LETTER:True cost of mobile phones

From Mr George J. Levy

Sir: With all the palaver about what we should and shouldn't pay for mobile phones that "face inquiry on costs as price war looms" (report, 20 March), isn't it about time someone first sorted out the increasing menace of car phone numbers being stolen, by scientific means (called cloning) - particularly from cars parked at Heathrow Airport.

The cost to phone companies must amount to thousands of pounds a day, but doubtless they are insured, and the premiums they pay are passed on to their customers with the price of each call they make.

May I suggest, therefore, that advertisements by these "service providers" should in future carry a "government theft warning" against using the accident-prone analogue system, and strongly recommend the new digital system, which has so far prove impenetrable.

Yours faithfully,

GEORGE J. LEVY

London, W1

21 March