There is no contract to sign or monthly line rental to pay.

The small business service comes available with free group billing free itemised bills for all the phones on the account and international roaming already set up.

Calls are 15p a minute for the first five minutes of use each day then 5p a minute after that. There are no peak rates.

Any company or individual spending more than 30 on UK calls or texts each month gets a loyalty reward of 10 per cent of whatever they spent credited to their account the following month.

Virgin Mobiles small business service is designed to help entre-preneurs such as builders to estate agents drivers to shopkeepers run their ventures more efficiently and cheaply claimed Virgin Mobile boss Sir Richard Branson.

There are no contracts to lock people into no monthly fees to drain their cash-flows just straightforward service and great value he added.

Trivial Pursuit will be available in the UK from April 2001 and will be rolled out internationally thereafter.

The game will be available in 10 languages include localised content and cover six topic categories. Motorola will make it available to all its operator partners so that subscribers can play the game via their service provider.

Codeonline will provide the gaming platform and the technical support to run the games.

Motorolas aim is to extend well-known existing brands into the mobile market and to create new mobile games and brands with application developers.

By bringing consumers established brand name entertainment we achieve our objective of delivering content to a broad segment of the market said Juan Montes director of technology for Motor-olas Personal Communications Sector.

This will include a room at the Hilton an advertisement in the Book of the Night and other priviliges.

Dealers can link their web site to CMCs server to offer competitive phone and tariff packages.

The dealer supplies CMC with customer details over the internet .

CMC handles fulfilment credit checks sends the phones direct to customers administers connection and chases proofs of contract. The phones are sent out bearing the dealers name and possibly on his own headed paper. Dealers have the responsibility of marketing and raising awareness of the special deals.

He takes over from John de Wit on August 1. His UK replacement has not been announced. A hot favourite is Vodafone director of indirect sales Ken McGeorge.

Jones was involved in setting up Libertel in 1995. He also starting Vodafone activities in France and Greece. He held posts as managing director of Vodafone Connect and financial director of Vodac.

Said one Vodafone serviceprovider: he may not be the most popular guy in the business. But he is certainly the right man for the job to maximise profitability.

As part of the rationalisation 22 Mobile Telecom Word-branded stores are to be transformed into MPC outlets over the next few months.

A statement from Vodafone confirmed:

Since the acquisition of Mobile Telecom plc on 2 May 2001 we have taken some time to understand the operation. In particular we have examined how best to manage the 100000 customers and how we can most effectively integrate Mobile Telecom into Vodafone UK.

There are approximately 100 people employed by Mobile Telecom providing customer support finance marketing and other services to the 100000 strong customer base. We intend to operate under the single Vodafone brand and we will migrate those customers onto the Vodafone customer base. In addition Vodafone already has established support functions such as finance IT and marketing and it is more efficient to absorb these functions at Mobile Telecom into the wider Vodafone business.

We will try where possible to identify suitable positions within Vodafone UK for staff affected including positions at Vodafones two other Croydon sites where there are opportunities. However in the event that we are unable to do this we will be offering redundancy payments.

The Mobile Telecom offices in Wallington near Croydon will close for business on November 30.

Things werent happening quickly enough for us. The opportunity hasnt come about as quickly as we would have liked. There is definitely space for a manufacturer who can produce good different kit and bring it quickly to market said Fonexco managing partner Mike Crompton.

We have been working with Benefon for over two years developing and opening up the market place for the manufacturer.

Within the current state of the market place brand awareness and speed to market are essential for the launch of any new product.

We had lots of good feedback from the industry on the products and enjoyed fair sales. We needed more than that. Benefon is working with a consultancy to look for another partner.

We were well accepted by the industry but we cant compete with larger manufacturers Crompton added.

We havent been able to deliver products into the market. Operators investment in 3G has inhibited location-based services which are part of the Benefons strategy he said.

The pre-pay market has affected sales of consumer-oriented handsets like the Q. We would have loved Benefon to provide us with large sums of money to support the brand. Its clear big investment is required Crompton concluded.

