A WORCESTER company is marketing a revolutionary new mobile phone that can locate its user to within 10 metres, anywhere in the world, in an emergency.

The Solo mobile phone works through a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) tracking system, with a central call centre able to locate its position, to within 10 metres, within 10 seconds of the user pressing the red panic button on the phone.

The call centre then phones the emergency services, maintaining contact with the user the whole time, and also any contacts, such as family members, pre-registered by the user.

Now, The Word, in Mealcheapen Street, has become one of only 10 companies in Britain to hold a licence to sell the Finnish-made phone, which was first conceived as an aid for mountain rescuers.

Lynn Morgan - who has been selling mobile phones in Worcester since 1986, when they were first introduced - said the Solo phone had many marketing applications.

"We are launching the Solo mobile phone within the trade sector, predominantly aimed at the lone worker, but it has endless possibilities," he said.

"Some of the areas we are looking into are, for example, organisations such as the alcohol advisory service, housing associations, councils, and the YMCA.

"But of course a major use will be the lone worker - sales representatives, care workers, trades people and drivers.

"As well as being a security aid, the system allows companies to track their field-based employees, helping them to plan visits and call-outs."

Mr Morgan moved to Worcester with his second wife from Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, specifically to open a mobile phone shop, and now lives in Warndon Villages.

In those days mobile phones "needed a duffel bag to carry them" according to the former policeman, who remembers selling his first mobile to a young haulage contractor, for £3,200.

"All he was interested in was whether it would work in Tramps Night Club!"

The ex-rugby player also remembers applying to the Nat West bank, in The Cross, for a loan, and the manager telling him mobile phones "would never catch on".

So he borrowed some money from his father-in-law and the company has grown year-on-year ever since, with the business set to turn over £1m in 2004.

The seven-employee business - which started life in "a couple of shacks", in the Newtown Road office complex - has been located in St Martin's Gate, Reindeer Court and The Shambles, before moving to its current office last year.