Sky to show football 24-7 on mobiles

The on demand service will include highlights archived footage and live goal clips from Premiership and UEFA Champions League matches. Sky will also allow subscribers to watch its popular Gillette Soccer Saturday and Soccer AM television shows.

The service will be made available to O2 T-Mobile and 3 customers for £5 a month or 50p per download.

Skys partnership with NGN will see the new service jointly advertised in the News of the World The Sun and across Sky television.

BSkyB commercial group director Stephen Nuttall said: 24-7 Football will be the most comprehensive on-demand football service for mobile phones. Were delighted that we can offer this service across all the major UK and Irish networks meaning that many millions of fans can keep up with Skys football coverage wherever they are and at any time of the day.

Timico gets new sales manager

Brown will report to Timico head of indirect sales Stuart Bell. She said: Timico is a quality company. Ive been on the periphery of converged services for a while and now I can combine my skills from my years in the telecoms and data channels.

She joins Timico from fixed line provider Thus where she was channel account manager.

Sony Ericsson and Orange tune in to music revenues

Orange UK director of devices François Mahieu said: If you compare the two million Walkman phones we have sold to date with the 10 million MP3-enabled handsets we have sold from other manufacturers revenue per user is 50 per cent better among the Walkman crowd.

Orange and Sony Ericsson confirmed stage two of their music partnership last week with a multi-million-pound marketing deal that centres on a new multi-platform music talent show.

The pair said the partnership to date was making good on the promise of mobile content and beginning to satisfy the network requirement for increased data revenues. John Harber said the higher data revenues from Walkman handset users were bringing to life the industry ideal.

He said: It sounds corny but it is good evidence that music is boosting ARPU. It works and with HSDPA and improved handset functionality down the line it is going to drive even more revenue. We can build on that with Orange.

Harber said Sony Ericsson expected total sales of Walkman devices through Orange to top three million this year.

Sony Ericsson is also backing the Orange partnership with a training scheme around its Walkman handsets for 4000 Orange retail staff and a flurry of in-store promotional and point-of-sale material to coincide with the mobileAct programmes. We are helping to develop Orange Retail to be a really good music destination he said.

Mahieu said its customers were downloading 100000 music tracks per month from its Music Store.

He also said the partnership with Sony Ericsson gave Orange access to exclusive Walkman colour variants. It is good for colour exclusives on top of the standard range of Walkman devices he said. We have the richest portfolio of Walkman devices of any network in the UK.

He added that Sony Ericssons work behind the scenes on handset customisation for networks also contributed to the good revenues.

Sony Ericsson captured the trend in music earlier than other manufacturers. It has invested quite heavily in its customisation of handsets for Orange so that Walkman customers can access our music portal in a single click he said.

If you take a generic product SIM-free there is not such a great link between the experience and the network promise on content. In many cases the user experience is quite poor and it is in fact a barrier to wider take-up of content services. Its why many data services struggle to take off.

The majority of phones we range is optimised and Sony Ericsson has worked closely with us.

Unique sales manager quits

Bramwell sales manager for Uniques SIM-free department had been with the company for eight years. Unique is searching for his replacement.

Unique sales director Jolyon Bennett said: Matt has worked extremely hard over the eight years but he now wants to pursue other challenges. We wish him all the best.

Bramwells next destination is unknown.

Meanwhile Unique lost a morning due to the flooding that swept the UK last week. Sales staff were moved from flooded ground-floor offices to a higher level.

Qualcomm to appeal against US chip ban

The Bush administration yesterday upheld the The US International Trade Commissions ban on the importation of the chips which are carried by many operators including Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel.

The ITC imposed the ruling citing that Qualcomm chips infringe on patents belonging to Broadcom Inc. including push-to-talk and video compression.

Qualcomm will now launch an appeal and renew its request for a stay of the ITC ban on imports of future 3G mobile broadband handset models.

Qualcomm CEO Dr Paul E. Jacobs said: We are committed to preserving the enormously successful mobile broadband industry in the U.S. and to protecting and advancing the significant gains that have already been achieved in communications disaster preparedness and emergency response.

