The products will be manufactured by CTLs factory in China and by Benefons factory in Salo. Benefon will licence the joint venture to produce its current Benefon Q model in China. CTL will buy from Benefon relevant production equipment and material for the Q. The joint venture company will market the Q in Far East markets. Benefon will sell it to the rest of the world.

Benefon immediately benefits from around $5 million of cash from the sale of the equipment and material. Benefons product marketing director Jukka Nieminen becomes chief operating office with overall responsibility of the business operations of Benefon.

These are units formed to develop partnerships and joint-ventures with technology companies and content providers.

He will also be responsible for the management of all current strategic investments including Wildfire Communications and news portal Ananova.

Lap was previously co-head of Morgan Stanleys Global E-Commerce Group and Strategic Ventures the firms corporate venture capital unit.

A new Code of Conduct on international retail roaming prices will help mobile consumers make better-informed decisions about the choice of network current prices and the range of services on offer when they travel in other countries.

The Code was announced by GSM Europe the European interest group of the GSM Association in Sweden last week.

This is all about giving people more choice and better value for money said GSM Europe Chair Caroline van Weede.

The Code of Conduct aims to make life simpler for customers when they go abroad.

Consumers have asked us for more clarity about the services they can get and how much they cost and this is our response.

Operators will ensure that it is easy to obtain clear price information on all calls and text messages sent to and from the phone of a roaming customer. However there should also be information on whether unanswered calls are charged and whether set-up charges are applicable.

Customers will have access to the numbers and website addresses of customer care and information services of the visited network.

These are just a few areas of best practice that already exist in the market. We want to encourage all operators to live up to the same high standards says van Weede.

Among the Codes provisions is that the home page of the operators website should have a clearly visible link to a section containing roaming information.

Operators should provide information to their customers using every means at their disposal. In addition to information via customer care and the internet the Code also encourages a series of other sensible methods that fulfil this objective.

This includes traditional forms of customer service in the high-street shops to newer methods such as WAP e-mail and fax-on-demand.

Mobile operators have a real interest in signing up to this voluntary programme says van Weede.

Customers are always looking for more choice and value for money – and want to use operators they can trust safe in the knowledge they are getting accurate price information. This Code gives consumers the reassurance they need van Weede added.

Oftel last week said that termination charges are still above costs and noted that Vodafone and BTCellnet processed calls at levels higher than would be seen in a truly competitive marketplace.

All four operators will be forced to reduce by 12 per cent a year for four years the amount charged to deliver a call to other mobile and fixed-line operators.

One 2 One PR and marketing manager Neil Bent said:

We are surprised and disappointed that Oftel does not appear to have acted in the long term interests of consumers or the mobile phone industry.

We are disappointed with Oftels proposals to control the cost of calls from fixed lines to mobile and mobile to mobile. The proposals could have a negative impact on the levels of investment by operators in the UK which could in turn slow development of 3G services. Ultimately the UK could lose its position at the forefront of mobile communications and suffer economic consequences.

Oranges director in charge of regulatory affairs Paul Franklin also said it was disappointing Oftel was unwilling to trust market forces and is proposing to extend the current price control.

We question whether Oftels decisions are consistent with the Governments objectives of minimum necessary regulation Franklin said.

BTCellnet is happy with the Oftel measures and called them a step in the right direction.

Oftel also wants operators to provide clearer information on pricing and services and put an end to SIM locking.

Oftel said it was concerned about roaming calls but said that it would assist the European Commissions investigation.

Vodafone said Oftel had failed to recognise the huge costs of 3G licence acquisition and infrastructure deployment costs.

There is no contract to sign or monthly line rental to pay.

The small business service comes available with free group billing free itemised bills for all the phones on the account and international roaming already set up.

Calls are 15p a minute for the first five minutes of use each day then 5p a minute after that. There are no peak rates.

Any company or individual spending more than 30 on UK calls or texts each month gets a loyalty reward of 10 per cent of whatever they spent credited to their account the following month.

Virgin Mobiles small business service is designed to help entre-preneurs such as builders to estate agents drivers to shopkeepers run their ventures more efficiently and cheaply claimed Virgin Mobile boss Sir Richard Branson.

There are no contracts to lock people into no monthly fees to drain their cash-flows just straightforward service and great value he added.

Trivial Pursuit will be available in the UK from April 2001 and will be rolled out internationally thereafter.

The game will be available in 10 languages include localised content and cover six topic categories. Motorola will make it available to all its operator partners so that subscribers can play the game via their service provider.

Codeonline will provide the gaming platform and the technical support to run the games.

Motorolas aim is to extend well-known existing brands into the mobile market and to create new mobile games and brands with application developers.

By bringing consumers established brand name entertainment we achieve our objective of delivering content to a broad segment of the market said Juan Montes director of technology for Motor-olas Personal Communications Sector.

This will include a room at the Hilton an advertisement in the Book of the Night and other priviliges.

Dealers can link their web site to CMCs server to offer competitive phone and tariff packages.

The dealer supplies CMC with customer details over the internet .

CMC handles fulfilment credit checks sends the phones direct to customers administers connection and chases proofs of contract. The phones are sent out bearing the dealers name and possibly on his own headed paper. Dealers have the responsibility of marketing and raising awareness of the special deals.

He takes over from John de Wit on August 1. His UK replacement has not been announced. A hot favourite is Vodafone director of indirect sales Ken McGeorge.

Jones was involved in setting up Libertel in 1995. He also starting Vodafone activities in France and Greece. He held posts as managing director of Vodafone Connect and financial director of Vodac.

Said one Vodafone serviceprovider: he may not be the most popular guy in the business. But he is certainly the right man for the job to maximise profitability.

As part of the rationalisation 22 Mobile Telecom Word-branded stores are to be transformed into MPC outlets over the next few months.

A statement from Vodafone confirmed:

Since the acquisition of Mobile Telecom plc on 2 May 2001 we have taken some time to understand the operation. In particular we have examined how best to manage the 100000 customers and how we can most effectively integrate Mobile Telecom into Vodafone UK.

There are approximately 100 people employed by Mobile Telecom providing customer support finance marketing and other services to the 100000 strong customer base. We intend to operate under the single Vodafone brand and we will migrate those customers onto the Vodafone customer base. In addition Vodafone already has established support functions such as finance IT and marketing and it is more efficient to absorb these functions at Mobile Telecom into the wider Vodafone business.

We will try where possible to identify suitable positions within Vodafone UK for staff affected including positions at Vodafones two other Croydon sites where there are opportunities. However in the event that we are unable to do this we will be offering redundancy payments.

The Mobile Telecom offices in Wallington near Croydon will close for business on November 30.