Vodafone objected to Oranges claim that speeds of 28.8 kbps three times faster than any other UK network could be made using the Nokia Card Phone and Orange high-speed data service.

Vodafone objected to the claim because it says the Vodafone network allows mobile data to be sent at faster speeds of up to 48 kilobytes a second.

Abdulkader Merhabi (31) had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to attempting to steal the 199 phone from Isabelle Briche at Paddington station on May 23.

I have a duty to protect the public said District Judge Roger Davies.

The courts take a serious view of theft from the person especially when people are relaxing in a restaurant or bar and their property gets stolen by people like you.

The court heard four plain clothed police officers were observing Merhabi as he made several attempts to remove the womans phone from a pouch on her belt.

Merhabi had been fined in December last year for shoplifting and conditionally discharged in June last year for a similar offence.

Pointing out that Merhabi came to England in January 1999 the judge asked why he did not go to France which has links with Algeria.

Defence counsel said that France does not accept asylum applications from Algeria.

In two separate incidents a Russell Specterman was remanded in custody charged with stealing aMotorola charger and Sony camcorder worth 500 during a burglary at the Elizabeth Hotel in Paddington on June 11.

And salesman Abdul Latif (19) was remanded on bail until July 17 charged with stealing three Nokia phones from the Orange Shop in Oxford Street London on January 28.

The company lost 130551000 in the year ending December 2000 according to the Deloitte report.

Dolphin companies are still being allowed to trade while a buyer is being sought.

Potential purchasers had until last Friday (September 14) to submit bids.

The main asset is the network equipment of masts and switches and the network management centre at Hemel Hempstead.

Deloitte &Touche stresses that it is in the interests of all concerned that the shares and/or assets of the businesses are sold without delay and with the minimum disruption.

Deloitte wants cash for the business. It says it will consider the sale on a piecemeal basis of Dolphin businesses and assets.

Dolphin has 1075 Tetra cell sites of which 1019 are in service providing 90 per cent population coverage.

There are currently around 300 remaining members of staff still employed at Dolphin working from the stricken companys Basingstoke offices.

Details of each phone make model and IMEI number covered by Lifeline policies will be held on for a year on the Equipment National Database (MEND).

This provides a central register that can be accessed by people who find phones or organisations tracing lost and stolen equipment.

The mobile phone tycoon has reportedly issued a writ against Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motor Cars Ltd after his third Bentley developed mechanical faults. Caudwell is claiming compensation and damages against Rolls Royce and car dealers Ron Stratton.

The writ has been lodged with the High Court in Manchester and lists problems with the cars warning lights brakes steering convertible roof and doors.

People take a great deal of pride in the ownership of the prestige brand.

The experience of owning the car nowhere near matches up to the image he told journalists at a press conference in Manchester.

Caudwell seeking a substantial amount of compensation and damages from Rolls-Royce and Ron Stratton following allegations of failures and defects in his open-topped car. He bought his first Bentley in 1993 and upgraded to a burgundy 230887 Bentley Azure convertible in 1997.

But the car had developed problems with its battery requiring it to be jump started.

Tow (35) started his career with Racal Electronics when it was setting up the cellular division which later became Racal Vodafone then Vodafone.

I was employee number 74. The other 73 were mainly engineers said Tow.

The 9p share price gives the company market capitalisation of just over 3.5 million and values chairman Warren Hardys 39.25 per cent share at just under 1.4 million.

Losses of 19 million were blamed on one-off costs such as the 15 million (cash and shares) Banner Telecom acquisition and abnormal trading conditions.

Also included in the deficit is 4 million from European Telecoms share of the losses of its joint venture Global Telematics. This 4 million included costs spent on the aborted flotation of Global Telematics.

European Telecoms bankers the Royal Bank of Scotland have agreed to continue providing banking and debt facilities to European Telecom for the next 12 months.

European Telecoms newly-appointed group managing director David McKinney said: The financial year ended March 31 was a very difficult and disappointing one.

The continuing support from our financiers is encouraging and we can now begin to focus our effort on operational improvements and restructuring our range of activities.

It is our firm intention to move ET forward as a leading supplier of value-added fulfilment services for the telecoms and converging industries McKinney said in a statement issued last week.

As part of its strategy to divest itself of non-core business European Telecom has offloaded its voice technology subsidiary ET Voice.

The ET Voice division set up to licence voice recognition software has been sold back to Swindon-based signal processing and speech recognition specialist Domain Dynamics.

Domain Dynamics invented TESPAR (Time Encoded Signal Processing and Recognition) technology which is an advanced voice recognition system designed for use in mobile phones and other devices (see interview P28).

BTCellnet is the official sponsor of the programme. BTCellnets service answers fans individual Big Brother queries by text message; as well as Big Brother voucher registrations trivia quizzes and BTCellnets free text alerts.

This is up from just under 500 million messages sent in the same period last year.

Mays figure gives an annual total so far of 4.4 billion messages. This means users are sending three million messages a day across all four networks.

Charges for calls to the UK within the visited country and incoming calls have been reduced from 99p to 75 pence a minute.

Text messages come down to 39p per message from 45p.

The reduced charges only apply if the user is logged on to European operators who are part of the Vodafone group. On other networks call charges remain unchanged.

The networks are: Airtel Vodafone (Spain); D2 Vodafone (Germany); ircell (Ireland); Europolitan (Sweden); Libertel (Holland); Omnitel (Italy); Panafon (Greece); SFR (France); Swisscom (Switzerland); Telecel (Portugal) and Tele.ring (Austria).

Vodafone refutes suggestions it has u-turned on its decision to try and move its business away from pre-pay and back onto contracts.

We are simply adding another service for our eight million pre-pay customers. It gives them an opportunity to use their phones abroad and creates extra revenue for Vodafone. Its not a new service.

We launched pre-pay roaming in May. Vodafone spokesperson Julien Couzens said.

Vodafone last week launched the third phase in its 2 million youth marketing programme with a 700000 cinema campaign supporting the new youth web site www.vod4fon3.com (see Site Seeing P40)

The commercial is showing at all cinemas showing Tomb Raider