We will pursue all legal and technical options available to us to minimize the impact of the ITC order on consumers our customers and the entire wireless industry.

Fraud register set for August

The database by the Telecommunications UK Fraud Forum (TUFF) will be made available to all mobile retailers in September.

TUFF chief executive Jack Wraith said the database would be fully functioning in time for the Christmas shopping season when mobile retailers traditionally take on more staff.

Wraith said mobile outlets had been reporting an unacceptable level of employee crime which retailers had attributed to frequent staff movement. I would like to see that concern disappear he said.

Ericsson closing Coventry office

The new 40-acre site will create around 650 jobs but the 300 staff currently working in Coventry face an anxious wait to see if they are offered positions at Ansty.

Ericsson UK managing director Jacqueline Hey said: The site at Ansty will enable us to create an operating environment specifically designed to suit the needs of our business both now and for the future.

We recognize both the skills that we have in the UK and the importance of maintaining the capabilities we have.

This is an important step securing employment in the area that is likely to create new job opportunities.

Virgin Mobile appoint Oxby as MD

Oxby has more than 15 years experience in the industry having previously worked as vice president of global mobile for Cable and Wireless and more recently as UK marketing director at 3.

Virgin Media chief operating officer Neil Berkett said: Graeme has been working in the mobile industry since its infancy and has helped pioneer the bringing together of mobile communications and entertainment.

His commercial acumen and pedigree marketing credentials will ensure Virgin Mobile retains a dynamic and compelling presence both in the mobile market and as part of Virgin Medias unique quad-play proposition.

Commenting on his new role Graeme said: Virgin Mobile has a well deserved reputation for doing things differently. Ever since its creation in 1999 it has consistently challenged convention and established itself as a genuinely distinctive choice for consumers.

I look forward to the challenge of building on this legacy and the opportunities that come with being part of the UKs only fully integrated entertainment and communications provider.

TAP picks up ET brand

ET went into administration in June after failed attempts to find a buyer.

TAP head of corporate development Harb Sangha said TAP had bought ETs intellectual property including its company name trademarks brand names and web domains.

Sangha said: We will be adding to our large stable of companies and this will fit in very nicely. Although the company went into administration European Telecom had a good name. Our executives are brainstorming for ideas on how this could widen the field for us. This will see us leapfrog a lot of other companies.

Sangha would not confirm rumours that TAP paid more than £500000 for ETs naming rights

Lords vetoes UK pre-pay ID checks

It follows proposals by state and territory police in Australia to introduce a 100-point identity check with customers required to present documents such as a passport or birth certificate to purchase SIM cards. Australian authorities claim the move will help them track down criminals.

However the House of Lords said last week that such a scheme would not deliver any significant new benefits to the investigatory process.

Meanwhile Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum (MICAF) and Telecommunications United Kingdom Fraud Forum (TUFF) spokesman Jack Wraith said the initiative would spur a black market for SIM cards.

The debate has been prompted by the increasing use of SIM cards as detonating devices in terrorist attacks and organised crime where suspects are found in possession of multiple SIM cards.

After the June 29 terrorist attacks when two cars carrying gas cylinders and nails were found in central London and a burning car crashed into Glasgow airport British police tracked a SIM card found on one of the men accused and alerted Australian authorities.

Australian police charged the man Muhammed Haneef 27 with supporting the bomb plot by giving his SIM card to the other two accused.

Haneefs defence was that he passed on the SIM card so the others could take advantage of his mobile tariff. It has not been established whether the SIM card was used in the foiled attacks.

In the House of Lords on July 16 Viscount Waverly presented the question of whether the Government would make it compulsory for proof of identity to be produced when purchasing SIM cards.

The House of Lords said: The compulsory registration of pre-pay ownership would not deliver any significant new benefits to the investigatory process and would dilute the effectiveness of current self-registration schemes.

Wraith said the UKs position was to encourage voluntary registration of mobile phone users via the Immobilise website which currently has 21 million registrations.