The Hutchison business supplies telecoms services to corporate accounts including Rolls Royce and Mobil.

Last year Hutchison generated revenues of 40 million.

The expansion of the corporate services division is our number one priority for 2001. The addition of Hutchisons subscribers positions Project Telecom as the UKs leading provide of telecom services to the corporate sector said Project Telecom chief executive TimRadford.

Project Telecom is a 250 million group which was successfully floated on the stock market last year.

Its portfolio includes more than 50000 corporate customers such as Aer Lingus Fuji Film Pretty Polly and Swissair. Last year it achieved top10 ranking in the Sunday Times Fast Track Index.

Darby will report to Peter Bamford chief executive for North Europe Middle East and Africa Region. He has worked at Coca Cola since 1984 and was in charge of its Central Europe and North-West Europe regions.

Chris Gent Vodafone Group CEO commented:

Gavins appointment will also allow Peter to concentrate on his increased responsibilities ensuring a continued high degree of focus on the critical UK market.

Oftel says UK prices for pre-pay international roaming are much higher than for customers in France Germany Sweden and Italy. Oftel says UK consumers can pay up to 1.50 a minute to receive incoming calls while travelling in Europe.

Many consumers may be getting caught because they are not aware of the high prices. Less than a quarter of consumers had any knowledge of the price of using a mobile phone abroad when they bought their phone.

Oftel advises pre-pay users to swap their Sim card when abroad for the Sim card of a foreign network.

Chris Kenny director of regulatory policy said:

The extremely high prices for pre-pay international roaming suggest that the UK operators are able to exploit a lack of consumer awareness. Better consumer information is vital if prices for pre-pay international roaming from the UK are to come down.

Well-informed consumers that shop around will put pressure on the mobile operators and will lead to lower prices in the future.

Oftel has already begun discussions with mobile providers retailers and consumer groups to address consumer awareness issues and I expect to see the industry taking action to improve consumer information and reduce prices over the coming months said Kenny.

NEC will begin delivery of 3G videophones in the fourth quarter of 2002. This is NECs largest agreement for 3G devices outside Japan.

Video applications are a key 3G features. Our customers will be keen to get one of these devices when we launch said Hutchison Whampoa MD Canning Fok.

The ACSP says it has been set up to promote the value of competition in services which benefits customers and contributes towards the establishment of a dynamic communications market in the UK.

Oftel Director General David Edmunds will launch the ACSP to press service providers and consumer group representatives this Thursday (February 22).

The database will also be used to analyse and segment Carphone Warehouses customer base to give marketing people the information they need to develop sales programmes and campaigns and to cross-sell products and services.

Speaking at a meeting of the WAP Forum last week Conway backed the protocol to grow and evolve.

He pointing toward industry forecasts for Europe that 100 million WAP-enabled terminals will be in the market by the end of this year

Some lessons have been learned and more need to be absorbed. But with the introduction of packet switched always on GPRS services by as many as 30 GSM networks to date with many more to come in the next few months WAPs future as a browser has never been brighter he said.

Conway agrees that WAP suffered from being over-hyped.

Nevertheless the twin successes of the text message facility on GSM phones and the i-mode data explosion in Japan convinces me that with expected enhancement in the number and quality of terminals and applications WAP can grow significantly he added.

He urged close cooperation between application developers vendors and carriers the WAP Forum and the GSM Association.

The i-mode service in Japan reached 18 million active users by January 2001 barely after two years from launch.

Thats one in seven Japanese people using the service. These facts prove that the market exists for mobile data services tailored for the wireless user.

Make it simple make it quick and make it everywhere and you have the recipe for success he suggested. Conway wants the WAP community to share the benefits of cooperative standardisation.

You must standardise the protocol from the browsers to the gateways from the applications to the services.

You must make the user experience simple and seamless. Location based services m-commerce and instant access to information will all play important parts. But the real catalyst for the re-birth of WAP is GPRS he predicted.

Although Iridium the original satphone company went bankrupt last year with its users apparently ending up with the most expensive doorstops in the world Colussy has paid the US bankruptcy courts just $25 million for the $5 billion network.

After striking a 48 million) deal with the US government to allow around 20000 Department of Defense users to continue using the satphone service Colussys company Iridium Satellite will restart offering satellite services to non-government customers by the end of April.

Colussy also has an optional deal for three times this amount with the US government to offer satphone services for up to nine more years so assuring the future of Iridium network.

The firm has outsourced the operation of the satellite network to Boeing and is now advising service providers on how to reflash the firmware of users Iridium 9500 and 9505 handsets as well as the Motorola 9570 portable satphone unit to use the new service.

The reflashing is necessary to allow the phones to support data services which operate at a basic 2400 bps and using a data compression module (from June) at 9600 bps.

Initially Iridium Satellite will concentrate on hooking up users of the old service to the new one as well as offering new subscriptions to heavy industry and other government customers.

The main focus of the service will be on offering voice communications to industrial companies as well as users in the more remote areas of the world.

Plans are also in hand for an Iridium paging service which will cost around 70 a month. Using spot beams users will still be able to receive paging signals from the satellites when inside a building and near a window.

Details of the new Iridium voice tariffs remain shrouded in secrecy but sources suggest a dollar-a-minute (70 pence) rate for single phone accounts is likely.

Globalstar USA has just slashed its own satphone line rentals from 16.50 to 13.50) a month with call rates of between 60p and 1 a minute for companies with five phones or more.

Unlike Globalstar Iridium plans for its dollar-a-minute charge to include onward charges to almost any landline making the rates comparable to GSM roaming charges – and even Mint Telecoms discount international SIM calling plans.

This is possible because again unlike Globalstar Iridium bounces call signals between satellites allowing a call to be delivered to the nearest appropriate earth gateway to the call destination.

Iridium is made up of a low earth orbit constellation of satellites resembling a cellular network in the sky

The advertisement featured a young woman dressed in a in school uniform clutching an Ericsson T20 cellular phone with text on the screen imitating sex ads.

Ericsson ran the full-page colour ad in the China Times newspaper twice in December.

Ericsson gave assurances that it would not repeat the ad.

It was obviously an unfortunate mistake Ericsson consumer products press relations manager Nina Eldh told Reuters.

It was placed by our local company there without our knowledge Eldh said.The tone of the ad had not been compatible with Ericssons values she said.

The Swedish branch of anti-child pornography and prostitution group Ecpat called the advertisement sexualised and its chairman Lennart Lindgren called on Ericsson to apologise.

In particular actual training equipment is desperately required by colleges and universities many of whom are responding to industry demands to put on extra training courses but have insufficient funds to supply all the necessary hardware said FCS Trade Association manager Jacqui Brookes.

Skills shortages within the industry has reached an all time low.

Skilled radio engineers are at a particular premium which is why it is important for our industry to support where it can the UKs national training programme to remedy this shortfall.

We recognise that many major companies within our industry are making significant contributions through their own training schemes but unfortunately this is not enough.

A previous scheme run by the MRTT whereby test and radio equipment was collated and passed to participating colleges. This increased the number of college courses which is why we wish to beef up the campaign added Brookes.