The exhibition is the work of 22-year-old photographer James Duffy who works at the Pocklington Civic Arts Centre close to Convergent Telecoms Yorkshire headquarters.

The show entitled Faces of Pocklington will feature portraits of the towns residents.

Convergent is giving Duffy the Sharp GX-10 mobile phone and computers on which the images will be shown at the Arts Centres gallery. The exhibition is to start at the beginning of March.

This is an opportunity to support the local community with an initiative that combines art and technology. This exhibition will be the first of its kind said Convergent chief executive Tony Farmer.

Convergent employs more than 240 people. Last year it won the contract to provide mobile telephones for Microsoft UKs 4000 staff. The firms client portfolio already includes Securicor and Colt International.

This figure represents an annual growth rate of over 100 per cent and is mainly derived from new types of transaction such as pre-paid top-up via automatic teller machines.

Current forms of mobile payments include premium SMS messages which can be reverse-billed or charged to subscribers accounts along with airtime.

These will be followed by prepaid top-up services either direct from linked accounts or from ATM networks.

ARC Group claims that virtual payments are the next generation of mobile payments and will be used for digital content purchased remotely online.

As the retail infrastructure is built out local point of sale payments will begin to develop allowing mobile users to pay for goods and services in retail outlets and at vending machines said Richard Jesty lead author of the report.

The newer generation of ATMs and vending machines will increasingly be able to communicate with mobile phones giving consumers the opportunity to gain access to virtual cash and to build up loyalty bonus points.

This will mean a repositioning of the players in the value chain with mobile network operators forming partnerships with credit companies and banks to offer an integrated package of content and payment facilities.

Vodafone UK customers will now earn two Nectar points for every 1 they spend on Vodafone calls.

Pay-monthly users will receive points based on the total cost of their spend including calls data and the monthly charge when they receive their bill.

Pre-pay customers will receive points when they top up.

The total number of chargeable person-to-person text messages sent across the four UK GSM networks in January 2003 totalled 1.65 billion.

Januarys figure takes the daily average to 53 million compared with 45 million in January 2002 and 30 million in January 2001.

This year has already seen text messaging usage soar and daily records broken.

On New Years Day 102 million messages were sent compared with 64 million sent in the previous year. Valentines Day saw 78 million messages sent compared with 57.5 million in 2002.

For the year ahead the MDA forecasts continued growth with text messaging expected to reach 20 billion for 2003. This equates to 55 million messages a day compared with an average of 43 million for 2002.

The MDA has also revealed figures for WAP page impressions for O2 Orange T-Mobile and Vodafone. The number of impressions reached 524 million in January.

The figure is a record total for one month and takes the daily average to 17 million compared with 13.5 million in December and 12 million in November 2002.

The increase on Decembers figure is more than 100 million representing 24 per cent growth.

There is an ever-increasing variety of compelling WAP-based services currently available for the mobile Internet user said the MDA.

Januarys most popular services included ring tones screensavers and downloads with demand for games increasing steadily. In the UK today there are currently more than 25 million mobile Internet-enabled handsets.

The MDA forecasts continued growth and expects WAP page impressions to reach eight billion in 2003.

It says mobile Internet services will continue to increase in popularity with an increasing range of services available to the end user.

It plans to monitor WAP usage monthly and post the results on its website: www.text.it.co.uk.

The MMS-enabled Samsung V200 will retail at around 199 (with contract).

Samsung claimed it is the only phone to have a camera on the hinge of the handset. A one-touch keypad controls brightness and includes a 10x zoom for close-up shots.

Improved TFD LCD screen technology enables the silver handset to display up to 65000 colours on the 128×160-pixel screen.

The V200 measures 91x48x23mm and weighs 96g. The dual-display clamshell design allows users to see whos calling without opening the phone. The standard battery allows for up to four hours talk time and 120 hours standby.

This was one of the crime statistics given at a press conference attended by Home Secretary David Blunkett last week to announce the launch of Immobilise Phone Crime an ad campaign organised by the police and mobile phone industry and which is backed by the Home Office.

The initiative is being funded with contributions from all the networks and main retailers and handset manufacturers.

The campaign coincides with a police crackdown on criminals under the Mobile Telephones (Re-Programming) Act.

This enables police to arrest criminals who reprogram stolen phones and allows convictions to be punished with jail for up to five years.

Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir John Stevens said there had been several arrests in the last month of people cloning phones.

This is the first time that the police the government and the mobile phone industry have all worked together to crack down on mobile phone theft he said.

