EasyMobile adds 15000 Pay Points

"The introduction of Pay Point´s retail partners extends our distribution reach by a further 15000 outlets" said EasyMobile sales and marketing director Mike Lewis.
EasyMobile went live with Pay Point a payment collection network from mid-June.
E-vouchers were initially introduced in May this year available from The Link Currys Currys.digital and PC World.

3 launches SME e-mail option

The package will give small office/home office customers and SMEs access to the mobile Internet.
The new offer includes the launch of two handsets incorporating easy to use QWERTY keyboards for the business market and a range of new services including push-mail and inclusive data allowances removing the need for a separate e-mail device.
"This marks our first steps into the business market" said Allera.
Mobile Office Mail allows customers to have their e-mails delivered to their 3G handsets exactly as they would on a PC.
The service is powered by SEVEN Networks Always-On Mail mobile e-mail platform which allows each e-mail to be pushed to the handset.
3 UK marketing director Graeme Oxby said: "E-mail is critical for many businesses and 3´s advanced network can deliver the service to mobile devices offering performance and value."
The Mobile Mail option includes 10MB of data per month for £2.50 and is expected to meet the needs of most small business users.
The enhanced version Mobile Office Mail is aimed at larger businesses. It enables retrieval of Exchange and Lotus e-mail and includes 15MB of data for £5 a month.

World is hungry for Chocolate

LG said the Chocolate phone has racked up sales of a million units worldwide since its international launch in May.
Simon Hahm president of LG Electronics´ European business division for mobile said: "When we created the Chocolate phone we knew had a special product on our hands but the scale of success after just one month of sale in the UK has surpassed our expectations."
LG expects the Chocolate to replicate its success in Europe as it launches in China Russia and Mexico.

T-Mobile jazzes up SatNav bundle

The offer is also intended to encourage the use of Web´n´Walk which is so far understood to have had disappointing take-up.
It is hoped that the services on offer will drive users to go for the unlimited browsing option which costs an additional £7.50 per month.
The bundle will be available through T-Mobile stores and online through the network´s own web site and also Dial-a-Phone.
It is also being offered to business users through T-Mobile´s preferred dealer Business Partners programme. According to senior product manager Darren Drinkwater take-up has been good through the channel with deals at 80 units a go.

Yes answers more quickly

The company claim 97 per cent of calls have been answered within three rings (seven seconds) compared with 88 per cent for the 10 months before. And 97 per cent of e-mails received since January were responded to within 60 minutes of receipt.
A spokesman from Parkway Telecom a Yes Telecom business partner commented: "Following the launch of the CARE initiative levels of support have increased considerably."

DAB downloads to trial

UBC Media Group CEO Simon Cole commented: "People are buying music online and are listening to the radio on their phone. This service will allow people to buy music as they listen on the move."
Consumers will subscribe to the service and top up the amount of credit they have for music downloads in the same way as they would top-up a pre-pay mobile phone.
The download cost is expected to be around £1.25 a track.
The consumer trial runs in Birmingham for four weeks from July 10 with 100 users able to download music in real time from Heart FM´s DAB station.

3 World Cup TV gets Canon aid

3 head of content products Mark Joseph said: "This is another big-name brand allocating advertising spend to mobile media. Canon recognises the opportunity to reach out to a large mobile audience of more than 3.5 million viewers tuning into one of the biggest events ever broadcast on mobile."
In addition to the sponsorship agreement Canon will run 30-second ads on 3´s made-for-mobile TV show Berlin or Bust.
Joseph explained: "Sponsorship agreements such as this will bring benefits to the consumer making way for more free channels such as 3´s Berlin or Bust TV show."
Canon Europe new media specialist Mike Nutley said: "The Wold Cup is a phenomenal opportunity for sponsorship packages. With this exclusive deal we can engage with our customers in an innovative way without having to worry about standing out from the clutter in traditional media."
He added: "Mobile and mobile TV is an extremely potent channel one which will no doubt grow in importance for Canon and other advertisers as consumers increasingly engage with the fantastic array of mobile multimedia services that are on offer."

