O2 UK head of SME marketing Simon Devonshire said: While small businesses can see the value in mobile data many are put off by the perceived complexity of implementing it. We want to help businesses see which options best suit their circumstances.

An O2 spokesman said the initiative was not an alternative strategy implemented after O2 dismissed its entire field sales team last month.

He said: Its completely unrelated to field sales. The initiative is specifically linked to insights from our smaller SME customers that they are put off implementing mobile email because of a perceived complexity.

3 has appointed David Bickett as its new director of retail business development.

Bickett comes from 3s Australian operation. He joins Ian Parpworth who arrived from The Link early this year in 3s expanded retail team as it rolls out its store portfolio.

3 has opened 130 standalone stores during the past 12 months. It is rolling out its store portfolio at a faster rate than any other network claimed a spokesman.

This time last year we had 15 standalone stores and 130 concessions within Superdrug he said. We now have 145 standalone stores.

3 has some 1600 retail employees and the new appointments will also aim to boost staff performance.

Bickett had been general manager for consumer sales at 3 Australia since 2001. Prior to that he was national general manager for retail at Australian network Telstra.

Parpworth was operations director for The Link between 2004 and 2007 and was previously an area manager for The Link between 1998 and 1999. Parpworth will now report to Bickett.

3 UK sales director Marc Allera said: With this announcement we are confirming our aim to be the best mobile retailer in the market.

At Orange Lovell was head of support operations for seven years where he was responsible for multimedia technical operations and services.

He left Orange in February this year to join BT as service operations centre manager which involved overseeing technical support teams responsible for NHS services provided by BT.

Lovell said: I am really looking forward to working with a team of people that already have an excellent reputation in the mobile arena.

One of my main objectives is to further develop Dialogues technical infrastructure and procedures in order to continue to improve platform and service reliability.

Dialogue managing director Hugh Spear said: Steve will be an integral part of helping drive the business forward. His technical knowledge and expertise will help continue to improve Dialogues reliable platform.

The Fly SL600 will be available on Vodafone pre-pay and will sell for £59.99.

The handset features a two-megapixel camera music player with expandable memory FM radio and Bluetooth.

Fly is currently in discussion with other retailers for further contracts and is set to bring a portfolio of about eight handsets to the UK by the end of the year.

Vodafone had until Thursday to exercise an option to sell up to $10 billion of its shares in Verizon Wireless to Verizon Communications. The announcement is a blow to Verizon Communications who already own 55 per cent of Verizon Wireless.

A statement issued by Vodafone said: Vodafone announces that it has decided not to exercise its rights under its agreement with Verizon Communications Inc. to sell to Verizon up to 10 billion dollars of Vodafones interest in Verizon Wireless.

VZW is a market leading business with strong growth prospects and the Board of Vodafone continues to believe that retaining its full 45-percent interest is in the best interests of shareholders.

Nokia will now work with four chipset suppliers including Broadcom Infineon Technologies STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments will continue to be a broad scope supplier across all protocols.

However Nokia will continue to develop its own modem technology which includes protocol software and related digital design for WCDMA/GSM. Nokia will then license the modem technology to its selected chipset manufactures.

Nokia executive vice president of technology platforms Niklas Savander said: This is a pragmatic move in the face of an increasingly complex technology environment. Companies in this industry need to focus on areas where they can add value and partner with others where it makes sense.

We believe that our renewed strategy will allow us to concentrate on developing core chipset technologies while increasing our R&D efficiencies and improving our agility in a fast-moving marketplace.

Theres also a reviews of the new Sagem my850v and the petbuddi GSM-based dog location service. While Ian White goes on another one of his rants about Ewan McGregor and phony PR for the Nokia 6110 Navigator.

To cap it all off Iain Graham and the team take a light hearted look at all the latest headlines affecting the mobile industry. So dont miss out listen to the latest edition of the Mobile News podcast by clicking here.

Jelfs exit comes in the wake of former chairman John Mcfarnon and sales manager Matt Bramwells departures.

The outgoing Jelfs has no concrete plans for his future and will focus his attention on consultancy work in the meantime.

Jelfs told Mobile News: I felt now was the time to move on after a long era as there are currently a lot of changes in terms of geography and in its cohesive strategy at Unique.

At the moment Im working on a couple of assignments as a consultant and both are keen to offer me full time positions. But at this point I am keeping my options open.

Flick said: We are a good business. We are on O2s Advance Partner programme and a part of both its data and M2M Centres of Excellence. We are one of just 10 tier-one Vodafone partners and our relationship with Orange is very interesting too.

The business we write is quality business delivered in quantity. In an unprecedented unjustified and unexpected move T-Mobile contacted me and our customers to tell them our trading relationship had ceased. It has been totally unprofessional. It should have given us notice to limit the impact upon our customers.

Ultimately T-Mobile is quitting the independent channel. Over the past two years it has been reactive. It has launched extremely aggressive price plans time and again only to withdraw them fairly quickly afterwards. It is very fickle.

The WiMAX Forum is a non-profit industry-led group that has more than 470 companies as members. This includes 141 operators that are committed to promoting and certifying interoperable WiMAX products.

Vodafone global chief technology officer Steve Pusey said: Our membership of the WiMAX Forum will complement our existing memberships of other key industry bodies such as the GSMA 3GPP and the Next Generation Mobile Network initiative.

Vodafone remains technology neutral as far as our future network options are concerned and joining the WiMAX Forum is a logical step as we seek to evaluate the full capabilities and potential of this technology.