Despite the admission that the industry is facing some very tough challenges Carphone Warehouse is to push ahead with an ambitious expansion plan that will see the number of stores rise from 480 to 550 in a bid to increase its overall market share.

As well as the store expansion the company is to more than double its budget for the training and development of branch managers.

A spokeswoman for the company commented:

We have announced that we are planning to open around 100 stores across the group this year. We have not broken down this figure but we are concentrating on the UK France and Spain. It is too early to say how the split will be made.

She added: The fact that we havent retracted this plan since our initial announcement is a good sign and shows the confidence we have in the market.

The company also outlined its first annual plan for new fixed-line service talktalk.

The target for the year ahead is 200000 customers. Achieving this goal would see the companys retail gross margin grow by five per cent.

Branch managers of the retailers smaller stores have had their quarterly bonus payments cut in half while managers at larger stores have seen their bonuses increase (Mobile News March 10).

The Swindon service provider which has around 500000 subscribers was acquired by Vodafone last week as exclusively revealed in Mobile News (March 10).

Major shareholders managing director Nigel Bunter and chairman Ric Lee have gone. The companys new general manager is Tim Bean previously responsible for customer development at Vodafone. Bean also worked for Vodafone Retail when it was a separate service provider.

Vodafone director of customer management Joe McLoone said business as usual was very much the message coming from the network regarding its recent acquisition. McLoone assured dealers that there would be no immediate changes and hinted that some of the Cellular Operation packages might last beyond the May review.

His declaration will ease dealers fears. Cellular Operations gave generous commission terms and dealers were worried that this would change when Vodafone took over with its bespoke tariffs being scrapped. The terms offered by Vodafone Direct are significantly less appealing.

McLoone said Vodafone bought Cellular Operations to be closer to its customers.

He refused to rule out the network acquiring any future service providers. McLoone said there would be no changes at Cellular Operations.

We dont want to tamper with something that has been very successful. We arent going to make immediate changes before we have looked at the business in detail. We want the people there to feel they can make the same decisions as they did before he said.

Vodafone is not disclosing the price it paid for the company but an industry source guessed the network would have paid at least 100 for each of the 500000 subscribers which could have netted shareholders Bunter and Lee 25 million each. But a debt provision would have reduced that price.

Cellular Operations turned over 240 million in its last financial year and employs around 600. It lost 12.5 million last year on top of a cumulative loss of nearly 6 million so Vodafone will inherit cumulative losses of 18.5 million.

Vodafone picks up accounts such as Ford Jaguar and the RAC and inherits the firms 7 million headquarters with call centre warehouse and distributions facilities.

It must be hard for Nigel and Ric leaving something they have spent years building up said McLoone. Considering all the work they have done it was very important to keep looking after customers in the same way and create a smooth transition – which has gone very well because Nigel and Ric put a lot of thought into it.

A 12 million worldwide joint marketing campaign will promote the film and Samsung products. The campaign is likely to feature television and print media public relations activity product placement and consumer promotions.

The original Matrix film featured Nokia phones.

The deal goes beyond the simple product placement that Nokia secured. The Samsung handsets used in The Matrix Reloaded have been co-designed by film producer Joel Silver and will be available in the USA and possibly in the UK after the release of the film.

Samsung has worldwide promotional rights for the second and third instalments of the Matrix trilogy. The Matrix Reloaded is released on May 15 while The Matrix Revolutions debuts in November.

The agreement extends to the DVD/VHS releases of The Matrix Reloaded and The Animatrix – a collection of nine short films that inter-connect with the upcoming Matrix films – as well as the video game Enter the Matrix.

The company is owned by Cityphone MD Barry Donaghey and his partner Paul Williams. A meeting of creditors has been called for April 2 in London where a liquidator will be appointed.

The companies going into liquidation are Britannia Airwaves Britannia Telecom and Britannia Retail which all used the trading name Talk 4 All. Britannia Airtime which traded as Talk 4 Business and Airtel has also failed.

The failure of Britannia is linked to the demise of Donagheys UK distribution business Pointgold. This went into liquidation last September (Mobile News September 16 2002).

At the time Williams was unsure whether the collapse of Pointgold would affect other companies within the Cityphone group. He hoped that they might survive.

Pointgold failed with debts estimated to be around 3.8 million mostly owed to T-Mobile. Rumours that Pointgold parent company Cityphone was in financial trouble had been circulating the industry for weeks before the collapse.

The collapse of the remaining Cityphone and Britannia companies has seemed on the cards. Neither Donaghey or Williams had been available for comment since the end of last year.

Cityphones troubles started when Donaghey admitted in September last year that the Cityphone empire was experiencing some financial problems. He blamed the groups store acquisitions.

Cityphone commenced its drive to build a nationwide retail chain in March 2000 when it purchased 18 TCL stores from KPMG the liquidator of the Kent dealer-distributor.

The shops were rebranded Talk 4 All. A year later Cityphone purchased 14 Cellularfone (CFL) outlets in Northern Ireland for 500000.

Within a year Cityphone had boosted its retail presence to 75 stores with the acquisition of 30 WAP Store outlets from RSM Robson Rhodes. The WAP Store went bust in January 2002.

At present owners must agree to ban mobile phones from forecourts as a condition of receiving the licence required to open a petrol station.

On March 14 the Institute of Petroleum met in London to discuss the danger posed by the use of handsets on forecourts. They found that worldwide there had yet to be an incident where use of a mobile phone was directly responsible for the outbreak of a fire.

