The essence of the Business Partner Programme is to help our dealers to grow and develop their business and to be valued in the market? said MoCo managing director Ian Robinson. In return they will provide increased levels quality business.?

The programme is open to all dealers but they must meet certain criteria.

It is open to everyone but dealers must show 100 per cent commitment? said MoCo director of marketing and direct sales Harvey Alexander said. They are selected on the grounds of the quality of their business and the length of time they have been with us.?

There are currently 20 dealers signed up to the programme and MoCo aims to gain a further 20 in the next quarter.

They will receive an array of benefits to entice them on to the scheme? said Alexander.

These will include improving their bottom line having someone to speak to when they have concerns and helping them develop their business in line with the changing market.?

Further programme benefits include enhanced commissions preferential stock allocation and training. Dealers will be signed up to the scheme for three months at a time before their membership is renewed or terminated.

Llanelli-based Landmark Communications which sells mobile packages on 3 disputes claims made in the survey that staff in Wales are poorly trained.

Managing director Grant Evans said: We are consistently closing more than 500 sales a day across our offices in Llanelli and Carmarthen. I dont think we could be doing that if our sales staff were not good at selling.

The survey carried out by sales training consultancy Silent Edge evaluated 1000 sales people and marked them out of 100.

Evans commented: We have an excellent training programme and each member of our staff has a product and training manual. Theres constant back-up available from our on-site managers.?

His remit is to strengthen the companys relationships with third-party channels and improve market share as the Caudwell Group readies itself for acquisition bids.

We have an exceptional team to do this and we are recruiting all the time? he said.

This is a new position created after the Dextra and 4U businesses were merged in May.

Jones reports directly to group managing director Mark Ryan and oversees the team headed up by sales director Angie Simpson who joined the group in April this year from Hugh Symons.

Jones was formally a sales director at Nokia before joining the Caudwell Group. He then moved on to become sales director for service provider Cellular Operations until it was bought by Vodafone three years ago.

Since then he has been working as a consultant in the mobile industry specialising in developing investment angel opportunities.

3s interim results show the company is increasing revenue in the UK faster than it is increasing its customer base.

The figures show that 3 UKs total revenue grew 16 per cent to GBP700338000 between December 31 2005 and June 30 this year. Year-on-year the figure shows a rise of 40 per cent. Total customer numbers grew just four per cent in the six months to June 30.

3 parent company Hutchison Whampoa attributed this partly to higher numbers of more valuable contract customers – a growth of seven per cent in the UK – though it admitted fierce competition in the UK market had boosted churn to 3.6 per cent in July this year.

The total number of 3 customers in the UK and Ireland at June 30 was 3750000 of which 1525000 were pre-pay and 2225000 were contract.

UK ARPU was up 20 per cent on the end of 2005 to GBP41.51 while non-voice ARPU was up from GBP8 in December to GBP10.16 in June and is now a quarter of total ARPU.

In addition 3 predicted rollout of its 3.5G HSDPA network would be completed for the major cities in the fourth quarter of the year and for the whole network in 2007.

It is the first joint offering since the companys acquisition of Virgin Mobile on July 4.

The package will combine NTLs existing TV broadband and fixed-line offers with a Virgin Mobile contract although the details of the mobile phone aspect of the package have not been finalised. The package will be priced at 40 a month.

The package will initially be offered through Virgins own stores but the independent channel may also get the chance to sell it according to trading director Graeme Hutchinson.

Initially we are selling the package through our own stores but we will be very quickly looking at where we can sell it through indirect retail? confirmed Hutchinson.

Its a case of which channels are most appropriate and whether the terms of the package are right for us and the retailer.?

NTL has promised additional packages in the future that will allow customers to buy any two services for 20 a month or any three for 30.

The LG LEO KG920 mobile phone will be the first mobile to have a five megapixel camera.

An LG spokeswoman said: We hope it will outperform some of the single device cameras on the market. This really is a proper camera.?

Other features include an autofocus lens a strobe flash and high-quality video recording.

The phone has a twist-design that allows people to take and view self-portrait snaps of themselves in the phones high-resolution screen. It will also come with a built-in MP3 player and Bluetooth.

LG is also set to launch a flip phone already dubbed the Chocolate flip? later this year. However the phone will not actually be part of its black label range.

The last half billion pre-pay subscriptions have been gained by mobile operators in less than 17 months since February 2005 nearly twice as fast as the 29 months it took to add the previous half billion? said senior analyst Abigail Browne.

The report – World Cellular Information Service – also predicted that while the number of pre-pay users is expected to keep rising growth will slow in coming years.

Informa also predicted that while overall mobile phone subscriptions will slowly decline the number of 3.5G mobile broadband subscribers will increase tenfold from 2.5 million in 2006 to more than 300 million in 2011.

However Informa predicts that a boom in 3.5G handsets is unlikely to occur until 2008.

Principle analyst Malik Saadi blamed a lack of compelling devices? for the slow uptake of 3.5G.

An average of 112 million messages were sent each day in June an increase of almost 30 per cent on the same period last year.

The World Cup is thought to have encouraged people to text friends with 140 million messages sent on June 15 when England played Trinidad & Tobago and on and July 1 when the team played Portugal. This is equivalent to six million SMS messages every hour.

The MDA predicts that 36.5 billion texts will be sent across the whole of 2006.
SMS – World Cup boost

The Palm Treo smartphone will include Microsoft Windows Mobile software and be available first to Vodafone customers before the year end.

This collaboration will provide a powerful tool for enterprise customers? said Palm senior vice-president of worldwide sales and customer relations. Partnering with Vodafone a world-class mobile operator is a significant step towards accelerating our geographic expansion and serving our European customers.?

Some two per cent of business e-mail boxes worldwide are accessed via mobile according to market research firm The Radicati Group. Palm Vodafone and Microsoft aim to target this large untapped market with real-time push e-mail using Microsofts Messaging and Security Feature Pack.

Varty left earlier this month. He has been replaced by Ben Threlfall formerly Vodafone head of IT reseller and distribution.

Both Varty and Vodafone refused to comment.

Vartys exit from Vodafone coincides with Vodafone UK CEO Bill Morrows surprise departure last week and follows on the heels of a slew of Vodafone channel staff changes.

These include the departures of head of sales for commercial partnerships Richard Hurring director of enterprise sales Chris Huggett senior manager of business partnerships Jason Rigby and head of dealer sales Iain Graham.

One distributor source said: It is a bit of a merry-go-round and Keiths departure has come as a bit of a shock. He hadnt been there a very long time. Richard Hurring was only there for just over a year.?

Avenir UK managing director Tanny Price said: Vodafone is going through a period of change with its channel staff. But the staff it has brought in to replace the old guard have been very impressive. Ben Threlfall is very nice and highly intelligent. These are experienced guys who have spent some quality time with us to find out about our business and how we can move forward together. It is very refreshing.?

Threlfall reports to Vodafones new head of sales for commercial partnerships Rob Sandford who reports to corporate sales chief Amanda Baker.