Benefon regional manager Thorsten Brysch added:

Customers have been asking us about our distribution in the UK. This was related to Fonexco who are no longer interested in working with us. We are surprised at the decision.

We will be looking for a new partner able to understand the product and the market. In the Interim we will look after our customers directly. We have a team of three to four people working full time on the UK.

The market took off slower than Fonexco expected and perhaps they became impatient.

Brysch said Benefon needed three years to grow the brand.

We are only 400 employees compared to Nokia s 60000. We cant afford to advertise on primetime TV . We are almost there. We need only nine months before consumers are familiar with the name. We supported the brand editorially wherever we could.

Before appointing Fonexco Benefon worked with JWE for distribution.

With Fonexco we have been on a learning curve regarding the market. We can do better. The market appears to be stronger than Fonexco was indicating. The announcement is not good news but its better to have this situation rather than quitting the market completely Brysch said.

Fonexcos ad agency Fishtank went bust last month (see Mobile News June 25).

Thirty of the 31 Discovery Store outlets will remain open and the name will be retained. Caudwell Group will also acquire a 98000sq ft warehouse and offices in Scarborough and will take on 250 Discovery Store staff with no job losses anticipated. The business will be run autonomously within the Caudwell Group.

There will be no direct relationship with our 4u brand and the Phones 4u shops. We may put some lifestyle products into certain Phones 4u outlets but the overall plan is to develop a separate brand within the Caudwell Group said John Caudwell.

Discovery has a superb presence in the retail arena. We intend to widen the range and provide the best possible high-tech highly desirable innovative lifestyle products.

We are considering a catalogue of Discovery Store products to Phones 4u customers and to the 980000 airtime subscribers on our Singlepoint customer base. But the products we make available will be exclusive to Discovery Store Caudwell said.

We have been testing the market with a Phones 4u Xtra store in Milton Keynes. This is where mobile phones fixed wire phones and gadgets have been sold in parallel and we will be making a decision soon on whether we will extend the Xtra name.

Russell Ford formerly MD of Iceland Frozen Foods will be a 10 per cent shareholder and will become MD of Discovery Store. At Iceland Ford (38) was responsible for 2 billion turnover and 770 stores.

The investigation was launched after third party mains travel chargers originating from China bearing false CE markings and certificates were unknowingly circulated by major UK accessory distributors such as Elite and TAG within the UK market.

Elite immediately recalled all potentially dangerous stock and sacked one of its suppliers (Mobile News February 19). Elite also revised its product testing procedures to prevent rogue product getting into the market.

Trading Standards spokesman Simpson Rolph declined to comment on whether action would be taken against any of the companies involved.

We are in the last throes of the investigation. We have gathered together substantial evidence. I cant comment on whether we plan to take the matter to court or not he said.

Space Communications director Darren Cooke first alerted Mobile News to the rogue chargers. One of the chargers is believed to have exploded.

Trading Standards have asked me to submit further evidence that I bought the chargers from Elite. It looks likely that it might go to court. Im getting fed up because Im having to pay solicitors fees.

Elite supplied me the faulty products. We dont regularly buy from Elite but that time we got our fingers burned. I am still getting faulty units back from customers. Because I am a competitor to Elite they have done nothing about it. No one has apologised. But I understand European Telecom has received a compensation payment from Elite said Cooke.

An Elite spokesperson commented:

We are unaware that any investigation is taking place. We dont understand why it would be of any interest to us. The matter is closed. Elite has not paid any money to European Telecom or its subsidiary TAG.

European Telecom whose subsidiary The Accessory Group supplied chargers to BTCellnet retail chain DX communications confirmed:

We are aware that the investigation is ongoing. We are co-operating with trading standards. We have not received any payments from Elite relating to mobile phone chargers.

Fuller a non-executive director of Fone Logistics (see story this issue) has spent a total of 20 years at Hutchison ending up as COO of Orange UK. He joined Telewest last December from Orange after Orange was acquired by France Telecom.