Virgin Mobile phones and Sim cards went on sale in The Carphone Warehouses 450 UK stores last week.

Said Sir Richard Branson: The Carphone Warehouse is the most successful mobile phone retailer in the UK.

It shares the same entre-preneurial spirit as Virgin.

Virgin Mobile has also done a deal to get its product into Argos 465 stores.

The Virgin Mobile phones on offer in Argos are: Nokia 3310 ( 99.95) Sony J5 ( 99.95) Ericsson T29 ( 129.95) and the MP3-enabled Siemens SL45 ( 299.95).

Argos has sales of over 2 billion a year and says that it attracts 41 million customers annually.

The new deals with The Carphone Warehouse and Argos mean that Virgin Mobile product is now available in a total of 5000 outlets including V.Shop Virgin Megastore Our Price Sainsbury Tesco WH Smith Iceland Co-op Asda Somerfield John Lewis Littlewoods and Morrisons.

The agreement improves collaborative efforts in assuring interoperability by allowing members and working groups of the two organizations to participate in each others discussions at the organizations general meetings and to share otherwise confidential documents.

In addition to joint workshops and meetings the GSM Association and the WAP Forum are considering plans for joint technical working sessions and joint working group sessions.

The two organisations plan to collaborate on work areas such as: identification of network operators and service provider requirements device protocol and application requirements; roaming and billing; development of WAP specifications; and interoperability.

The GSM Association and the WAP Forum have agreed to work together to improve and evolve the wireless Internet says GSM Association.chief executive officer Rob Conway.

The WAP Forum is responsible for fostering the growth of WAP.

Swarovski is in fact one of a number of designs in the new Unigrip range of phone holders and is not a separate fascia range.

We are pleased to put the record straight.

Mickey is leaving we will make an announcement shortly. He will be leaving amicably said Kondor chairman Malcolm Bartlett.

However the Deutsche Telekom-owned network does not disagree that some of its 7000 employees may be facing redundancy in the wake of an overhaul of the way the business is run in the face of the worldwide downturn in telecoms.

The review is part of a recognition that revenue is moving more to data and that the company needs to adapt to globalisation and not be solely a domestic operator. It feels it may have the right people in the wrong roles.

The official line according to marketing PR manager Neil Bent is:

As the company reaches a new level of maturity it intends to focus skills and resources on key business drivers.

In order to achieve this and in line with a determination to challenge commonly held views One 2 One intends to conduct a complete business review in the process of creating new and powerful ways of operating. This may result in a reduction in the companys overall head count.

However One 2 One will be concentrating its efforts on minimising any effects this might have.

The company is looking at staff skills roles and structures. It is looking at the market to see what shape it needs to be with the arrival of 3G. The review will take place over the next few weeks.

One 2 One cannot rule out any outcome. The review could flag up skill shortages and show we need to recruit. Or it could indicate we need to relocate staff internally Bent told Mobile News.

One 2 One is trying to be as open as possible. We are not being secretive. We are keeping people up to date. The assumption that it is bad news is ridiculous.

It will be two months before anyone knows the results of the review. One 2 One has had a successful year and is looking towards next year in terms of goals targets and budgets.

The company desires to improve efficiency added Bent.

12 snap will run a mobile phone marketing campaign using interactive mobile games to advertise the KitKat Chunky bar in Germany with the slogan the full load.

This will be Nestles first attempt at integrating mobile marketing into future marketing strategies.

Frank Schuebel marketing director at Nestle said: marketing via mobile phones is an interesting way of communicating which we wanted to try out. We decided on a collaboration with 12snap for our mobile marketing activities as 12snap has a young and incredibly innovative image coupled with a very wide radius.

The partnership with Nestle comes after 12snap announced in January Europes largest mobile marketing deal with the restaurant chain McDonalds in Germany.

This announcement was followed with the signing of a cash deal with American Express to promote and gain customers for its youth focused credit card blue card.

SMS campaigns allow mobile players to push out much more interactive and personalised service said 12snap co-founder and marketing manager Cyriac Roeding

Campaigns are resulting in very high response rates averaging between six and 12 per cent around 15 times higher than traditional direct marketing campaigns. Projections on revenue generated from wireless advertising are forecasting 12 billion in 2005.

Vodafone commercial managing director Paul Donovan said:

Legally recognisable electronic signatures are fundamental to our mobile commerce strategy.

As the Government have already announced plans to allow individuals to submit tax returns electronically using digital signatures we hope that these trials will go some way towards establishing the technology and help the DTI to promote the UK as the European leader of mobile commerce.

Using information contained on their SIM smartcard present in mobile phones Vodafone customers will have the potential to use their mobile device whenever and wherever they currently use their signature said Donovan.

Whereas today we write cheques pay by credit card or debit card sign mortgage or stock trading contracts and in our working environments sign holiday forms or timesheets in the future these transactions could all be completed using just your mobile device.

The trials will demonstrate that the technology is easy to use and provides a more secure method of authorisation than our current hand-written signatures he continued

sale.

This follows a meeting last week between the police Home Office and networks on how to reduce mobile phone crime.

Also a new Home Office crime prevention leaflet will be prepared and distributed via major retailers the operator-owned shops and the Home Office Crime Prevention Officer network.

Networks have pledged increase take-up of their voluntary registration schemes for Pay as you Go phones to help operators bar stolen phones.

Mobile phone operators and retailers are to clamp down on false insurance claims for lost phones and review their insurance policies with a view to including cover for loss (with a duty of reasonable care) and for non-violent theft to discourage false reporting of theft.

Handset manufacturers and networks are to share information about techniques for preventing the reprogramming of handsets and consider implementing the use of PIN numbers and other options for personalising handsets such as voice registration.

We now have an action plan agreed by all parties to help us start to tackle the problem of mobile phone theft. More work still needs to be done but I believe these practical measures represent an excellent beginning said Home Secretary Jack Straw.

BTCellnets head of security John Cross (on behalf of the mobile phone industry) said:

This is part of the industrys ongoing strategy of improvingco-operation with the police on all aspects of mobile phone security. We welcome the involvement of the Home Office and the opportunity of continuing to work with them and the police on this important area.

Adrian ONeil Weekes faces 13 charges mostly of criminal deception involving cloned credit cards at various shops and stores between December 12 and early January.

Weekes is also charged with dishonestly handling 1100 worth of stolen clothes and computer equipment.