Newcomers join Caudwell Dunstone on new rich list

The list published by Real Business magazine is the only ranking of business people who have made their millions from new economy interests including mobile phones the Internet software and computer games.
At number 13 on the list is Mo Ibrahim whose Celtel network has provided mobile coverage for Africans since 1998 and today covers 14 of the poorest countries in the continent including Sudan.
He sold Celtel for £1.7 billion last year but continues to run the firm. He has a personal wealth of £343 million putting him above Carphone Warehouse founder Charles Dunstone who is estimated to be worth £200 million.
Another successful entrepreneur is mobile phone designer Jim Morrison who moved Carrier Devices to Dubai´s Internet city from Glasgow in 1993. In Australia his i-mate handsets rival Treo and BlackBerry. Morrison is valued at £300 million.

Voda T-Mobile fall in behind 3.5G

It also puts a spin on the current rush by rivals to transform themselves into multi-service conglomerates.
Two weeks ago Vodafone and T-Mobile announced that their services would start on June 22 and August 1 respectively.
Vodafone is rolling its service out to Glasgow Sheffield Greater Manchester and Tyneside together with the environs of London inside the M25. Full roll-out is expected to be completed by 2007.
Both T-Mobile and Vodafone are restricting their service to datacards but Vodafone is also offering in-built mobile broadband cards within Dell Acer and Lenovo laptops.
The Vodafone service will give download speeds of up to 1.4 Mbps with uploads at 384 Kbps three times the capacity of 3G it claims.
Vodafone enterprise business unit sales director Mark Bond claimed that the service which the network has dubbed 3G Broadband is the first of its kind in the UK. He said it was the perfect fit for business people on the move.
"It´s designed to meet the needs of today´s work anywhere´ business culture as more people access their e-mail or office network on the move or away from the office" he said.
For the moment T-Mobile is restricting its HSDPA service called Mobile Broadband to its Web´n´Walk Professional service which also provides extras such as free WiFi access for 12 months.
The service is delivered through a datacard only with no plans to embed cards in laptops or run it out to handsets.
While Vodafone´s premium Unlimited Data offer is expensive at £45 a month T-Mobile is going for a cheaper £17 monthly fee but with a data limit of around 2GB.
Suggested speeds are up to 1.8Mbps but T-Mobile data marketing manager Rob Langton admits that the average speed will around 1Mbps comparable with most entry-level fixed-line broadband services. Upload speeds are similar to Vodafone´s offer.
T-Mobile´s coverage will be national from launch. "Where there is 3G there will be HSDPA access" said Langton. Consumer devices will be on offer by the end of the year he promised.
The UK is the fifth country to get the T-Mobile service. The others are Germany Austria the Netherlands and Hungary. Research from those markets revealed that 80 per cent of HSPDA traffic is e-mail.
Interestingly this service could be T-Mobile´s answer to rival networks allying themselves with other media to offer three or four-play services.
We won´t go down the route of fixed-line DSL" said Langton. "we are focused on mobile and believe the future is mobile Internet."
Conversely two of the three other infrastructure-owning networks Orange and O2 appear to be focusing on alliances with other media and don´t plan to offer mobile broadband until the end of the year.
The most recent of these is O2´s acquisition of minor broadband player Be for £50 million. Be is only present in 150 exchanges but it is the first Internet provider to use Broadband technology that allows speeds of up to 24Mbps.
3 has also been conducting mobile broadband trials and it is understood to be planning a launch also for the end of this year.
Orange appears to be pitching its own version to consumers running it on a range of handsets. O2 has indicated in the past it will start its Super 3G service in the business space with datacards. 3 is understood to be offering the service with datacards but because of its strength in the consumer market it is likely to pitch it to that sector.

