The Carphone Warehouse said last week that it would pump £10-15 million into customer service for TalkTalk broadband in the next 12 months.

Carphone CEO Charles Dunstone said: We continue to invest in customer service as we work to further build the service levels at TalkTalk following the problems we incurred at launch. As ever our goal is not to maximise immediate profitability if it compromises the customer experience but rather to protect the brand longer term.

He added: We have made excellent progress. The delays we reported in migration earlier in the year mean we are still a little behind our original business plan but the current momentum of customer recruitment and migration gives us confidence that we will make up the lost ground by the summer.

Carphone said contract connections for the three months to the end of March rose by 14 per cent year on year to 1.02 million. Prepay sales were up two per cent at 1.24 million and almost 28 per cent for the year overall. SIM-free sales for the quarter were up 29 per cent at 156000.

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Vodafone said last week that its deals with supermarket chain Asda and electronic goods chain DSG would boost its shares of the £1 billion MVNO market and the SoHo sector.

Meanwhile it reported a six-month drop in its UK margins from 34 per cent to 26.6 per cent. Ovum principal analyst John Delaney said: Things still look tough for Vodafone in its home market.

Vodafone has entered into a wholesale airtime agreement with Asda that will see the supermarket chain set up as an MVNO and go head-to-head with Tesco Mobile (see box) which leases airtime from O2. Vodafone has just eight per cent of the MVNO market through a deal with BT Mobile. Asda will sell handsets on Asda Mobile tariffs in 52 stores from the end of June.

Vodafone chief executive Nick Read said: We believe we can drive market share gain in wholesale. It is a £1 billion market and we only have an eight per cent share. [The Asda deal] is a very compelling venture. Its very complementary because it targets customers that the Vodafone brand wouldnt normally reach.

Read said that Vodafone would be selective in its choice of MVNO partners going forward but indicated the Asda deal would not be the last.

Are we going to open up for everyone? No. Were looking for significant scale opportunities. We believe we can push on and take market share in this area he said.

An Asda spokesperson added: Its a similar deal to that which Tesco has with O2 so we will be going into direct competition with Tesco.

Separately the deal with DSG will see Vodafone sell voice and data products in designated connectivity centres within 30 of DSGs PC World outlets. It hopes this will boost its current 30 per cent SoHo share.

Vodafone UK enterprise business manager Kyle Whitehill said: We looked at ways we could take the strength of the PC World distribution model which has a very high share of the small business market. By adding our expertise to PC Worlds small business expertise you get a powerful distribution model.

The Vodafone connectivity centres will be staffed by Vodafone. Customers will also leave with a mobile connect card or a voice tariff said Whitehill. They will be able to use those services as soon as they leave.

The deal will also see DSG and Vodafone provide field support to small business customers. They will bolster DSGs TechGuys support service which currently has 3000 employees. DSG said last week that 2000 more would be added during the next three years.

A mobile phone engineer has been ordered to pay £3400 in costs and damages after he was found guilty of illegal peer-to-peer file sharing.

Derek Butterworth from Epping was identified as part of a 10-month investigation codenamed Operation Tracker by The Federation Against Software Theft.

Senior legal counsel Julian Heathcote Hobbins said: The high street cost of the software would have been £35 so the penalty was almost 100 times more than the cost of doing the right thing and buying it.

More than 300 mobile phone traders have signed a petition to pressure HM Revenue & Customs to cease its unlawful actions against legitimate companies.

The e-petition posted on the Downing Street web site was submitted by Monty Jivraj director of operations and logistics at London-based mobile phone trader Olympia Technology.

Jivraj said: There are a lot of legitimate traders who are concerned about their businesses and the livelihoods. We are trading with the latest handsets to meet consumer demand. We are not trading in a carousel.

Under Customs extended verification process VAT re-payments are withheld for an indefinite period.

One trader said: Weve signed the petition and were doing everything in our power to get the witheld money back.

Customs refused to comment.

We hope the government will wake up and conduct extended verification in an appropriate fair and reasonable manner which it is not doing at present said Jivraj.

We havent stopped trading. Weve had VAT payments witheld on everything including stationary and legal fees. It is ridiculous and most clearly delaying tactics by HMRC.

T-Mobiles aggressive store roll-out which saw its retail portfolio hit 250 outlets last week is expected to slow down as part of its internal cost-cutting exercise Save for Service.

T-Mobile director of retail Russell Taylor said that its target of 300 stores which it had originally aimed to reach in June 2007 was under review.

