The record losses came as Vodafone announced the culling of up to 400 staff from its Newbury headquarters as part of a cost-cutting strategy.
Fone Logistics head of marketing Julian Parven said: "Vodafone needs to look at where it is spending money and getting no return. For a long time I´ve thought that indirect channels and Vodafone consumers don´t sit well together. It needs to move away from gaining consumers via indirect channels and focus on acquiring more businesses that way."
Hugh Symons business manager Bob Sweetlove added: "We have direct dealer retailers servicing consumers buying from the business part of the network which doesn´t fit. You also have distributors capable of generating a good mix of consumer and business connections only able to access good business rates."
Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin has attempted to answer his critics through a make-or-break strategy focusing on cost-cutting and offering broadband services.
Avenir Telecom managing director Tanny Price said: "We would hope that the proposed broadband/voice offerings would be made available to the independent dealer channel. The key to prosperity in the current climate is flexibility."
Parven agreed. "Vodafone needs to focus on offering broadband and VoIP but it needs to make sure it is easy for the consumer to use and have all payments on one bill. That is where it can start to pull back some of their losses" he said.

Dunn is chairman and chief executive of Capita Group division BDML Connect. He is also non-executive chairman of the insurance services division of Capita.
Supercover MD Russell Park said: "Dunn´s considerable experience and knowledge of the insurance industry will be extremely beneficial in the realisation of our business objective to be the specialist insurer of choice to the independent dealers for all mobile electronic consumables in the UK."

Monthly pricing models include unlimited access to the Orange photo album unlimited free data network uploads and 30 free MMS messages for £4 a month.
Orange head of multimedia marketing Rob Bramble said: "It is working particularly well on the Nokia N80 where the application is in-built. With this service we are encouraging people to use their camera as a primary device."
Users can upload their images to the album and then send them on to friends or print them off.
"We´ve made it very simple for the user" claimed Bramble. "As soon as they take a picture they just choose to send save or do neither."
The standard album comes with 200MB of space enough for 1000 medium-resolution photos. Photos can also be processed and delivered.

EasyMobile sales and marketing director Mike Lewis said: "While most of our target consumers want just simple voice and text we´re a predominately Internet-based brand and some of our more technology-savvy customers want a better experience with faster transfer speeds when using their mobile."
The announcement follows the company´s move from a purely online operator to a high street retail provider. EasyMobile is trialling the sale of handsets through easyInternet cafes in two central London stores.
Lewis claimed that the move was about expanding the brand´s opportunities rather than diluting the company´s unique online proposition.
"We have introduced this service with a simple pricing structure to meet their needs this underpins our commitment to offer great value and great service" he said.

Mobile News understands that Henry joined Carphone Warehouse in a consultancy role on June 23.
Henry had been widely tipped to fill the role at Carphone Warehouse left vacant by director of indirect distribution Steve Fraser who was suspended in May and has faced an internal disciplinary hearing.
Fraser has officially left the company it emerged last week but Henry joins only in an advisory capacity for the time being.
Henry left activity and experience company Red Letter Days at the end of April and said last month that he expected to return to the mobile industry.
The Carphone Warehouse declined to comment. Henry was unavailable for comment.

From this week Avenirs UK subsidiary will buy SIM-free stock from Motorola via Avenir Group based in France. Avenir UK managing director Tanny Price said she would have considered dropping its status as direct Motorola distributor if it had not been able to work out a solution through its parent company.
Both Fone Logistics and Elite dropped their status as direct Motorola distributors last year.
UK distributors with direct supply deals with Motorola have traditionally over-ordered to compensate for consistent shortfalls in delivery of stock by the manufacturer. But they found themselves unexpectedly burdened with surplus stock after Motorola fulfilled its last quarterly orders from distributors in February.
UK distributors each received a full allocation of Motorola stock and supply has outweighed demand. Avenir like others has been trying to off-load stock at a loss ever since causing a significant devaluation in the value of Motorola stock across the board.
Price said: "We have all been stuck with a lot of stock and it has cost every distributor a lot of money. We have had to trade our way out of the excess stockholding and have now succeeded others havent yet."
Moving forward Avenir plans to order and buy Motorola stock for the UK market via its central buying function in France.
"It makes a lot more commercial sense and dealers will enjoy better pricing. If we hadnt been able to take advantage of the group status we would have considered supplying Motorola products indirect."
Another distributor source said that demand for Motorola products had plummeted anyway: "Motorola has done well with its V-series phones but beyond that its portfolio has been fairly weak."
Motorola was unavailable for
comment.

