INTERNET company Onyx Group is launching an email service to open up mobile data communications to small businesses.

The service, which has been launched in the region by the Newcastle company, is targeting businesses which have been prevented from benefiting from technological advances due to costs involved.

Onyx will host dedicated email accounts at Databanx, its £5m data storage centre in Newcastle, and emails will then be transmitted over the mobile network infrastructure to handsets.

Fone Logistics, of Cramlington, Northumberland, will provide the equipment to develop the services.

Existing and potential customers of both Onyx and Fone Logistics will be offered the opportunity to take up mobile data communications packages, initially from the O2 network.

Neil Stephenson, Onyx's sales and marketing director, said: "Until now, mobility in business communications in particular has been prohibitive in cost terms for many small businesses.

"Mobile communications are definitely the future, with more handsets coming out in the next few months and more and more people needing to be connected to their critical office functions wherever they are in the world.

"Our existing customers have been interested in this level of connectivity for a while now, so we are pleased to be able to expand our services yet further to give our customers what they need to grow their businesses."