Vodafone will launch its full-fat mobile Internet proposition in the summer it said last week. The service will compete with 3s X-Series package.

Vodafone will open up its walled garden which demarcates its live! portal to allow users to browse the wider Internet on their handsets.

It claimed last week that it has 4.5 million active Vodafone live! customers and rising. The new service will be made available on all handsets on flat-rate tariffs.

Vodafone chief executive Nick Read said: With the exception of 3 we significantly lead the rest of the mainstream networks in terms of 3G device penetration. So we have a fantastic base [for the mobile internet] and it is now time to take down the walled garden of live! and really open up its potential.

Vodafone consumer business director Tim Yates added: The partnerships we have developed with the likes of YouTube eBay Google and MySpace will be an enhancement of this.

Mainline regional sales managers Pete Hedge and Jo McLarty have resigned.

Hedge had been with Mainline for four-and-a-half years. His role will be absorbed into the new sales regime. He has left to set up as a B2B dealer using Mainline for its Orange connections.

McLarty who had been with Mainline for just three months is understood to have quit to pursue career opportunities in other sectors. McLarty spent over seven years with Hugh Symons.

Mainline managing director Andrew Boden said: Weve known for some time that Pete wanted to leave to set up his own dealership and we are delighted to be supporting him.

He added: Jo leaves with our best wishes. The search is under way for a replacement regional sales manager.

European Telecom is looking to add another 30 sales staff to its new direct B2B sales division by the end of June.

ET Business Solutionswhich has been in operation for just a few months has more than 30 sales staff in place as it stands. European Telecom director of B2B Frank Masson said it would add around 100 staff by the end of the year.

ET Business Solutions is targeting sole traders SoHo and SME customers. It is selling mobile data fixed-line broadband and VoIP solutions.

The business unit has also been appointed to T-Mobiles business partner programme. Masson said that it was also being considered for similar schemes by its other mobile fixed-line VoIP and broadband network partners.

Masson said: Our aim is simple. We want to offer the best B2B technology and telecoms solutions. We believe in experience honesty and reliability. The management team has worked in the B2B area for over 10 years. It is a winning formula.

T-Mobile national sales manager for business partners John Fannon said: We are confident that ET Business Solutions will establish itself as one of our preferred business partners with the ability to deliver the type of managed business solutions our customers are looking for.

O2 is in discussions with all the network operators about putting in place a code of conduct on slamming to stop distance sellers cold-calling customers to mis-sell network contracts.

Vodafone and T-Mobile along with O2 have been most active in eradicating the practice from the channel. Orange and 3 still work with distance sellers that are thought to slam customers.

O2 said it is handling 100 reported instances of slamming a month. It has already taken legal action against Landmark Communications with which it settled out of court for £500000 and has started court proceedings against Communications Direct.

O2 sales and retail director Mark Stansfeld said: We have drawn up a 10-point code of conduct. We expect to receive positive support from all of the other networks within the next week. The industry has to take control.

Customers have slammed 3s performance according to the Mobile Industry Customer Satisfaction Survey.

Marketing consultancy Aura Corporations fourth annual survey polled 3049 customers this year and found the network to be the worst performer in ratings of satisfaction with network and satisfaction with retail store. O2 led in both categories.

Yes Telecom has doubled its dealer base from 350 to 700 in six months claimed managing director Keith Curran last week.

Curran is now recruiting to fill 18 more business partner vacancies and Yes is spending £1.5 million on refurbishing flagship new offices in Didsbury south of Manchester which it will occupy at the beginning of June.

Curran said: We were concerned about how our business partners would view our close relationship with Vodafone but because we are so close it means that their customer bases will go untouched.

The fact that distribution is so uncertain as well had contributed and the message from Yes has been so consistent throughout.

The Carphone Warehouse said last week that it would pump £10-15 million into customer service for TalkTalk broadband in the next 12 months.

Carphone CEO Charles Dunstone said: We continue to invest in customer service as we work to further build the service levels at TalkTalk following the problems we incurred at launch. As ever our goal is not to maximise immediate profitability if it compromises the customer experience but rather to protect the brand longer term.

He added: We have made excellent progress. The delays we reported in migration earlier in the year mean we are still a little behind our original business plan but the current momentum of customer recruitment and migration gives us confidence that we will make up the lost ground by the summer.

Carphone said contract connections for the three months to the end of March rose by 14 per cent year on year to 1.02 million. Prepay sales were up two per cent at 1.24 million and almost 28 per cent for the year overall. SIM-free sales for the quarter were up 29 per cent at 156000.

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Vodafone said last week that its deals with supermarket chain Asda and electronic goods chain DSG would boost its shares of the £1 billion MVNO market and the SoHo sector.

Meanwhile it reported a six-month drop in its UK margins from 34 per cent to 26.6 per cent. Ovum principal analyst John Delaney said: Things still look tough for Vodafone in its home market.

Vodafone has entered into a wholesale airtime agreement with Asda that will see the supermarket chain set up as an MVNO and go head-to-head with Tesco Mobile (see box) which leases airtime from O2. Vodafone has just eight per cent of the MVNO market through a deal with BT Mobile. Asda will sell handsets on Asda Mobile tariffs in 52 stores from the end of June.

Vodafone chief executive Nick Read said: We believe we can drive market share gain in wholesale. It is a £1 billion market and we only have an eight per cent share. [The Asda deal] is a very compelling venture. Its very complementary because it targets customers that the Vodafone brand wouldnt normally reach.

Read said that Vodafone would be selective in its choice of MVNO partners going forward but indicated the Asda deal would not be the last.

Are we going to open up for everyone? No. Were looking for significant scale opportunities. We believe we can push on and take market share in this area he said.

An Asda spokesperson added: Its a similar deal to that which Tesco has with O2 so we will be going into direct competition with Tesco.

Separately the deal with DSG will see Vodafone sell voice and data products in designated connectivity centres within 30 of DSGs PC World outlets. It hopes this will boost its current 30 per cent SoHo share.

Vodafone UK enterprise business manager Kyle Whitehill said: We looked at ways we could take the strength of the PC World distribution model which has a very high share of the small business market. By adding our expertise to PC Worlds small business expertise you get a powerful distribution model.

The Vodafone connectivity centres will be staffed by Vodafone. Customers will also leave with a mobile connect card or a voice tariff said Whitehill. They will be able to use those services as soon as they leave.

The deal will also see DSG and Vodafone provide field support to small business customers. They will bolster DSGs TechGuys support service which currently has 3000 employees. DSG said last week that 2000 more would be added during the next three years.

A mobile phone engineer has been ordered to pay £3400 in costs and damages after he was found guilty of illegal peer-to-peer file sharing.

Derek Butterworth from Epping was identified as part of a 10-month investigation codenamed Operation Tracker by The Federation Against Software Theft.

Senior legal counsel Julian Heathcote Hobbins said: The high street cost of the software would have been £35 so the penalty was almost 100 times more than the cost of doing the right thing and buying it.