Mobile News understands that only a few roles within T-Mobiles 30-strong retail operations team are likely to be affected and that no area manager field manager store manager or store staff roles will be affected as part of Save for Service.

We have not been put under any significant pressure to reduce our headcount said Taylor.

He claimed that T-Mobile had been the fastest-growing UK retailer in any sector during the past 18 months. When he joined as head of retail in 2005 T-Mobile had 128 stores. It opened its 250th store in York last week.

Taylor was tasked with bringing T-Mobiles own store portfolio in line with that of rival networks and he has overseen the refurbishment of 118 of the original sites and a near doubling of the number overall.

Taylor claimed that service levels across its base had improved.

T-Mobile outlets and dealers rated well against rival stores in T-Mobiles international mystery shopper programme before Christmas. But he added that mobile phone retail in general was below par and so a poor barometer of success.

In the UK service levels are generally mediocre and we are measuring ourselves against a market that is not great he said. So were not there yet but at the same time were heading in the right direction.

He added: Our mission is to become the best-regarded service company in the UK not just in high street retail but in web sales and telesales too.

Last week around 400 area managers store managers and members of T-Mobiles field teams attended a staff leadership conference.

All the networks struggled to get any real traction within the consumer market as far as data and connectivity solutions go until we launched WebnWalk said Taylor.

Weve done a great job breaking that to the mass market and we must look to empower our retail staff. They are the most important people in the business because they are the ones directly in touch with the consumer.

The store roll-out is part of a review of T-Mobiles overall retail strategy which takes in recruitment training and retail systems. Completion is expected in early 2008.

Avenir switched the focus of its quarterly dealer forums to data last week when it hosted dealers at a data forum in Northamptonshire.

Avenir managing director Tanny Price said: As the returns on voice services are diminishing we are looking at untapped opportunities in the data market.

The success of data services is reliant on the industry working together to provide end-users with a consistent offering that provides a measurable return on investment. The data solutions forum was a great example of how this kind of approach can work.

We look forward to holding similar events in the future.

Speakers at the event included representatives of Vodafone O2 Hewlett Packard BlackBerry manufacturer RIM Trackaphone and ESE Applications.

MoCos direct sales arm MoCo Business is looking to turn 25 per cent of its customer base on to data services this year.

MoCo Business is also to double its sales team to 12 in the coming months following the appointments of sales consultants Bobby Sokhi and Michael Thomas last week.

MoCo director of sales and marketing Harvey Alexander said: We have an 80 per cent retention rate across all networks with our direct customers. We are trying to push converged services to 25 per cent of our base. If you sell data voice will follow. Thats is the change in the market. It is a mistake to bolt the data solution on because that wont work.

Sokhi who joins from Wish Communications and Thomas who joins from O2s corporate sales team will concentrate on new business customers while the rest of the sales team look after existing customers. They report to business sales manager Lester Dougal.

MoCo Business is offering mobile landline data and IT solutions to its customers.

Data solutions provider Crimson Tide is offering dealers and distributors the chance to double and even triple their money on standard airtime commissions for bringing data customers to its attention.

Crimson Tide a Yes Telecom business partner and O2 direct data reseller has set up a new partner programme. It is on the verge of signing a major airtime distributor thought to be Ipswich distributor Anglia Telecom or Kent-based MoCo.

It is offering to manage customers data solutions while dealers or distributors take care of voice services.

Crimson Tide sales director Jeremy Roth said: If theyre earning £100 commission per box we will pay them £200 or £300 depending on the size of the contract.

Sales at The Carphone Warehouse are 20 per cent down on last year it was claimed last week.

A Carphone staffer told Mobile News morale was low. There is considerable pressure on sales. Our area is about 22 per cent down for contract sales compared with [the same period] last year he said.

Area sales manager for the North Ken Hanning sent staff an e-mail on February 14 that urged them to raise their games in the light of poor sales. It was sent to 14 stores and around 80 employees

Hanning told staff: We have faced a serious disappointment today. [The sales] mix on your sales floor is your responsibility.

Carphone refused to comment on the area sales performance. But one member of Hannings sales team took issue with the tone of the email. He said: His message does nothing to motivate his managers or inspire them to do well.

A Carphone spokesperson said: The e-mail has been taken out of context from a series of communications between an area sales manager and his team.

Another Carphone salesman said: Ken is a good bloke and Ive never had a problem with him before.