The new organisation called Worldzap was launched last week in London at an event hosted by world champion hurdler Colin Jackson. It is a joint-venture company between Prisma Sports & Media (a subsidiary of Germanys Kirch Group) the Fantastic Corporation and the ETF Group. Worldzap will provide a combination of news live action clips and immediate results to 3G devices.

Premium services will be developed around the worlds major sports events and the music and entertainment industry.

Initially Worldzap will offer text services using Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) i-mode and SMS and will quickly evolve to offer photos and full-motion video. The use of Fantastics software and global satellite distribution system will enable Worldzap to bypass the current bottlenecks of the internet to deliver its sports content at broadband speeds to a society that is becoming increasingly mobile. The service will be sold through mobile operators many of whom are already Fantastic customers.

The largest part of Worldzaps market will be mobile phones. The user will subscribe to the Worldzap service choosing from a menu of programming options (e.g. goals follow a team follow a particular player interviews previews results).

The Fantastic Corporation technology will be used to notify the user that a clip is ready for viewing at the touch of a button often within seconds of the live event occurring and to deliver this to the handset.

Prisma is a leading international sports marketing and media company which specialises in the management of media rights to major sports events.

Its appointment to implement the distribution of the 2002 and 2006 FIFA World Cup media rights in Europe on behalf of KirchMedia and management of the European television rights for Wimbledon are amongst its projects.

Fantastic was formed in November 1996 with its headquarters in Zug Switzerland. Shareholders include Deutsche Telekom British Telecom Intel Lucent Telecom Italia KirchGroup Reuters and Singapore Press Holdings.

The company provides software solutions for broadband data broadcasting. The ETF Group is a European venture capital company with financial interests in 20 high tech companies.

Meanwhile BTCellnet and Halifax have partnered to provide on-line banking by the summer with SMS text messaging and WAP banking followed by GPRS high-speed data services in the Autumn.

Other Natwest services will include the ability to look at the 12 most recent transactions and via the Short Message Service (SMS) be alerted to things such as when their balances reach a certain limit or that their credit card payment is due.

The service has been developed with Orange. NatWest says more than 100000 people have signed up to its Internet banking service since its introduction in November. An average of more than 1700 a day have joined since the beginning of this year.

BTCellnet will supply Halifax with mobile services.

The face of banking is rapidly changing and is being driven by technology and mobile communications said BTCellnet MD Peter

Erskine.

Asecurity guard who stole a mobile phone from the place he was supposed to be guarding was fined 200 after pleading guilty to stealing the Nokia phone from the offices in Grosvenor Place.

James Wallace was arrested at the building on January 31 and the stolen phone was found when the police searched his house.

He admitted stealing the phone from a fourth floor office while patrolling the building.

The court was told the companys security manager called in the police after the phone went missing.

His solicitor said he had been tempted in a moment of weakness and had considered returning the phone.

The cartridges are being sold for 100 each dropping to 50 each for orders over 10. Unblocker Software and leads for both c12 and Diga are being sold for 500

The web site states:

We are well aware that you may consider this to be a scam due to all the recent scams concerning mobile phones and sky hacks Our only answer is If you were thinking this way Dont jump in with both feet buy one cartridge to test (cont P2) the water. At least this way you can test us with minimum risk If you like what you get then deal with us If not then Im sure well be flamed on the newsgroups and this site will fall into oblivion.

The sellers of the device say:

If the phone becomes blocked by your service provider its not a problem just place the cartridge in the base of the phone power up the phone (with full battery) and press hot key 9 at the same time and wait for 20 seconds

This will allow the cartridge to do its job and hey presto your back on line with the same number and credit. If you wish to put extra credit on the phone this can be done as well.

Warning! each cartridge is unique to the first phone its introduced to so if you try to put the cartridge in another phone it will display contact your dealer. This is unrecoverable

The phones with their cartridges have even sent some abroad to India Pakistan Germany France and Tenerife.

All phones worked fine say the cartridge sellers.

We could make calls back to the UK but could not make Internal calls in the countries we tried. Except of course the UK where you can make as many calls to who ever and where ever you like.

Vodafone has launched a 1.5 million advertising campaign at Heathrow Airport.

It includes exterior poster sites escalator panels and sites above shops in the main buildings.

An estimated 61.5m visitors pass through Heathrow Airport each year.

The campaign features Nervous System depicting a human body.

The second advertisement Vodafone Spoken Here majors on the fact that Vodafone claims to have the most roaming agreements world-wide and claims that no mobile phone network covers more countries.

European Telecom will initially purchase 30000 Phonecell terminals to sell to African networks and distributors and give them the means of connecting fixed telephone equipment to a cellular network for emergency or temporary set-ups.