The promise was made by Detective Inspector Kenny McDonald of the National Mobile Phone Crime Unit at a special Mobile News conference on telecoms crime and security held last Wednesday in London.
Street criminals will steal phones because they know they can sell them on. People have outlets in Algeria South Africa and Pakistan that take these stolen phones said McDonald.
We are currently looking at people travelling out of the country with mobile phones in their luggage. We found someone going through Waterloo with 700 phones. When we asked why they didnt put them in their hold luggage they said they didnt want them stolen. That was 700 phones from 700 robberies. Its something that concentrates the mind.
McDonald stressed the importance of the National Mobile Phone Crime Register. He said that around 70000 law enforcement officials now have passwords to access the database. And in a new development cut-down details of stolen and missing phones would be available to anyone through a new internet service called CheckMend. This would flag up a green or red signal depending on whether the phone was bone fide or not.
The more phones we can get registered on the database the more street criminals will realise they will get caught carrying them he said.
See full report next issue

In an exclusive interview Read explained that the company needs to become more nimble if it is to maintain its dominant position in the market and fend off aggressive tactics from rival networks.
My experience with more aggressive companies tells me that we should be driving the market he said. Part of this strategy is making sure all staff are singing from one company hymn sheet.
We may lose people who dont fit in to this culture and we may have too many people of a traditional skill-set where that is not the area of growth he said.
The comments follow a string of high-level departures and the restructure of the companys business unit culminating in the appointment of Mark Bond as business sales director last month.
See interview page 22

T-Mobile notified distributors last month that it would not authorise new dealers to connect customers because of an overhaul of its internal systems. Since late March T-Mobile has also refused to let new dealers connect customers to the network via distributors own codes.
Dealers speculated last week that T-Mobile may follow this up with a further 30 per cent cut in dealer commission payments.
One source said: It is death by a thousand cuts. As a distributor you are always looking for new routes to market. If those routes have been cut off then we need to replenish them. But how can we do that now? We are being squeezed out.
In a note to distributors the network said: T-Mobile will not be processing any stockist application forms as we are undertaking an internal change review no connections to T-Mobile should be processed using your distributor parent code.
Another distributor said: Surely it would issue temporary dealer codes if there was a systems issue.
T-Mobile has recently cut off distance resellers clamped down on box-breaking and cut dealer commissions on B2B tariffs in both May and June. From July 1 it also cut back the 25 per cent discount on its 18- and 24-month Business 1 contracts for customers.
Avenir UK managing director Tanny Price said: It is very frustrating for sales staff who have worked hard to sign up new dealers. All that work goes to waste.
Fone Logistics marketing manager Julian Parven said: Having created a monster it hasnt been able to sustain it. Dealers have changed their business models on the back of T-Mobiles aggressive acquisition policy this year but it has withdrawn from the channel suddenly and completely. These changes have cost a lot of dealers a lot of money.
Parven pointed out that T-Mobile advertising is still driving customers into stores. But it wants to take everything direct now. It is frustrating because it hasnt communicated its intentions and some dealers have been hurt very badly he said.
Hugh Symons business manager Bob Sweetlove added: This is another example of where T-Mobile has done a large amount of new business in a short space of time and is taking a breather while it reassesses the propositions and sales strategy.
A T-Mobile spokeswoman responded: We are updating our systems and are currently unable to process applications. New stockists can fill out applications but we wont process them until mid- to late July. This is not a move to pull back from the independent channel.

Cocker has relationships with the record labels content aggregators and music publishers and also has a marketing role to identify strategic marketing opportunities within mobile music.

Mobile News
What are the biggest challenges you face at the moment?

Matt Cocker
The challenge is technology. The mobile industry is trying to move too quickly to produce an offering that is customer friendly. Mobile phone compatibility is an issue here.
Record labels have always been slow to adopt new ways of selling content. What is their view of mobile music?

The record labels still remember about what happened with music on the Internet and how they got burned. They are being much more proactive this time. They view it as the future of their digital business. We are the next distribution channel for them there is a great deal of co-operation now.

If the music industry is on message what about consumers are they ready yet?
We are still reaching out to the early adopters who are really the ones looking to put content on their phones. As the technology to do this becomes more widely available take-up will filter down to other segments.
It´s still a niche market though.

How will you bring music services within reach of mainstream punters?

The demand for these sorts of services has been demonstrated and its potentially huge. The market for ringtones is an illustration of this. Revenues in the UK have reached £140 million this year already.
We´ve seen an increase in customers buying music videos. We see that as a step into real music retailing. But mobile has much more to offer the music industry. We´ve started up NME Mobile so customers can find out about new music. We´ve developed community services so that fans can get together to chat.
One of the biggest initiatives is mobile ticketing. We´ve had experience with Live 8 last summer and we are offering the service this year for the O2 Wireless Festival. So far we´ve sold £150000 worth of wireless tickets. It´s all about using the phone in a whole range of ways based around music.
The volume of ticket sales surpassed our expectations. Live 8 gave us an idea of how useful the service could be in handling such large volumes but we were still surprised. We will also be offering content from the festival to download over O2 Active 24 hours after the event.

Mobile phone users are certainly into participation. What other interactivity have you thought about?

One is O2 Undiscovered a nationwide search for unsigned talent. The prize was a bursary to nurture talent rather than going for success in the X Factor model. The winner Emma Rohan has been given studio time and has had advice from professionals in the music business and she´s going to release a single with Polydor which will be distributed online. It was very successful we had more than 10000 demos.
Where do you think it will end up?

The way it´s going customers will soon be able to buy music using a range of devices from the store of their choice. They will be able to play the track how they want. They won´t have to worry about the format whether it´s PC or mobile.

Is this happening anywhere already?

Asian consumers get a wider experience. If a user searches for an artist services will bring in the latest review of the artist´s latest single or the latest community site comment entry. They can buy a ticket to their next gig or download a track.
We have to offer a richer customer experience. These issues should be debated so that all the interested sectors can get their ideas together.
London Calling is at Earl´s Court in
London on June 29-30