The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has refused to grant a Bexley mobile phone company a credit licence as two of its directors have convictions for falsifying documents and theft.

It may appear surprising that Fone 4 All Limited of Welling, Bexley, decided to make an application at all in light of the criminal history of their directors. However, the company decided to lie about their convictions to the OFT but were caught out. The directors may yet face criminal charges for making a false application.

Call centres who plague customers with automated silent calls will face stiff new fines of up to £50,000 following an announcement by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

Silent calls occur when automated calling systems used by call centres generate more calls than the available centre staff can deal with. This results in silence on the line when the call is answered and these abandoned calls can cause significant anxiety and annoyance to consumers. BT currently handles about 80,000 complaints a month about nuisance calls.

Orange customers who use their mobile phones to access the internet whilst travelling abroad will now have easy access to call charges courtesy of the Orange Roamer's Guide.

The guide to using your phone abroad will automatically be available on Orange phones when they connect to the internet whilst outside the UK. The guide will also provide a list of mobile internet pages that require minimal data access charges.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint against T-Mobile ruling that an advertisement for its "web'n'walk" service that claimed "The internet wherever you are" was misleading.

The complaint was brought by the mobile phone company Orange, who argued that the coverage of T-Mobile's network is only 86% which does not equate to "wherever you are", a phrase which may give the impression that the service is available everywhere in the UK.

The ad appeared in the national press.

Kids are able to get hold of access codes to pornographic websites by sending a £1.50 text from their mobile phone.

Some websites holding adult content offer access to people who send a text to a premium rate number, costing upwards of £1.50. The website operator then replies to the mobile phone with the access code which is usually valid for a few hours.

The consumer watchdog Which? discovered that a phone registered to a 15 year old girl was able to get codes to eight websites offering pornographic content.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld complaints against mobile phone operator T-Mobile over advertisements that show a woman driving with various mobile devices in her car.

The advertisement appeared in the Guardian, Times and Evening Standard and promotes wireless availability with the text:

"Work where you work best. Business data solutions from T-Mobile puts your business wherever you are. BlackBerry®, Mobile broadband access and HotSpots mean the internet and email are always with you".

The complaints claimed that the ad condoned dangerous driving, as it suggested that the products could be used at the wheel.

Once again, the Advertising Standards Authority has had to remind telecoms companies to stop using the term "free" in their advertising when they are in fact describing "inclusive" elements of a package.

The problem is a simple one. If something is "free" then you shouldn't have to pay a penny to get it. In the case of Telecom Plus a membership free was required to their Utility Club, and the Authority felt that OneTel also used the term when describing some of its bundled packages.

Items which are bundled or dependent upon membership should be referred to as "inclusive".