The scheme will involve a series of football development days staged at league clubs across England over the next two years to encourage disabled people to participate in football. One of the first clubs to sign up for the programme is Everton which is already sponsored by One 2 One.

Everton will now set up a disabled section to provide training.

The allcalls package offers calls from as little as 5p a minute with no service charge.

Access to the original Pay As You Talk 2p weekend local call rate is excluded.

Handset packages cost from as little as 60 including 10 worth of free calls in the box 2.50 preloaded on the phone and an additional 7.50 worth of calls for every user who registers. No time limit or use by date on TopUp cards means existing cards can now be used to spend 5 15 25 or 75 all on calls.

Vodafone Pay As You Talk allcalls offers an exciting extension to the Vodafone Pay As You Talk range to further broaden its appeal offering not only an extensive selection of handsets and TopUp vouchers in varying denominations but also greater tariff choice said Vodafone commercial manager Paul Donovan.

As pre-pay moves to the next stage in its development it is natural that networks extend the range of choice available to provide a service to suit an even wider audience.

Handsets on offer include the Siemens C25 Ericsson A1018 Motorola M3788 and Trium Astral.

Customers can now log on to the Vodafone Interactive web site at www.vodafone.net to top-up using a credit or debit card.

Vodafone says it now has more than 4.2 million customers on Pay As You Talk.

Mobile content markets in Europe and North America will grow from e1.8 billion in 2003 to a potential value of e4.3 billion in 2006.

The largest growth will occur in the mobile games and downloadable music markets which collectively could see growth from e510 million in 2003 to over e1.9 billion in 2006.

The content market in Europe and North America is cranking the handle on production and development but there is no effective method to getting these products to market utilising content providers current strategies said Graham Brown author of the report Winning and Losing in Mobile Content.

The industry has yet to collectively develop a winning strategy he added saying: We identified a number of industry weaknesses that surprised us when conducting the research. The most obvious of these was investing resources in mythical killer applications and rich content without an effective distribution channel to get products to market.

Unfortunately we appear to be collectively disposed to pursue industry solutions to industry problems.

W2Forum studied companies both inside and outside the industry and concluded that the vast majority were employing ineffective distribution strategies for marketing delivery and the collection of payment for their products.

The few that employed winning distribution models were rapidly increasing their market share.

The report compares these markets with the developed markets of Asia Pacific where mobile content is already worth up to e2.65 billion and could be worth as much as e5.7 billion in 2006.

Most content providers believe they can become a small part of an increasing pie added Brown and thats their weakness.

Instead he predicted that non-mobile players and the few mobile companies that have focused intensely on core competencies distribution and operational effectiveness will dominate this market.

Nokia says consumers expect mobile internet services to be as easy to access as the internet itself and that its new WAP technology takes all of the configuration headaches and sucks them into the infrastructure away from the user.

With the new method a mobile user browses the internet on a PC and finds an e-commerce site that is mobile enabled. The user simply clicks on a designated icon on the web page and inputs their mobile phone number. Settings are automatically programmed over-the-air to their WAP-enabled phone.

This programming is expected to speed the way the subscriber can directly access this e-commerce site wirelessly without any additional input or programming to the phone.

Ease-of-use is one of the key advantages mobile phones have over PCs today particularly for buying things over the Web said Mark Bregman general manager IBMs Pervasive Computing Division.

Hewlett Packard IBM and Nocom will work to bring the new over-the-air WAP solution to market during the first half of the year.

Called talktalk the service is the result of CPWs purchase of fixed operator Opal Telecom last year. It became available throughout CPW stores from last Monday.

The service is available to users of BT residential lines. As well as saving 30 per cent on the price of calling fixed lines customers are promised up to 25 per cent off the cost of calling mobiles.

Carphone Warehouse chief executive Charles Dunstone said:

For all the talk about competition BT has around 80 per cent of all residential landline customers and a 73 per cent share of the residential voice market.

Many customers receive no discounts and those that do end up paying higher line rentals for the privilege. We think people are paying too much for telephone calls and thats why were launching talktalk.

Siemens made the same claim for its new WAP phone earlier this month (Mobile News February 7).

It uses WAP 1.1 and a microbrowser from Phone.com and comes in a range of five colours with high-gloss finish. Measuring 122 x 48 x 25mm and weighing 150g with the standard Nickel Metal Hydride battery the One Touch View db will provide up to 123 hours of standby. The super power Li-Ion (Lithium Ion) 580-mAh battery offers up to 110 hours standby.

Alcatel is working with five operators in Europe to provide terminal packages and bundles to suit the national marketplace. These bespoke packages and bundles will be commercially available during the second quarter this year.