All participating Mainline dealers have to do is connect as many new customers as possible to the Orange network between now and December 31.

Points are awarded per connection. A new contract gets three points. A Boxed & Ready two points and one point for a Just Talk.

The top three dealers will win the holiday next May in Tokyo and Kyoto. Mainline has just moved into a 12000 square foot building that cost 1.5 million.

Each package includes a Motorola handset and accessories pack free CD Walkman and connection to Vodafone.

The offer is available to all Britannia Music members and follows the launch of Celltalks new consumer brand ClubMobile (Mobile News August 2) and is one of a series of affinity agreements that have included Breathe.net and Cheekymonkey.com.

We are keen to develop a number of new affinity partnerships in order to grow our business further. Britannia Music is just one of many affinities we expect to sign over the next few months said joint managing director Jess Meredith-Watts.

Celltalk is AIM-listed. It claims to be the UKs largest contract dealer for Orange and connects more than eight per cent of the Orange contract base each year.

Britannia says it is one of the largest mail order clubs in Europe with more than two million members.

They are Paul Farrell (account manager) Nigel Whitehead (retail manager) Tricia Rich (head of marketing) and Mark Kennedy (quality control manager).

Farrell joins Ora from Philips. Whitehead was from PC World. Rich moves from Mitsubishi Electric and Kennedy has been promoted internally from quality assurance supervisor.

The 3.2 million includes 900000 for subscriber debtors. Netnet sales for 2000 were approximately 12 million.

Newgate is a subsidiary of the US alternative telco World Access which filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the US.

Project Telecom has acquired 20000 Netnet subscribers from the receivers and liquidators of Newgate.

Netnet supplied telecommunications services to corporate accounts and SMEs. The acquisition brings Project Telecoms total subscriber base to to around140000.

We expect that the Netnet acquisition will enhance earnings in the current year said Tim Radford Project Telecoms chief executive.

The development of the corporate services division is driving our strategy to grow rapidly as a virtual network operator and we continue to look for opportunities to expand the business both organically and through acquisition.

During the first half of 2001 Project Telecoms won corporate contracts from companies such as Arriva East Riding Council Investec and Northern Foods. In March the company announced the acquisition for 14 million of the corporate subscriber base of Hutchison Cellular Services.

This follows Chestergates failure to settle a county Court Judgment made against the company in the Clerkenwell County Court on May 2 following non-payment of two advertisements that appeared in Mobile News last June and August.

The Warrant of Execution means court bailiffs will now sedquestrate goods from Chestergate and sell them at auction to pay the debt.

The advertisements were for a mobile comms exhibition Chestergate was trying to launch at the NEC in Birmingham but which never took place. They were placed by Chestergate executive Justin Bird.

Chestergate Exhibitions originally defended the summons issued against them on the grounds that the invoices raised had not been sent to the correct division.

But the company failed to appear at the five-minute hearing in which District Judge Stary issued the Judgment against Chestergate.

Chestergate said its show had not been cancelled but merely postponed.

Yet there have been no ann-ouncements about a second date.

The awards were founded and produced by business advisers Ernst & Young. As a regional award recipient Jones automatically becomes a member of the Entrepreneur Of The Year Institute which bring together successful business people from around the globe.

FoneMan is a specialist retail software system designed for mobile phone dealers and distributors. It has been available in the UK and Ireland for over six years.

Primemark boss Asif Laher has been involved in a bitter dispute with Odyssey over alleged unlicensed use of FoneMan software in several Odyssey stores.

However the likely demise of Odyssey (see P1 and Mobile News September 3) means that the dispute over alleged illegal use of the software is probably now at an end. Syntros produces a similar suite of software under the SaleStar name.

Syntros aims to achieve 25 per cent market share in the specialist mobile communications retail software system market by the end of 2003. It says it will do this through further acquisitions as well as organic growth.

Syntros founder and chief executive Deen Ossman said:

This deal will give existing and potential FoneMan customers access to comprehensive support as our partnership approach encompasses IT and systems integrity training and ongoing support from pre-sales configuration to aftersales service both online and on-site.

Mobile retailers require suppliers offering customer retention and tracking software and extensive maintenance and support.

The first units of the Nokia 8310 will be available this month with the Nokia 6310 shipping in the fourth quarter and the Nokia 8390 at the end of the year .

With the GPRS business system our industry is moving to a new level of complexity. Careful attention has had to be paid to the smooth functioning of the entire system before the volume roll-out of terminals and services Alahuhta said.

This year we estimate the GPRS terminal market volume to be about 10 million units but expect its share of the GSM handset market to rise to over 50 per cent in two years time. Our GPRS phone tests give us confidence that our products will perform to high expectations when they are released to the market.

A key element in the overall success of GPRS is the ability of multiple vendors to consistently test GPRS features between infrastructure and terminals in order to deploy interoperable products in the market.

All leading manufacturers are unanimous on the importance of moving GPRS forward as a joint effort following a commonly agreed process of interoperability testing in relation to new features. This kind of broad industry consensus is essential for the successful rollout of the new mobile services.

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.