New Link in O2´s chain

For some time now The Link has been tipped as the likeliest of the big three multiple retailers to be squeezed from the high street by tighter margins. Last week that forecast was made reality.
DSG International formerly Dixons Group confirmed it would sell its 60 per cent stake in The Link to O2 which already owns the remaining 40 per cent for £30 million. The purchase will enable O2 to add up to 300 stores to its existing chain of 300.
"The competitive landscape for mobile phones initially a retail market has changed significantly" says DSG chief executive John Clare. "It has become a market in which the profit opportunities can best be leveraged by the networks and telecom services providers."
Struggle to compete
The Link has struggled to compete with the likes of The Carphone Warehouse and the encroachment of the network operators´ own stores. In the year to April 29 its like-for-like sales slumped 25 per cent and it contributed just £600000 to DSG´s bottom line compared with more than £38 million last year and close to £45 million the year before.
O2 will assume 100 per cent control of The Link´s retail estate and assets. Commercial terms have been agreed in principal for a cash sum of £30 million but legal documentation must be completed before any of the parties involved will talk freely about the implications.
"The proposed deal will accelerate our retail strategy and boost our brand presence on the high street" says an O2 spokesman. "A number of the outlets would complement our existing store portfolio."
O2 will remove The Link signage from above the doors of sites that do not impinge on O2´s existing footprint. O2 claims that where there is duplication it will retain The Link brand apart from a few exceptions that it will sell off. But there is a sense that The Link brand won´t be around for much longer.
Inevitably The Link´s demise raises a lot of questions. How many Link stores will O2 sell on? Who will buy the cast-offs? T-Mobile 3 Virgin Mobile and The Carphone Warehouse were all said to be hovering last week though unsurprisingly none of them was willing to comment.
One obvious question was why The Link´s fortunes had nosedived to the extent that its majority shareholder was willing to offload its share for just £30 million. It is a difficult time in retail but even so O2 looks to have bagged a bargain.
Evolution Securities analyst Nick Bubb says: "DSG has been trying to thrash out a solution to the ownership issue for some time. It was making a lot of money not that long ago and at one point was trying to buy out O2. To end up selling for £30 million is hardly a favourable result."
He adds: "There is no doubt that The Link caused a huge dent in DSG´s profits last year and everyone will be glad to see the back of it."
Part of the problem is that the market is saturated and the networks are not now prepared to pay money to acquire customers who are likely to simply churn.
"The whole of mobile phone retail has changed" argues Investec retail analyst Mark Charnok. "At one point the networks were throwing money at getting connections via retail. Now they are more circumspect. The days of making hay are behind them."
The effect of churn can be seen throughout the sector. The Carphone Warehouse for example has defined itself as a services-led proposition and has rolled out an MVNO offering a landline and a broadband service.
"The Carphone Warehouse has invested in all levels of communication services and has been able to leverage that as revenues from the networks have declined" says Charnok.
"The Link chose not to do that because it would not have sat well with the way that O2 wants to run the business. It doesn´t want The Link billing services to its customers. It doesn´t want The Link setting up as an MVNO. O2´s stake in The Link probably helped it in the early days but not as the market has changed."
The Link has also struggled to define itself in the mind of consumers. Like Phones 4U it pitched itself as a hard-seller governed by targets. But where The Link has fallen down Phones 4U has turned itself around.
"It is strange that Phones 4U wasn´t making any money two years ago and it is unclear how it has turned things around when The Link has suffered" says Bubb.
Charnok puts it down to the fact that Phones 4U like Carphone Warehouse is simply better defined as a retailer. "Phones 4U and Carphone Warehouse are clearly mobile phone stores and The Link has never positioned itself quite right" he says. "It has always stocked a reasonable slug of fixed-line phones and faxes both of which are declining technologies."
On the face of it O2 looks to have snapped up a good deal that will enable it to fast-track its retail expansion to match rival networks.
"O2 wants to roll out new value propositions in the same way that The Carphone Warehouse and Orange have been doing" says Canalys research analyst Nick Spencer. "In terms of straight phone upgrades high street retail doesn´t cut it any more because people can upgrade over the Internet and the phone. But for the new services that all the operators want to harness there needs to be a high street presence and a point of contact for the consumer."