Speaking at a meeting of the WAP Forum last week Conway backed the protocol to grow and evolve.

He pointing toward industry forecasts for Europe that 100 million WAP-enabled terminals will be in the market by the end of this year

Some lessons have been learned and more need to be absorbed. But with the introduction of packet switched always on GPRS services by as many as 30 GSM networks to date with many more to come in the next few months WAPs future as a browser has never been brighter he said.

Conway agrees that WAP suffered from being over-hyped.

Nevertheless the twin successes of the text message facility on GSM phones and the i-mode data explosion in Japan convinces me that with expected enhancement in the number and quality of terminals and applications WAP can grow significantly he added.

He urged close cooperation between application developers vendors and carriers the WAP Forum and the GSM Association.

The i-mode service in Japan reached 18 million active users by January 2001 barely after two years from launch.

Thats one in seven Japanese people using the service. These facts prove that the market exists for mobile data services tailored for the wireless user.

Make it simple make it quick and make it everywhere and you have the recipe for success he suggested. Conway wants the WAP community to share the benefits of cooperative standardisation.

You must standardise the protocol from the browsers to the gateways from the applications to the services.

You must make the user experience simple and seamless. Location based services m-commerce and instant access to information will all play important parts. But the real catalyst for the re-birth of WAP is GPRS he predicted.

Although Iridium the original satphone company went bankrupt last year with its users apparently ending up with the most expensive doorstops in the world Colussy has paid the US bankruptcy courts just $25 million for the $5 billion network.

After striking a 48 million) deal with the US government to allow around 20000 Department of Defense users to continue using the satphone service Colussys company Iridium Satellite will restart offering satellite services to non-government customers by the end of April.

Colussy also has an optional deal for three times this amount with the US government to offer satphone services for up to nine more years so assuring the future of Iridium network.

The firm has outsourced the operation of the satellite network to Boeing and is now advising service providers on how to reflash the firmware of users Iridium 9500 and 9505 handsets as well as the Motorola 9570 portable satphone unit to use the new service.

The reflashing is necessary to allow the phones to support data services which operate at a basic 2400 bps and using a data compression module (from June) at 9600 bps.

Initially Iridium Satellite will concentrate on hooking up users of the old service to the new one as well as offering new subscriptions to heavy industry and other government customers.

The main focus of the service will be on offering voice communications to industrial companies as well as users in the more remote areas of the world.

Plans are also in hand for an Iridium paging service which will cost around 70 a month. Using spot beams users will still be able to receive paging signals from the satellites when inside a building and near a window.

Details of the new Iridium voice tariffs remain shrouded in secrecy but sources suggest a dollar-a-minute (70 pence) rate for single phone accounts is likely.

Globalstar USA has just slashed its own satphone line rentals from 16.50 to 13.50) a month with call rates of between 60p and 1 a minute for companies with five phones or more.

Unlike Globalstar Iridium plans for its dollar-a-minute charge to include onward charges to almost any landline making the rates comparable to GSM roaming charges – and even Mint Telecoms discount international SIM calling plans.

This is possible because again unlike Globalstar Iridium bounces call signals between satellites allowing a call to be delivered to the nearest appropriate earth gateway to the call destination.

Iridium is made up of a low earth orbit constellation of satellites resembling a cellular network in the sky

The advertisement featured a young woman dressed in a in school uniform clutching an Ericsson T20 cellular phone with text on the screen imitating sex ads.

Ericsson ran the full-page colour ad in the China Times newspaper twice in December.

Ericsson gave assurances that it would not repeat the ad.

It was obviously an unfortunate mistake Ericsson consumer products press relations manager Nina Eldh told Reuters.

It was placed by our local company there without our knowledge Eldh said.The tone of the ad had not been compatible with Ericssons values she said.

The Swedish branch of anti-child pornography and prostitution group Ecpat called the advertisement sexualised and its chairman Lennart Lindgren called on Ericsson to apologise.

In particular actual training equipment is desperately required by colleges and universities many of whom are responding to industry demands to put on extra training courses but have insufficient funds to supply all the necessary hardware said FCS Trade Association manager Jacqui Brookes.

Skills shortages within the industry has reached an all time low.

Skilled radio engineers are at a particular premium which is why it is important for our industry to support where it can the UKs national training programme to remedy this shortfall.

We recognise that many major companies within our industry are making significant contributions through their own training schemes but unfortunately this is not enough.

