A ding-dong ’war of words’ between island phone companies ManxTelecom and Sure has taken a new turn.

In the past week or so the two firms have pointed to surveys that show their own network outperformed their rivals.

Now ManxTelecom has fired off a new salvo claiming it is the first Isle of Man operator to offer its business customers inclusive UK and EU mobile roaming and the first to include completely unlimited shared allowances of on-island network minutes, texts and data.

The company has launched what it describes as a new range of ’SmartCorp’ mobile tariffs for business, offering what it claims is ’outstanding value for making calls and using data, both on the island and whilst travelling abroad.’

Al Lugton, mobile product development Manager at Manx Telecom, says the company has listened to business customers and designed the SmartCorp tariffs to meet the needs of all Isle of Man businesses, from SMEs to major corporations.

He said: ’We`ve listened to all our valued customers large and small and the feedback we received was to provide more affordable, simpler and transparent roaming - so we did just that and created SmartCorp.

’Choosing SmartCorp gives our customers the confidence of knowing that they have their mobile needs covered both on and off-island whilst travelling in UK and EU destinations, and takes the worry out of roaming.

’SmartCorp builds on the success of our Smartroam consumer mobile tariffs launched last year with more than 9,000 customers now benefiting from a roaming inclusive tariff in just six months.

’Both Smartroam and SmartCorp are the result of an extensive project involving significant investment in IT systems, and negotiating even better international roaming agreements.

’We have been working hard behind the scenes for some time to renegotiate our costs with global network partners, and this has enabled us to pass on the cost savings directly to our customers.

’We now have 380 roaming agreements with all major networks, including those in the most popular destinations visited by Isle of Man business travellers.’

Sure got the winter war of words going first by saying a network quality assessment had been carried out by independent telecommunications networkexperts Systemics, which said its 4G mobile network was the fastest for data downloads, with speeds averaging nearly 50 per cent faster than Manx Telecom.

The next day Manx Telecom responded by saying its network had been declared the island’s best overall in an independent survey.

MT had commissioned Equiendo to conduct research which compared the prformance of Manx Telecom’s mobile network against Sure’s network. Equiendo concluded that MT’s mobile network ’performs best for both voiceand data performance and is the overall winner for network benchmarking.’