McCanns appointment wont affect existing local ad agencies working with individual Vodafone companies in each country.

After seeing a number of agencies we selected McCanns for the strength of its network and track record on campaigns of this type said Vodafones global branding director Thomas Geitner.

The agency will have an important role to play in establishing our future gobal brand enabling Vodafone to achieve its aim of becoming the worlds leading mobile multimedia company and ensuring the Group is in pole position when it launches third generation networks.

The GSM Association says that SMS demand is so great that its forecast of 10 billion messages a month by the end of the year will have been achived in September. The Association says 15 billion messages will be sent a month by the end of the year.

What was a cult following a couple of years ago is a mass-market phenomenon today said GSM

Association chairman Jim Healy.

There is huge demand boosted by a vast volume value and variety of services offered by GSM networks and internet applications services.

SMS initially took time to catch on and reach a critical mass in

Europe before exploding. We are seeing a replication of that trend across all markets now and are witnessing a subtle shift in the world of wireless comms from the verbal to the visual variety.

Rob Conway GSM Association CEO added:

The rise of SMS has been fuelled by many factors including the extraordinary growth of pre-pay services the development of WAP-based SMS messaging SMS roaming interconnection between operators and the sheer range and diversity of services now available to customers.

In France more than half a billion messages were reported as in Italy during August.

The Grinch stars Jim Carrey and is directed by Ron Howard. Its being hyped as the biggest film this side of Christmas.

One 2 One and The PocketPhone Shop have been given exclusive access to The Grinch and have put together a sales channel promotion to coincide with the films launch.

Branded Grinch postcard dispensers will be displayed at point-of-sale in over 300 cinemas nationwide offering a holiday competition to Los Angeles.

Entrants have to fill the entry form on the reverse of the card and then drop it into the nearest PocketPhone Shop.

Coupled with a branded entry box and considerable in-store branding in over 170 PocketPhone Shops nationwide is another holiday competition that is open to all purchasers of One 2 One phones until the end of December.

The promotion will be boosted with national newspaper competitions and online promotions. One 2 One recently promoted hit movies American Pie and Kevin & Perry Go Large.

Reverse charge technology over a mobile network eliminates the need for callers to key in personal details. They can use their phone bill as a method of payment.

WAP needs killer applications to really take off e-mail was the first now with this technology we have also opened it up to the world of m-commerce said MD Hugh Spear.

It is particularly suited to low-value or micro-transactions where there is consumer resistance to using credit cards.

Mobilebone.com is a WAP information and entertainment site which offers a range of services including sports results travel information quizzes jokes and hot gossip.

The most popular section which receives over 4000 hits a day allows visitors to download over 100 different ringtones for their mobile phone.

This was an increase of more than 513 per cent in one quarter. Registrations on the UK site increased by 38 per cent over the same period to more than 1.6 million.

This data demonstrates that mainstream consumer adoption of wireless information services is on the upswing said Genie MD Laurence Alexander.

BTCellnet says around a million of its customers have upgraded to to WAP-enabled handsets. Genie has recently announced a location based service.

Other plans include GPRS enhancements and a development of its m-commerce offering.

Genie currently has web and WAP portals in the UK the Netherlands and Italy with more than 2.6 million registrations in total.

Genie has also partnered with Yahoo! and Freeserve to enable their customers to access their e-mails via Genie.Genies other businesses include Qdodge.com a system to top-up pre-pay mobile phones via the web and ATM type machines.

Dolphins growth has been slower than expected but the network reckons it had 50000 digital subscribers at the end of last year using a national digital network of approximately 950 sites.

Dolphin put on 20000 net new customers in the last quarter of 2000 and intends to grow its digital customer base to 150000 subscribers in the U.K. by the end of this year. Growth is expected from better coverage in major cities and the second generation of handsets in the second quarter and from the targeting of specific industry segments.

According to figures received from the four UK network operators the number of chargeable person to person messages sent last month was 673 million compared to 171 million in November 1999.

Mike Short Chairman of the MDA said:

The Mobile Data Association is celebrating its first truly SMS Christmas. We look forward to continued growth in SMS next year and serving our customers with a much broader range of mobile data and text services in 2001.

The MDA was established in 1994 to increase awareness of mobile data amongst users and their advisers. It also provides a forum for its members to communicate with Government bodies including the DTI the Radiocommunications Agency and Oftel.

ET blames losses at its electronic top-up operation Eazypay and a 300000 loss from its Global Telematics joint venture. It also expects its African subsidiary to make a loss rather a than an expected pre-tax profit of 800000. Its UK accessories division TAG is also performing below budget.

Ora managing director Ken Jacobson said heads of agreement had been signed.

That takes us through to the next phase. We havent yet entered the phase of due diligence. I feel confident a deal will be concluded by the end of Q1.

We have a number of choices we can take but no plan has been finalised as yet. Our priority is to keep our existing customers happy.

Kondor MD Mickey Priman said he expected a merged company to hold on to both brand names for the short to medium term.