A previous scheme run by the MRTT whereby test and radio equipment was collated and passed to participating colleges. This increased the number of college courses which is why we wish to beef up the campaign added Brookes.

Virgin Mobile phones and Sim cards went on sale in The Carphone Warehouses 450 UK stores last week.

Said Sir Richard Branson: The Carphone Warehouse is the most successful mobile phone retailer in the UK.

It shares the same entre-preneurial spirit as Virgin.

Virgin Mobile has also done a deal to get its product into Argos 465 stores.

The Virgin Mobile phones on offer in Argos are: Nokia 3310 ( 99.95) Sony J5 ( 99.95) Ericsson T29 ( 129.95) and the MP3-enabled Siemens SL45 ( 299.95).

Argos has sales of over 2 billion a year and says that it attracts 41 million customers annually.

The new deals with The Carphone Warehouse and Argos mean that Virgin Mobile product is now available in a total of 5000 outlets including V.Shop Virgin Megastore Our Price Sainsbury Tesco WH Smith Iceland Co-op Asda Somerfield John Lewis Littlewoods and Morrisons.

The agreement improves collaborative efforts in assuring interoperability by allowing members and working groups of the two organizations to participate in each others discussions at the organizations general meetings and to share otherwise confidential documents.

In addition to joint workshops and meetings the GSM Association and the WAP Forum are considering plans for joint technical working sessions and joint working group sessions.

The two organisations plan to collaborate on work areas such as: identification of network operators and service provider requirements device protocol and application requirements; roaming and billing; development of WAP specifications; and interoperability.

The GSM Association and the WAP Forum have agreed to work together to improve and evolve the wireless Internet says GSM Association.chief executive officer Rob Conway.

The WAP Forum is responsible for fostering the growth of WAP.

Swarovski is in fact one of a number of designs in the new Unigrip range of phone holders and is not a separate fascia range.

We are pleased to put the record straight.

Mickey is leaving we will make an announcement shortly. He will be leaving amicably said Kondor chairman Malcolm Bartlett.

However the Deutsche Telekom-owned network does not disagree that some of its 7000 employees may be facing redundancy in the wake of an overhaul of the way the business is run in the face of the worldwide downturn in telecoms.

The review is part of a recognition that revenue is moving more to data and that the company needs to adapt to globalisation and not be solely a domestic operator. It feels it may have the right people in the wrong roles.

The official line according to marketing PR manager Neil Bent is:

As the company reaches a new level of maturity it intends to focus skills and resources on key business drivers.

In order to achieve this and in line with a determination to challenge commonly held views One 2 One intends to conduct a complete business review in the process of creating new and powerful ways of operating. This may result in a reduction in the companys overall head count.

However One 2 One will be concentrating its efforts on minimising any effects this might have.

The company is looking at staff skills roles and structures. It is looking at the market to see what shape it needs to be with the arrival of 3G. The review will take place over the next few weeks.

One 2 One cannot rule out any outcome. The review could flag up skill shortages and show we need to recruit. Or it could indicate we need to relocate staff internally Bent told Mobile News.

One 2 One is trying to be as open as possible. We are not being secretive. We are keeping people up to date. The assumption that it is bad news is ridiculous.

It will be two months before anyone knows the results of the review. One 2 One has had a successful year and is looking towards next year in terms of goals targets and budgets.

The company desires to improve efficiency added Bent.

12 snap will run a mobile phone marketing campaign using interactive mobile games to advertise the KitKat Chunky bar in Germany with the slogan the full load.

This will be Nestles first attempt at integrating mobile marketing into future marketing strategies.

Frank Schuebel marketing director at Nestle said: marketing via mobile phones is an interesting way of communicating which we wanted to try out. We decided on a collaboration with 12snap for our mobile marketing activities as 12snap has a young and incredibly innovative image coupled with a very wide radius.

The partnership with Nestle comes after 12snap announced in January Europes largest mobile marketing deal with the restaurant chain McDonalds in Germany.

This announcement was followed with the signing of a cash deal with American Express to promote and gain customers for its youth focused credit card blue card.

SMS campaigns allow mobile players to push out much more interactive and personalised service said 12snap co-founder and marketing manager Cyriac Roeding

Campaigns are resulting in very high response rates averaging between six and 12 per cent around 15 times higher than traditional direct marketing campaigns. Projections on revenue generated from wireless advertising are forecasting 12 billion in 2005.