The product appeared on the site because of an isolated system error which has now removed.

The Carphone Warehouse has written to all those who tried to order a free 9210 to apologise for the error and to offer them 10 off the price of any other handset they wish to buy (see Sharp End).

The legal get out for The Carphone Warehouse is that the terms and conditions of its web site only apply when a credit card has been debited or an e-mail confirmation sent out.

In another e-commerce development on-line book store Amazon is to sell pre-pay phones supplied by The Carphone Warehouse.

Customers of the co-branded site will be able to choose from handsets such as Nokia Motorola Siemens Panasonic and Sony. Amazon is responsible for stocking selling and delivering the products.

The Carphone Warehouse will become Amazons preferred provider of contract and upgrade phones through links from Amazons co-branded phone store to a co-branded area of The Carpone Warehouse web iste. Amazon will become the first on-line retailer to have a link from The Carphone Warehouses homepage.

Ronnie Kamya (21) of Wembley is also charged with dishonestly handling a stolen Barclays Bank debit card on the same day.

The sabotage could cost Orange up to 25000 to repair and follows local opposition to the masts erection.

A Strathclyde Police spokeswoman confirmed the incident happened on July 14.

The security guard was not injured. Orange said the company is working with police and that the mast was not operational at the time of the attack.

A statement from the network said:

Orange can confirm that its transmitter site at Castlehill Farm Kilmalcolm Port Glasgow was severely damaged by vandals on Saturday 14 July 2001.

The telecommunications installation which was under construction was not operational at the time.

Orange has taken steps to ensure the safety of the site since the incident and we are now working with Strathclyde Police to investigate the matter further.

This is an isolated incident and in no way affects how we proceed with the construction of our other sites across the UK.

It is understood that the mast suffered severe damage.

Johnson who was the third director of The Carphone Warehouse in 1989 with Charles Dunstone and David Rossholds around 10 per cent equity share of 92.76 million shares.

He has agreed not to sell his shares for two years without board consent. He is also prohibited from being active in the mobile phone industry.

But with a paper fortune of well over 100 million it is unlikely Johnson feels the need to earn a living by dealing in mobile phones.

Charles Dunstone chairman and chief executive officer said:

Guy has been with The Carphone Warehouse since soon after the business was established. He is a good friend and he leaves with our best wishes. Over the past year much of Guys responsibilities were devolved to other members of his team. He is able to leave without affecting the continuing operation and growth of the business. We wish him every success in the future.

The company has changed massively. He indicated to me a little while ago he wanted to do less. Were assigning his responsibilities to other people. Were not recruiting someone to replace him specifically. Ours is a European business now and Guy was only working within the UK said Dunstone.

Sources close to The Carphone Warehouse say Johnson had been unhappy with the post-flotation procedures that required much more formality and dealings with the City.

Motorola also will supply technical support services to BTCellnet

System support including network optimisation hardware services and software maintenance will also be supported by Motorola digital wireless network operating system professionals.

Motorola also supplied BTCellnet with its GPRS network

The SMS version has been programmed by Finnish company Codeonline. Every month the top game player will win a weekend for two in Monte Carlo in a prize worth 10000 including return flights from London/Nice three nights five star accommodation and 500 gambling chips .

Nine runners-up will each receive a bottle of champagne and the new second edition Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? board game.

The game is similar to the TV show. Players have to answer a series of 15 questions to reach a million. For the text message version players get points rather than pounds. Players send the text message M to 8889 and are sent a first question together with a choice of four answers with a two-minute time limit per question.

As with the TV show competitors have three Lifelines. They can key in TIME (for double the time limit) ASK (for results based on the answers of previous contestants) and 50 (takes away two wrong answers).

The Mobile Data Association (MDA) represents BTCellnet One 2 One Orange and Vodafone.

The consumer campaign will include promotion events and charity links and will target people in the 20-30 year-old age bracket who currently dont use SMS.

A corporate programme will be directed at business users and will use web-based information services and sponsorship.

The web activity includes competitions surveys and downloads to third-party sponsorship and hot links.

Phase 2 of the programme will build on the awareness we have already achieved by encouraging non-users to try texting for the first time said MDA chairman Mike Short.

The MDA was set up in 1994 to increase awareness of mobile data among users and their advertisers.

It currently has over fiftymembers from the mobile data community.

So says Swedish strategy advisor and management consultant Par Strom.

Strom who has been a consultant to Nokia and Ericsson says.

It was a mistake to launch mobile data services on a circuit-switched network. It makes surfing far too expensive for consumers. In addition atmospheric interference results in frustrating interruptions which doesnt happen in packet-switched networks.

Strom does not think that 3G is the revolution that networks expect.

The big step is GPRS with its packet switching. This lets users stay on line permanently while only paying for the bandwidth they are actually using.

As telecommunications successively shifts from voice to data transfer the operators are losing ground he claims.

Through surfing business can be done without the operators even knowing about it. A shift is therefore taking place from base revenue (derived from the traffic itself) to value-based revenue (derived from the value of the services provided) which also degrades the situation for the operators.

A further threat to the operators is alternative networks built with local access points that use licence-free frequencies called hot spots.

It is however far too soon to count the operators out. They have three trump cards. Their large customer base payment relationships and they are the only ones who know the geographical location of each user.

Called Group Chat the service creates a virtual chatroom over the airwaves. It requires one of the participants to be registered by BTCellnet as a Group Chat chairperson.

The chairperson must be a BTCellnet customer. But the other participants can be subscribers to any mobile phone service and can take part using a landline or even when they are abroad. Each person will only pay for their own phone call.

Product is to ship at a recommended price of 400 with connection and is to reach dealers by the end of the month.

Improvements to the Communicator over earlier versions include a new colour screen the ability to download music and video files from the web and full compatibility with Microsoft office software.

Nokia business development manager Mark Squires said We have over 22000 developers signed up to provide exciting applications for the non-GPRS compatible 9210.

We are targeting people that want to use the phone and its applications today. It is compatible with HSCSD (supported by Orange) allowing web access at up to 28.8kbps or 43.2kbps in Ireland. We dont feel GPRS is ready just yet.