E-Commerce and Small Business Minister, Patricia Hewitt has announced a £4 million research programme into the future development of mobile phone technology.

The programme will be carried out by the Mobile Virtual Centre of Excellence in Mobile and Personal Communications (Mobile VCE), set up in 1996 as a non-profit making organisation. The Government is contributing £1.5m. Mobile VCE’s industrial members, comprising BT Cellnet, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, One2One, Orange and Vodafone, among others will be supplying the rest.

Ms Hewitt said: "Future generations of mobile technology will change the way we live and work. The UK is already a world leader in telecommunications. We will continue to drive this exciting new technology forward and exploit it to the full."

Dr Walter Tuttlebee, Executive Director of Mobile VCE said: "It is difficult to predict the evolution of mobile phones over the next 10 years. To help in this we are establishing a Vision group, involving key industry players whose role will be to create, explore and validate specific potential future scenarios."

The overall programme will encompass over 100 man-years of research effort and will be undertaken by pan-university teams drawn from Mobile VCE's academic members.

Anna Lagerkvist