This shows that there is no scientific basis for the banning of mobile phones from forecourts said director of campaigns Tom Wills-Sandford.

According to Wills-Sandford the repealing of the ban would also serve the more important function of helping to destroy the myth that mobile phones are dangerous in general.

The company was behind the plan to have one central helpline number for customers to call and last week announced that since launch the helpline has been receiving approximately 1000 calls a day.

The campaign was launched three weeks ago with the backing of Home Secretary David Blunkett. It has been organised by the police together with leading networks retailers and manufacturers in the mobile phone industry.

The message is that any phone stolen in the UK will not be able to be re-connected in this country.

M-Fusion and Mad Box Media went bust last month with estimated total debts of 2.6 million.

Mad Box trade and expense creditors are owed 1.1 million. M-Fusion owes 163000. Other creditors are owed the balance.

Euro Cellular stands to lose almost 1.4 million from inter-company loans. Euro Cellular continues to trade in SIM-free handsets. Founder Win Donaldson had hoped M-Fusion would enable Euro Cellular to get a foothold in the UK distribution market.

M-Fusion was launched in a blaze of publicity and promised to deliver higher levels of service than rival distributors.

M-Fusion was to provide dealers with unique content offerings from a deal with MTV to produce content such as ring tones logos and games for mobile phones under the MTV 2 Go brand. Mad Box Media would distribute MTV 2 Go content in the UK and Ireland.

M-Fusion and Mad Box Media had been trading in the UK for little over a year.

Their failure is blamed on lack of finance and slow sales of MTV 2 Go content cards. There was also a failure to attract investors.

Euro Cellular invested more than 1.2 million in M-Fusion and Mad Box thus breaching its overdraft limit. The banks then introduced funding restrictions on the company.

M-Fusion shareholders tried to save the division by an injection of 100000 to try and ease cashflow. Donaldson unsuccessfully tried to secure 1 million in factoring with Lloyds Bank.

The financial uncertainty and poor content sales forced both companies to cease trading.

The liquidators report says Mad Box directors agreed the market was not ready for a card-based content service but would have been more responsive to a service based around interactive voice recognition.

One of the convicted men Raymond

Woolley (49) was originally from Stoke-on-Trent but had moved to Marbella.

He was given a maximum nine-year jail sentence for conspiracy to cheat the public revenue. His accomplice Robert Garner from Stone in Staffordshire pleaded guilty to the same charge and was sentenced to seven years and three months in jail.

The two men carried out a missing trader fraud using a network of companies in the UK Ireland and Spain.

They used a UK VAT number to import goods free of VAT from other EU member states and then sell them on to customers with the VAT added.

The court heard that Woolley supplied 100000 handsets between March 1997 and January 1998 running up a VAT liability of 3 million. Only small amounts of VAT money were ever paid to Customs and Excise.

Customs officials say one of the duos companies Roofsmart Ltd ran up a VAT bill of over 24000. However it sent in just one VAT return for 273.49.

On sentencing Woolley the judge said the sentences must go out as a warning to others planning to follow in your footsteps.

In a separate case six men were found guilty for their part in a 21 million VAT fraud. Three of the men have been sentenced. The other three await sentencing.

One of the men is former police officer Neil Walker (47) from Nottingham. Walker had already been found guilty for netting

3 million in unpaid VAT and is to be sentenced in May after admitting a further charge of VAT fraud of 13 million.

His colleague Ian Cale (56) also from

Nottingham received a three-year jail sentence on four counts of conspiracy to cheat.

Lincolnshire man James Brooman was jailed for five years for netting 15.4 million in unpaid VAT. Craig Ireland (26) of Ilkeston received 120 hours community service after admitting one count of conspiracy to cheat.

Another Lincolnshire man David Hodgeson (56) and Imran Khan (27) from Leicester await sentencing.

Customs and Excise said the investigation took six years to complete.

The airline is currently looking for five thousand air travellers to test the service. As well as informing them that their luggage has been delayed it also informs them when they can expect to receive it. Customers then contact SAS personnel when the luggage is due.

Director of product development on ground at Scandinavian Airlines Peter Soderlund said: Time is often scarce for travellers. As soon as we know that a bag is delayed the customer can also receive this information.

The trial will continue until the end of May. If the service is well-received SAS intends to introduce it for all SAS EuroBonus members and Travel Pass travellers.

It is not the first SMS service developed by Scandinavian Airlines. Currently all travellers can order information regarding arrival and departure times for the days flights.

So says a survey of 1000 people carried out by Henley Management College and Netonomy for the mobile phone networks.

The survey which took place between January and April this year reckoned price is still the biggest factor in buying a mobile phone followed by size functionality availability of a model on a tariff the model itself and handset manufacturer. The bad news for the networks was that a third of people switched network when they bought a new phone.

The survey concluded that only 10 per cent of mobile phone users use WAP services. Of those that used data services 31 per cent accessed traffic and promotional information. This was followed by weather (29 per cent) banking (27 per cent) shares (24 per cent) and sports information (24 per cent).

Usage of text messages was high with 86 per cent of people using text messages to make arrangements. However only nine per cent of people used text games.

The survey also revealed that Nokia and Orange were the two strongest mobile brands. Around 66 per cent recognised Nokia as a handset brand followed by Motorola (33 per cent) and Samsung Siemens and Sony Ericsson (29 per cent).

O2 was the least known network brand (56 per cent) beaten by Virgin (59 per cent) T-Mobile (61 per cent) Vodafone (69 per cent) and Orange (77 per cent).