Motorola also will supply technical support services to BTCellnet

System support including network optimisation hardware services and software maintenance will also be supported by Motorola digital wireless network operating system professionals.

Motorola also supplied BTCellnet with its GPRS network

The SMS version has been programmed by Finnish company Codeonline. Every month the top game player will win a weekend for two in Monte Carlo in a prize worth 10000 including return flights from London/Nice three nights five star accommodation and 500 gambling chips .

Nine runners-up will each receive a bottle of champagne and the new second edition Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? board game.

The game is similar to the TV show. Players have to answer a series of 15 questions to reach a million. For the text message version players get points rather than pounds. Players send the text message M to 8889 and are sent a first question together with a choice of four answers with a two-minute time limit per question.

As with the TV show competitors have three Lifelines. They can key in TIME (for double the time limit) ASK (for results based on the answers of previous contestants) and 50 (takes away two wrong answers).

The Mobile Data Association (MDA) represents BTCellnet One 2 One Orange and Vodafone.

The consumer campaign will include promotion events and charity links and will target people in the 20-30 year-old age bracket who currently dont use SMS.

A corporate programme will be directed at business users and will use web-based information services and sponsorship.

The web activity includes competitions surveys and downloads to third-party sponsorship and hot links.

Phase 2 of the programme will build on the awareness we have already achieved by encouraging non-users to try texting for the first time said MDA chairman Mike Short.

The MDA was set up in 1994 to increase awareness of mobile data among users and their advertisers.

It currently has over fiftymembers from the mobile data community.

So says Swedish strategy advisor and management consultant Par Strom.

Strom who has been a consultant to Nokia and Ericsson says.

It was a mistake to launch mobile data services on a circuit-switched network. It makes surfing far too expensive for consumers. In addition atmospheric interference results in frustrating interruptions which doesnt happen in packet-switched networks.

Strom does not think that 3G is the revolution that networks expect.

The big step is GPRS with its packet switching. This lets users stay on line permanently while only paying for the bandwidth they are actually using.

As telecommunications successively shifts from voice to data transfer the operators are losing ground he claims.

Through surfing business can be done without the operators even knowing about it. A shift is therefore taking place from base revenue (derived from the traffic itself) to value-based revenue (derived from the value of the services provided) which also degrades the situation for the operators.

A further threat to the operators is alternative networks built with local access points that use licence-free frequencies called hot spots.

It is however far too soon to count the operators out. They have three trump cards. Their large customer base payment relationships and they are the only ones who know the geographical location of each user.

Called Group Chat the service creates a virtual chatroom over the airwaves. It requires one of the participants to be registered by BTCellnet as a Group Chat chairperson.

The chairperson must be a BTCellnet customer. But the other participants can be subscribers to any mobile phone service and can take part using a landline or even when they are abroad. Each person will only pay for their own phone call.

Product is to ship at a recommended price of 400 with connection and is to reach dealers by the end of the month.

Improvements to the Communicator over earlier versions include a new colour screen the ability to download music and video files from the web and full compatibility with Microsoft office software.

Nokia business development manager Mark Squires said We have over 22000 developers signed up to provide exciting applications for the non-GPRS compatible 9210.

We are targeting people that want to use the phone and its applications today. It is compatible with HSCSD (supported by Orange) allowing web access at up to 28.8kbps or 43.2kbps in Ireland. We dont feel GPRS is ready just yet.

In-Touch has its own business centres in Bournemouth Gillingham Southampton and Winchester and already supports franchise operations in Christchurch Lymington New Milton and Armesbury.

A creditors meeting will be held in London this Thursday (June 15). Benefon UK managing partner Mike Crompton commented.

It wont affect future plans. If we cant work with Fishtank there are other agencies we can work with.

Crompton says Benefon is preparing to launch its new ESC handset which features built in GPS positioning software and downloadable maps.

They are Dudley Eustace (finance director of Royal Philips Electronics) Doug Dunn (president of ASM Lithography) and Simon Roper (former general manager of the Asia Pacific arm of CellStar Corporation).

Bredesen who worked for Philips after leaving Motorola is now chief executive of Swedish television company Tandberg.

He spent almost 20 years in the telecom industry starting at Siemens.

His is last assignment was sales director for Motorolas Personal Communications Sector.

Following a recent survey by Peramon where corporate senior decision makers expressed their opinions on mobile internet technology deployment 47 per cent agreed that the most likely mobile technology to be deployed this year is actually SMS.

David Townsend Peramons managing director said:

Businesses should prepare for GPRS but while theyre waiting for the technology to deliver SMS can impact the corporate bottom line immediately. Many are overlooking the investment already made in SMS technology currently available in all GSM handsets. By taking SMS seriously businesses can drive down the cost of their mobile communication at the same time as increasing employee productivity.