Moyes began his career at Siemens in 1986 and went on to head up the UK sales division before assuming global responsibility for the mobile phones business in September 2003.

Jonathan Bate vice-president Northern Europe told Mobile News: Ian was not only a great mentor but also a good friend. He was one of the most professional bosses I ever had the pleasure of working with.

Detective chief inspector Chris Foster believes that between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of reported mobile phone-related street crime in London doesnt actually take place.

During the recent Operation Pavilion officers posing as customers who had lost their phones visited retail outlets. They asked for advice about how best to make a claim and according to Foster in 12 cases out of 96 shop staff encouraged his officers to file false reports to their insurance company.

Helpful advice dispensed by staff included suggestions that the crimes should be reported to have taken pace in areas without CCTV coverage and that phones should have been in jacket rather than trouser pockets. After having obtained a crime reference number the insurance companies would provide the victim with a voucher for a new mobile phone.

Giving this sort of advice is a crime said Foster. Its just not worth risking prison to make an extra sale. He urges the industry to accept that there is a problem and work with his officers to resolve it.

Id like to see retailers putting systems in place to make sure that all their staff know that they are breaking the law by suggesting customers make false claims. I want to see prominent notices in shops warning customers about the consequences of false reporting and the police will be informed of any suspicious claimants adds Foster.

Foster promises that senior retail management will be kept in the loop if further operations are mounted but says that his officers wont be involved in any fishing expeditions.

We want to work with the industry to target those individuals who encourage the false reporting of crime. We will only mount undercover operations when they can be justified as a result of intelligence received. There will be no mystery nicking.

Investigations have to be justified and will not be sanctioned unless there are reasonable grounds he concluded.

Several recent arrests have been made and individuals charged with incitement to commit deception. They will appear in court during January.

After a review of the High Court action brought by PNC Telecom and the allegations made in the national press against Mr Darren Ridge the administrators are satisfied that there is now no case to answer. The High Court action has been withdrawn.

Ridge had been accused by PNC of spending 400000 of company money without board authority on payments to non-PNC staff (Mobile News July 8 2002). Ridge denied this and claimed it was a ploy by PNC to avoid paying him under the terms of his contract. PNC went into administration last year only weeks after selling KJC and PNC systems to Vanguard for 3.5 million.

Check out www.mobilenewsawards.co.uk or e-mail queries to Lucy Glennon lucyg@mobilenewscwp.co.uk.

Darren Oxlade 26 of Bletchingley Surrey is charged with unlawfully and maliciously wounding 40-year-old Tony OConnell with intent to do grievous bodily harm at his flat in Marylebone London on December 16 2003.

He is additionally charged with unlawfully entering the flat as a trespasser.

It is alleged that Oxlade attacked OConnell with a wine bottle leaving him with head wounds requiring 30 stitches.

Magistrates who transferred the case to Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court rejected Oxlades application for bail.

Other television feeds have been available for some time notably Bloombergs 24-hour news service. However this content is downloaded in the form of recorded clips – it is not live television.

The joint-venture between Channel 4 the shows producers Endemol and mobile video hosting company Vemotion represents a milestone according to Vemotion CEO Tony Antoniou.

I believe the user experience offered by our high-quality live video delivered over GPRS networks is better than any medium currently viable on any mobile phones on any network Antoniou told Mobile News.

Though Shattered is likely to have been watched on mobile by just a handful of keen viewers Antoniou is convinced this is just the start.

Plans are well advanced to make all Endemols output for Channel 4 (including Big Brother) available over GPRS networks.

Vemotions platform is scalable and according to Antoniou able to cope with simultaneous demand from millions of phone viewers. An additional server farm in Germany will cater for viewers in mainland Europe.

Though not all 2.5G handsets are currently able to receive the live video feed based on the latest international standard H.264 the Nokia N-Gage 7650 6600 and 3650 the Sony Ericsson P900 O2 xda and HP iPAQ are compatible. Other handset models are being added to the list.

The service is currently accessed via reverse-billed SMS for a one-off charge of 1 after which normal network GPRS rates apply.

