are still buying their first phone compared to 33 per cent of males.

Also 52 per cent of males will change their phone to keep up with technology compared with 16 per cent of females.

These figures highlight the necessity for technology retailers to tap into and capitalise on their most valuable asset their sales team said EMS Chiara chairman Richard Thompson.

Sales staff are the direct link to the shoppers and therefore their attitude and product knowledge is crucial. Advertising will draw people in-store but essentially it is the sales team that are able to make or break a sale. Retail managers should consider investing more in sales training.

Messages can also be redirected to any fax machine to obtain hard copy.

E-mails of up to 160 characters (the maximum length of an SMS) can be received with no need for a data card or modem. If the message is longer additional parts of the e-mail can be requested.

Customers need to register for the BulletIN service but there is no monthly subscription fee. The cost of originating or receiving an e-mail is 20p to forward an e-mail to a fax machine costs 50p. However until the end of September the service is available at half price.

Worth more than 1 million a year the contract makes One 2 One the main supplier of mobile phones to the Central Buying Consortium.

The Consortium was formed eight years ago and is the largest local authority purchasing group in the UK.

We chose One 2 One primarily because of its innovative approach to structuring the deal said Paul Raimbach senior contracts manager for Buckinghamshire County Council the main authority in the Consortium.

As well as offering unbeatable value for money it was immediately clear that One 2 One was easily capable of meeting the range of strict network and customer support quality guidelines we laid down in the tender process.

Customers are charged 10p (plus VAT) to send a message to a subscription pager and 20p to send to a caller-party-pays Zap! pager.

After composing the message users key in the pager number instead of the mobile number.