The message from this new scheme is clear – stolen phones will not work. Anyone who thinks they can get away with cloning phones is in for a shock.

Mobile phones are stolen in 50 per cent of street crime. In 30 per cent of street crime they are the only items stolen.

The Immobilise campaign started in London last week and will roll out to phone-crime hotspots across the country.

Retailers will be putting up stickers and posters and distributing leaflets urging victims of mobile phone crime to report the loss on-line or by phone.

The money was raised by O2s Can Do In The Community programme which supports local communities through donations to projects and sponsorships.

Six charities get donations of 5000 each. They are the German charity Aktion Mensch (supports people with disabilities) Stichting Weeskinderen (Netherlands orphanage charity) Crossroads (Isle of Man disabled charity) Northern Counties Horses and Small Animals (UK animal welfare charity) Limerick Animal Welfare and the NSPCC.

Project will take over the customer management and billing of around five million Energis customers a subscriber base worth an estimated 5 million annually.

Energis said the agreement was made because the company wants to concentrate on its top 30 customers including Boots the BBC and Bank of Ireland.

The transfer of customers is expected to happen over the next six months. Project Telecom will handle billing and payment for its new customers and then take a margin for this service.

Energiss 20 business-to-business resellers move under Project Telecom control.

Project Telecom has also signed with Martin Dawes System (MDS) to use MDSs DISE 3G service covering order management billing and customer relationship management as well as ongoing training and systems development.

The MDS solution will manage more than 200000 mobile and fixed-line Project Telecom corporate customers.

The system is claimed to be capable of managing well over five million subscribers without significant additional enhancements.

Project Telecom has grown its corporate business around 30 per cent year on year.

Derbyshire dealer Richard Hunt of Phones Direct first alleged he had had his quarterly connection targets drastically cut by O2 and that the network was stopping him from using a distributor to make up the shortcomings.

Hunt claims O2 channel marketing manager Ian Driver said that by contacting Mobile News he had breached the trust of the dealer-network relationship and was having his dealership status terminated.

Driver absolutely refutes this offering the assurance that:

The suggestion that we would sack a dealer for speaking to the media is nonsense.

O2 has served a 90-day termination notice following a breakdown in the relationship. We have talked with him at some length about the issue of him connecting to O2 via routes in addition to his status as a direct O2 dealer.

The dealer has not accepted O2 policy. On this basis and despite a great deal of account management time being spent with him it was felt that the breakdown was irretrievable.

O2 UK sales director Mark Stansfeld added:

Its just not true. We would never sack a dealer for talking to the media. Listening to dealers complaints whether directly or through the press is all part of the open way in which we try to work.

Driver said that when a dealer sought other routes for connecting to O2 the network needed to be mindful of any consequential inefficiencies in its sales channels.

He added: O2 needs to keep these inefficiencies to a minimum. On that basis would not want a direct dealer also making connections to O2 via another supplier.

Hunt responded:

Ian Driver gave me a number of reasons for the termination. He said one of them was speaking to Mobile News which showed that I didnt trust O2. But why should I trust them if this is the way they act? I was told that the only reasons O2 would terminate a dealer were if he didnt make the connections and if he breached the terms of his dealer agreement.

I have always made the connections and havent breached the agreement terms. I have always been loyal to O2.

Hunt alleges that after terminating his dealership Driver required details of his customer database and instructed Hunt not to contact his customers for 12 months.

They want my business because they say I didnt trust them. I was told that if I was not happy with the original restriction in connections I could work through a distributor.

I was happy working with O2 direct and making up the connection shortfall through a third party. But I was told that I had to choose between one or the other.

I was reluctant to sever ties with O2 completely because I would lose my ongoing commission and the chance to earn more commission by upgrading existing customers.

Hunt says he is now consulting with his solicitor.

E-pay was set up in 1999 by John Gardiner and Paul Athasen. It claims to be the largest electronic payments processor of pre-paid mobile airtime top-up services in the UK and Australia with approximately 35 per cent and 75 per cent market share in each region respectively.

In the fourth quarter of 2002 e-pay generated net revenues of approximately $24 million and operating income of approximately $2.5 million. During this period the company processed approximately 15.7 million transactions up 214 per cent from five million transactions in the fourth quarter of 2001.

In 2002 the company processed approximately 42 million transactions up 281 per cent from 11 million transactions in 2001.

This acquisition is a huge step towards our goal of offering our products and services to the global market said Althasen.