Jo Groves managing director of Kent B2B dealer Active Digital has been shortlisted for the Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award part of the Fast Growth Business Awards sponsored by T-Mobile.

Groves 28 said Active Digital was O2s second best performing dealer in the South of England last year behind Azzurri after recording the best quarter across of its channel partners. Its turnover jumped 80 per cent last year compared with 2004/5 and it doubled its number of staff to 30.

The company expects turnover to double again this year and Groves is recruiting more than 10 new staff across its sales support and development teams. Active Digital has just moved to a new 5000 square-foot HQ near Tunbrige Wells.

Groves said: The achievement is great. It puts the business on the map and its good for staff morale. Last year was our best ever. We took on a couple of very big corporate clients. This year we expect to grow the business further.

Active Digital is on the O2 Advance Dealer programme and is a Vodafone direct dealer. Groves co-founded Active Digital in 1996 with her brother business sales director Richard Groves.

The Fast Growth Business Awards are run by magazine Growing Business.

We have not cut supply lines from any distributorsaid a Tesco Mobile spokesperson.

We have increased business with one distributor but our business with the others remains constant. Business has not been switched between suppliers.

Sources claimed last month that Data Select had picked up certain product lines from rival manufacturers 20:20 and Unique. Tesco Mobile was initially unavailable for comment. However it said last week: None of our suppliers has lost business.

It refused to confirm what percentage of Tesco Mobile supply lines Data Select is now responsible for but sources claimed it was as high as 50 per cent.

Meanwhile former Unique boss John McFarnon who joined Advantage Cellular Group last month stated he was not using his ties with Tesco Mobile to win new business for Advantage.

Bernard has taken a position in Sony Ericssons global marketing team and will deal with its network partners.

Bernard will report to Sony Ericsson global marketing director Ben Padley.

Live Telecoms is moving to a new office and warehouse base on the same trading estate in Great Shelford this month. The new warehouse has twice the storage capacity of its present site but Live Telecoms purchasing manager Simon Warren said the companys headcount had reduced.

Warren said 90 per cent of Live Telecoms staff were on annual leave this
month.

He said: We are moving this month because August is always quiet. There is never a good time to move in terms of business but trade is quiet at the moment and 90 per cent of staff have taken holiday this month. We are running our stock holding down ahead of the move and then we will build it
up again.

Sources claimed last week that Live Telecom was restructuring its finances. Warren responded: Business is good and we are moving in order to be able to do more business.

The central London outlet shut earlier this year. Nokia UK managing director Simon Ainslie said last week the new store opening will be attended by a series of smaller regional outlets. Nokia has 18 stores in the UK at present.

Ainslie said: The point of our flagship stores is to treat customers as guests and to give them a complete multimedia experience.

These are all branding exercises rather than sales exercises; so customers understand the design and functionality of Nokia products. The concept stores will perform the same function on a smaller scale in regional areas.

Ainslie said the Nokia outlets were not sales environments and devices would carry higher price tags than in traditional retailers.

Staff will be target driven on a customer experience; there will be no sales targets whatsoever. As soon as you start connecting salaries to sales you drive a behaviour thats different and that¹s not what we¹re after explained Ainslie.

The short-term loans are available to staff while they wait for insurance payouts.

Vodafone evacuated 2500 staff on 20 July after its Newbury headquarters flooded. As a result the group has offered to reimburse staff for out of pocket expenses incurred while trying to get home on that date.

Vodafone head of policy and reward Alan Thomas said: We take the welfare of our employees very seriously and recognise that some employees may have been unable to get home or indeed may have made it home to a distressing scene.

We hope that this support will go some way to helping employees who may need to bridge the gap while insurance assessments are done.

O₂ will be provided with over 300 pieces of content including video clips wallpapers and ringtones from popular BBC programmes such as The Office Doctor Who and Little Britain.

BBC Worldwide already has similar deals in place with Orange and 3 but it is the first one complied by Phil Mercier the newly appointed head of mobile at BBC Worldwide.

O₂ UK head of strategic content partners Grahame Riddell said: The programme brands that BBC Worldwide can bring on board are exactly what our customers are looking for well recognised and compelling.

Were constantly looking for quality new content that will appeal to our customers and this deal paves the way for access to the wealth of material available from the BBC in a range of different and innovative formats.

The network is keen to gain broader access to the non-specialist market and supply management business Comment offers a configuration customisation and service solution to retailers such as Woolworths WHSmith Littlewoods and Sainsburys.

Comment has similar deals with LG Sagem and Alcatel.

Comment managing director Michael Richardson said: Our aim is to help Sony Ericsson develop direct relationships with major retailers.

The Lancashire-based firm has teamed up with Vodafone to offer contracts of up to two years with optional handsets. Resellers can offer as much as 17.5 per cent discount against Vodafone retail prices. They will also be given marketing assistance and the opportunity to brand the offering under their own business name.

Resellers will receive up-front commission and retention bonuses for customers who then reconnect. Daisy is also negotiating a proposition with T-Mobile.

The distributor increased its focus on business connections last year in response to network demands of the dealer channel. This year it has introduced measures like network business specialists and a dedicated business team to support the initiative.

Dextra airtime sales director Angie Simpson said: We really started to focus more on B2B connections last year and now have a lot of building blocks in place to develop the offer. We had a blank canvas in B2B and the opportunity to do things well.

Simpson added the introduction of O2 and Orange business specialists would give essential knowledge and training to independent dealers.

B2B can seem like a minefield but knowledge is the ultimate sales tool she said. We introduced a dedicated internal business team with account management and sales and data support. The support team play a massive part in what the dealers do.