Called Talkshare Plus the plan rewards customers for their combined loyalty to the Orange network with lower-cost calls and text messages simpler billing and monthly subscription.

Talkshare Plus allows up to four people to have their own Orange phone and number while sharing the same talk plan based on 200 inclusive minutes of talk-time.

Under Talkshare Plus a primary account holder has the opportunity to share monthly talk plan savings with up to three sharers as well as offering lower call rates and a single itemised bill for the whole household.

Calls between members are always charged as off-peak at just 5p per minute. There are 200 inclusive minutes for a group to share.

A 50 per cent discount on text messaging between sharers means messages are charged at just 5p each.

The bundle also includes one year of Orange Care for the account holder and all sharers who get one itemised bill.

Orange research has shown that a significant number of households have more than one handset| said Orange commercial director David Taylor.

Talkshare Plus is an exciting new service that recognises this and meets the needs of our customers by allowing them to share a bigger talk plan with lower call charges. It rewards customers for their loyalty to Orange.

The new commercial tastefully shows a man who admits he pads out the crotch of his pants with a pair of socks but is ashamed of his out-of-date mobile phone.

The first ad in the series of five featured a man who showed no shame about airing his soiled washing in public but was highly flustered about the state of his old-fashioned mobile phone.

Account director Mark Harrison at ad agency CBJWT said:

Our challenge was to develop Phones 4Us profile further with a treatment that carved a very clear identity for the brand in what is a cut-throat and crowded marketplace.

The discovery was made by one of Pamas Russian partners who spotted leather and plastic phone cases carrying the Pama brand name in Moscow street markets.

The partner became suspicious of the products after noticing they didnt have Pama Manchester England stamped on the packaging. Instead the goods bear a stamp of United Arab Emirates.

Pama development manager Harry Heaney says:

We are most concerned about stopping the counterfeiting before it branches out into electrical goods such as car chargers. The cases are poor quality goods using inferior materials.

We dont want the same sort of problems with electrical goods.

Pama contacted the Russian equivalent of trading standards before contacting The City of Moscow Police.

The Moscow Police then traced the fake goods to what is believed to be the Moscow distributor and seized all counterfeit products. The police have traced the products to a United Arab Emirates-based company trading as Link Bits which is part of AMT International.

Heaney continues: This is a problem that we are keen to stop as soon as possible. We hope to have stopped the production of these goods at the source.

It has taken Pama 20 years to build up a worldwide reputation and the company now exports to over 50 countries worldwide.

So any infringement of our international trademark must be taken seriously.

The news comes as a boost for retailers who have reported demand for MMS handsets over the Christmas period but have expressed dismay that customers can only send picture messages to phones that are on the same network.

People arent aware of the fact that they cant send messages across networks said Paul Hooper of Upland Mobiles. The advertising doesnt tell people this and it only becomes apparent when customers get home and send pictures to friends on other networks.

An Orange spokesperson said it was working hard to have cross-network MMS ready for the Spring:

There are a number of reasons we havent offered cross-network photo messaging. The networks all launched photo messaging at different times. Only now do all four networks offer the service to their own customers she said.

There are also some technical issues that need to be resolved because all four UK networks use a different infrastructure to deliver the messages to handsets. We need to test the handsets for interoperability in order to guarantee a good user experience explained the spokesperson adding: We are confident of full cross-network interoperability by Spring 2003.

Lack of MMS interconnect does not appear to have hindered sales. Vodafone last week reported that it had 90000 UK registered users to its live! service in the last quarter of 2001 (see P6).

Mobile messaging consultancy Mobile Streams chief executive Simon Buckingham said MMS was becoming the biggest success since digital handsets were launched.

MMS is an overwhelming success. The penetration of MMS phones is unprecedented compared with other technologies. Lack of MMS interconnect is not a problem. People can send pictures to phones on other networks via e-mail.

Buckingham says MMS infrastructure is not yet stable enough to support cross-network MMS.

This name is of course is almost identical to the name of the PocketPhone Shop retail chain it purchased in July 2000 for around 72 million. One 2 One dropped the PocketPhone name last October before the subsequent rebranding to T-Mobile. Ex-PocketPhone Shop employee Damien Druce then registered the name The Pocket Phone Shop Ltd on January 15.

Druce has been using a variation of the old PocketPhone Shop logo on the front of his store and marketing materials. T-Mobile found out about the resurrection of the name when Druce applied to become a T-Mobile dealer. T-Mobile told him it was unhappy about his use of The Pocket Phone Shop name. (Cont P8)

Nokia shipped early software versions of the handsets to dealers despite Vodafones requests not to do so.

We had software versions of the 3310 that had a problem when used with a particular SIM. We havent seen the problem elsewhere said Nokia head of customer care Peter Rand.

King joined Alcatel from Panasonic two years ago. Last year marketing executive Paul Whitby was made redundant after 16 years with the company.

The remainder of Alcatels mobile phone sales and marketing team have been moved to the companys offices in Maidenhead.

The dispute is over connections made through two Rocom dealers Newcastle-based ITS and Wales-based Select Communications both of which went into liquidation last year.

In an earlier County Court hearing Knights sued Vodafone for two invoices totalling over 12000.

It lost this case but was given permission to approach the Court of Appeal for a reduced figure of 1100; 500 for one invoice and 600 for the other. To win the appeal it only had to win judgment for one of the two invoices.

Knights has been pursuing a total of 120000 for work it claims it carried out for 3@Telecom between 1994 and 1997 before 3@ was taken over by Vodafone in 1999.

The 500 was a test case involving just a few of the invoices Knights claim it is owed.

Vodafone won its initial hearing against Knights in June 2001 but was forced to return to court after Knights appealed on the grounds that Vodafone broke Civil Procedure Rules (CPRs) by manipulating evidence in the initial court hearing.

Vodafone now faces a further court battle as Knights prepare to pursue the remaining 107000.

Knights proprietor Allan Knight says:

It has been a long journey but we remain determined.

We intend to pursue Vodafone through the courts and back to the appeal court if necessary to recover our total invoices of 107000 our breached four-year contract and damages for the destruction of our business and health.

In the recent appeal case Vodafone offered Knights 2000 to settle the entire 107000 claim.

Vodafone says the judge ruled in Knights favour on only one small aspect of the case.

A Vodafone spokesman said: The Court of Appeal found that the County Court judge could perhaps have drawn different inferences from the facts in relation to the first part of the claim and so awarded Knights 500.

The packages include online and face-to-face training for dealers as well as re:source magazine a quarterly publication designed to provide information about the mobile and IT market through expert opinion news trends and advice.

Hugh Roper managing director of the Hugh Symons Group says:

Margins are tight in the traditional mobile market. If a dealer can sell new products then he can add new margins and also go after new markets.

The online packages include a website that will give dealers a hassle-free way of connecting a customer to GPRS as well as other pages that offer advice on products and technology from the straightforward to the highly technical.

Roper continues:

Our products are designed to give dealers a broader product portfolio better understanding of the market and technologies and the ability to deliver ongoing support to their customers.

Because of our work with operators vendors and dealers we are in a position to help resellers to extend into new markets and capitalise on the convergence of mobile technologies.

The new services will hopefully demystify some of the more complex technologies that are out there and help them capitalise on the mobile computing opportunities.

The new Hugh Symons data scheme is supported by the UKs leading brand vendors and cellular networks.

These include Compaq iTouch Nokia Palm Pumatech Red-M TDK and Toshiba.

Roper says that the new packages will also be of use to IT dealers who want to make the move into the mobile data market.

The company is hoping to attract around 40 resellers to the mobile data scheme by the end of the year.