The new service comes on the back of the successful addition of Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN) to 3s Internet portfolio last year. 3 customers have sent over 133 million messages via Windows Live Messenger in the last 12 months.

Yahoo Messenger will be available for free on selected handsets to all of 3s pay monthly customers. 3 Pay As You Go customers will also be able to access the service until the end of 2007.

3 marketing director John Penberthy-Smith said: Now 2 million Yahoo! Messenger users can enjoy the exclusive benefit of free instant messaging on 3.

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report also concluded however that the new reverse charge mechanism which zero rates VAT in the supply chain could see resourceful fraudsters switch to other goods. It also said: The financial rewards from missing trader fraud have been high while the risk of being caught and penalised has been low.

Missing trader VAT fraud has cost HMRC at least £6 billion during the past six years. It reached a high in 2005/6 of up to £3 billion. The EU commissioner for taxation has estimated the annual loss from VAT fraud across the EU at £40 billion.

The introduction of the reverse charge combined with increased policing and restrictions on the issue of VAT registration numbers is expected to protect revenue of £50 million this year. HMRC has taken on 500 additional staff since last year and turned down 2200 VAT number applications.

But the committees report admitted: Progress on implementing the previous recommendations for tackling VAT fraud has been limited. HMRCs response rate to requests for assistance from other EU members states to tackle VAT fraud was only 55 per cent in 2005/6. The department should set a demanding target for bringing the response rate closer to 100 per cent.

HMRC has secured 157 convictions since 2001. Last year saw 45 convictions for missing trader VAT fraud the biggest annual figure to date.

The FTI said last week it will support traders that wish to appeal to the VAT and Duties tribunal to challenge HMRC over its witholding of VAT repayments.

It said a number of traders businesses have hit the skids because of witheld VAT.

It said in a statement: We are willing to support traders to give them a chance to challenge the decision rather than be on the receiving end of this potential unlawful blanket policy.

The on demand service will include highlights archived footage and live goal clips from Premiership and UEFA Champions League matches. Sky will also allow subscribers to watch its popular Gillette Soccer Saturday and Soccer AM television shows.

The service will be made available to O2 T-Mobile and 3 customers for £5 a month or 50p per download.

Skys partnership with NGN will see the new service jointly advertised in the News of the World The Sun and across Sky television.

BSkyB commercial group director Stephen Nuttall said: 24-7 Football will be the most comprehensive on-demand football service for mobile phones. Were delighted that we can offer this service across all the major UK and Irish networks meaning that many millions of fans can keep up with Skys football coverage wherever they are and at any time of the day.

Brown will report to Timico head of indirect sales Stuart Bell. She said: Timico is a quality company. Ive been on the periphery of converged services for a while and now I can combine my skills from my years in the telecoms and data channels.

She joins Timico from fixed line provider Thus where she was channel account manager.

Orange UK director of devices François Mahieu said: If you compare the two million Walkman phones we have sold to date with the 10 million MP3-enabled handsets we have sold from other manufacturers revenue per user is 50 per cent better among the Walkman crowd.

Orange and Sony Ericsson confirmed stage two of their music partnership last week with a multi-million-pound marketing deal that centres on a new multi-platform music talent show.

The pair said the partnership to date was making good on the promise of mobile content and beginning to satisfy the network requirement for increased data revenues. John Harber said the higher data revenues from Walkman handset users were bringing to life the industry ideal.

He said: It sounds corny but it is good evidence that music is boosting ARPU. It works and with HSDPA and improved handset functionality down the line it is going to drive even more revenue. We can build on that with Orange.

Harber said Sony Ericsson expected total sales of Walkman devices through Orange to top three million this year.

Sony Ericsson is also backing the Orange partnership with a training scheme around its Walkman handsets for 4000 Orange retail staff and a flurry of in-store promotional and point-of-sale material to coincide with the mobileAct programmes. We are helping to develop Orange Retail to be a really good music destination he said.

Mahieu said its customers were downloading 100000 music tracks per month from its Music Store.

He also said the partnership with Sony Ericsson gave Orange access to exclusive Walkman colour variants. It is good for colour exclusives on top of the standard range of Walkman devices he said. We have the richest portfolio of Walkman devices of any network in the UK.

He added that Sony Ericssons work behind the scenes on handset customisation for networks also contributed to the good revenues.

Sony Ericsson captured the trend in music earlier than other manufacturers. It has invested quite heavily in its customisation of handsets for Orange so that Walkman customers can access our music portal in a single click he said.

If you take a generic product SIM-free there is not such a great link between the experience and the network promise on content. In many cases the user experience is quite poor and it is in fact a barrier to wider take-up of content services. Its why many data services struggle to take off.

The majority of phones we range is optimised and Sony Ericsson has worked closely with us.

Bramwell sales manager for Uniques SIM-free department had been with the company for eight years. Unique is searching for his replacement.

Unique sales director Jolyon Bennett said: Matt has worked extremely hard over the eight years but he now wants to pursue other challenges. We wish him all the best.

Bramwells next destination is unknown.

Meanwhile Unique lost a morning due to the flooding that swept the UK last week. Sales staff were moved from flooded ground-floor offices to a higher level.

The Bush administration yesterday upheld the The US International Trade Commissions ban on the importation of the chips which are carried by many operators including Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel.

The ITC imposed the ruling citing that Qualcomm chips infringe on patents belonging to Broadcom Inc. including push-to-talk and video compression.

Qualcomm will now launch an appeal and renew its request for a stay of the ITC ban on imports of future 3G mobile broadband handset models.

Qualcomm CEO Dr Paul E. Jacobs said: We are committed to preserving the enormously successful mobile broadband industry in the U.S. and to protecting and advancing the significant gains that have already been achieved in communications disaster preparedness and emergency response.

We will pursue all legal and technical options available to us to minimize the impact of the ITC order on consumers our customers and the entire wireless industry.

The database by the Telecommunications UK Fraud Forum (TUFF) will be made available to all mobile retailers in September.

TUFF chief executive Jack Wraith said the database would be fully functioning in time for the Christmas shopping season when mobile retailers traditionally take on more staff.

Wraith said mobile outlets had been reporting an unacceptable level of employee crime which retailers had attributed to frequent staff movement. I would like to see that concern disappear he said.

The new 40-acre site will create around 650 jobs but the 300 staff currently working in Coventry face an anxious wait to see if they are offered positions at Ansty.

Ericsson UK managing director Jacqueline Hey said: The site at Ansty will enable us to create an operating environment specifically designed to suit the needs of our business both now and for the future.

We recognize both the skills that we have in the UK and the importance of maintaining the capabilities we have.

This is an important step securing employment in the area that is likely to create new job opportunities.