His job is to accelerate the restructuring of Alcatels sales and marketing operations to address the most dynamic and profitable markets in the UK and Ireland said a company statement.

Howard has worked for more than 23 years in global telecoms sales and marketing.

Apart from working at Alcatel Howard has also held executive management positions with other major telecoms companies including Cable and Wireless and Nortel Networks.

Progress Distribution which owned 22 shops went into receivership at the end of October. It is understood the company owed One 2 One in the region of 500000.

All 50 staff have been made redundant and the shops closed a spokesperson for the receivers said.

The auction took place a fortnight ago. We cant disclose the amount raised.

The company suffered major cashflow problems and the networks made it clear they no longer wanted to work with them.

The majority of Progress shops were leasehold premises and will be handed back to the landlords shortly said the BKR Haines Watts spokesperson.

MBNA is a major player in banking services and employs 2500 staff in its Chester headquarters.

We rely heavily on telecoms to operate our business so our requirements for equipment and support are stringent said telecommunications manager Neil Thornton.

We always demand value from our suppliers. Although we prefer to deal with local companies wherever possible this never involves us making compromises.

Ternhill impressed us with its professionalism and commitment and a capability to provide a high and ongoing level of support.

Says Ternhill managing director Matt Sandford:

Corporate sales are a major part of our business. We will provide MBNA with a dedicated account manager who acts as a single source of contact. We will continue to succeed in this demanding field only by offering outstanding and cost-effective phone solutions.

Ternhill was voted the UKs Best Small Retailer at this years prestigious Mobile News Awards and is the regions largest independent specialist.

Mehboub Ashgar (19) pleaded guilty to causing a public nuisance by falsely using his mobile to tell the Metropolitan Casualty Bureau (MCB) that a relative called Joslin Ashgar was feared missing as a result of the terrorist assault on New York.

Police found no trace of the missing person and subsequently called Ashgar on his mobile. He denied ever calling the MCB.

But police enquiries showed the mobile was registered in his name and that the call had been made from it on September 11.

Ashgar later admitted making the hoax call and confessed that he realised it had wasted police time.

District judge Peter Gillibrand told him: While the civilised world was reeling from the horrors that took place in America on September 11 you were wasting police time in relation to a bureau set up to assist frantically-worried relatives in this country making enquiries about their loved ones in New York. It is almost inevitable that you will receive a custodial sentence. You run a very high risk of that.

There is too much public concern about people who behave in this way. It wont just be a question of looking at your guilty plea. It is also about deterrence and to reflect public concern and outrage at this sort of behaviour.

ITS offers a flat rate irrespective of which European country is called when the call is made and whether it is to a mobile or landline.

ITS has a standard monthly subscription fee of 2.99 but is available at no extra cost to Business Max GroupWorker Groupworker Max and Mobile Extension customers.

Business First customers already receive ITS rates on all calls made from the UK as part of their calling plan.

Akpabio (25) faces a total of 51 charges of theft and false accounting. He is accused of stealing a total of 2740 in sums of between 50 and 150 during a three-month period between December 9 last year and March 10 this year at the Orange Shop in Oxford Street in Londons West End.

He is also charged on numerous accounts of falsifying receipts by pretending they had been signed by customers.

Vodafone came first in six out of the nine UK regions with leads of nearly two per cent in Scotland and the South.

Vodafone also came top in Oftels quarterly residential survey with 98 per cent of the networks mobile customers surveyed saying they were satisfied with the overall service provided by the company.

Arthur D Little consultant Thomas Strohmaier said worry about debt burdens and pressure from investors were forcing operators into making decisions on network sharing without considering the strategy behind them.

Sharing networks will reduce operators costs at a time when their return on investment is under scrutiny he told the Mobile Infrastructure Sharing Conference last week.

Greenfield operators with no experience in mobile operations are most at risk of making the wrong choice while trying to earn back their licence investment.

It means operators more and more lose control of their network making future changes harder to implement he added.

Anglo conducted an independent survey into customer satisfaction levels across 200 UK businesses ranging from small and medium enterprises to large corporates.

The survey interviewed telecoms managers and senior executives in charge of buying maintaining and running a companys mobile phones.

The findings showed that more than 50 per cent of small enterprises expressed dissatisfaction with their current arrangements.

The survey indicated that most telecoms providers are failing to get the basics right with more than 50 per cent of respondents saying they had difficulty getting hold of a customer service advisor. Once they had managed to make contact with a customer service advisor 55 per cent of those interviewed said they experienced further delays in getting the problem solved.

The most common complaint was failure to deliver an accurate bill. Around 75 per cent of the sample said they were always told of price increases but less than half were told about ways they could cut their telecoms costs and make more efficient use of their mobile.

Only a third of those interviewed placed any importance on new technologies such as 3G and Bluetooth.

Service providers may claim they work in partnership with customers but our findings show that many want to have their cake and eat it said Anglo managing director Mark Weir.

Last month all four network operators introduced an automated number porting system which cut transfer time from 25 days to seven days or less.

Apart from a recent Oftel press release the industry has done next to nothing to publicise a service which could potentially save the SME market millions of pounds a year said Alternative Networks marketing director and co-founder Chris Wilson.

This new service has proven to be popular with our own customers. However market awareness as a whole remains very low.

Mobile public telecommunication operators licences require them to provide mobile portability to other operators on a reciprocal basis.

This regulatory obligation came into force on January 1 1999. UK customers were the first in the world to be able to do this. Since then nearly a million mobile numbers have been ported.