With a recommended retail price of 99.99 on pay-as-you-go the One Touch 735 has a camera and is MMS-capable with polyphonic ringtones and downloadable games. It offers one-touch access to integrated Orange services.

The 60000 sq ft building complete with gym and subsidised cafe will also house personnel responsible for the outsourced aftersales care of some Vodafone and O2 customers. Opal Telecom formerly based at Irlham in Greater Manchester will also relocate to the Warrington site.

The current workforce of 85 will increase to 265 by July 2004.

The cumulative number of page impressions for 2003 stands at 8.2 billion surpassing the associations prediction of eight billion impressions for the whole of the year.

Virgin Mobile is to start recruiting independent dealers for the first time and will be looking to expand the brand into Europe.

These are the initial consequences of Virgin Mobiles out-of-court settlement with T-Mobile the other partner in the joint-venture. The Virgin Group now obtains 100 per cent control of Virgin Mobile while T-Mobile has settled for a non-exclusive 10-year supplier agreement

It really has liberated the opportunities of the business said Virgin Mobile chief executive Tom Alexander.

Were going to be expanding distribution and the proposition we can offer. Weve got clear access to 2.5G access going forward. Weve a good relationship with T-Mobile and a long-term contract.

He would not be drawn as to whether Virgin would look to sever the relationship with T-Mobile entirely saying: There might be no need to go elsewhere but having the complete flexibility is a benefit.

According to Alexander the end of the acrimonious court case has been cause for celebration and will allow the company to better address present market conditions.

We definitely opened a few bottles of champagne. I cant talk about the details as were bound by loads of confidentiality clauses. It has taken lots of discussion. We wanted to get it absolutely right. We dont want to end up fighting again he said.

We had both been living with an unsatisfactory contract that we had to battle out in court. We wanted to put a contact together that was black and white with no areas of disagreement.

Alexander claims it has taken a Virgin Mobile team a full year to work out a new contract to take into account mobile developments.

The original contact was written in 1998 so the details of technologies like 3G were still vague and hazy he said. Now a lot more is known. Both sides could put down a lot of hard details.

According to Alexander the arrival of new T-Mobile MD Brian McBride was a big help.

It helped the process that he came in and had a totally different approach and was able to sit down and talk constructively. A lot of progress was made with a good spirit of co-operation.

McBride said: It is a good deal for both companies. This deal was not just between myself and Virgin. It had to be approved at very high level within T-Mobile. In its previous state there was no way of unlocking the value in Virgin Mobile. A week ago Virgin Mobile was not worth anything. Now the company is free to float and the commercial terms are better for both companies.

If Virgin Mobile floats for more than 550 million we get a share of that. We have a significantly better relationship with Virgin now. I dont accept that Virgin will be worse off under the new agreement.

He conceded that there was no way for either party to exit the joint-venture except by going to court.

The old contract was a probably a good one at the time it was signed five years ago. However the market has changed. This is a reflection of that. The old arrangement was primarily a voice-only deal. It didnt lay out the way that Virgin would be able to access new data services. MMS GPRS and 3G werent even around then.

McBride said the new supply contract clearly spelled out how services would be provided to Virgin and he claimed he was not not worried if Virgin decided to use a new supplier.

Virgins most complex relationship is with its network supplier. It would be a huge risk and challenge to try and work with multiple suppliers or even change suppliers said McBride. I cant see why Virgin would want to change network suppliers and its not our intention to want to cause Virgin to find another supplier. The commercial terms are good for both companies. Virgin is happy with network performance. We want to have Virgin Mobile customers using our network. However it wont ruin T-Mobile if Virgin decides to change network supplier.

If Virgin is successful we share the upside of that growth. There was always going to be a conflict of interests being a supplier and a joint-venture partner. In any joint-venture peoples businesses and their interests change over time.

I intended to resolve the situation when I joined in June last year. It was clear from the outset that the best way forward was a sale of our share of the joint-venture. However it didnt come together until late last year. (See analysis P10)