No big surprises in Vodafone future outlines

MUCH AS expected, Vodafone announced that it will it create a new division - the New Businesses unit headed by Thomas Geitner. This will concentrate on the trendy new area of fixed/mobile convergence. And hopefully pull Vodafone out its current financial mire.

All off the three new areas identified by Vodafone's New Business will fall under the general heading of Mobile Plus. The first area is dead simple. In Germany, the company will start the ball rolling by offering customers xDSL services through Arcor.

So there's no sign of it buying up established ISPs, then.

As predicted, the company also intends to build on its Vodafone Zuhause (Germany) and Vodafone Casa(Italy) ‘home zone' offerings.

But it's hard to see what the company means by saying it will focus "on the integration of the mobile, PC and the Internet at the application level, offering seamless interoperability of services." That sounds as if it wants to become the next IBM.

The most curious comment is that it wants to introduce "advertising based services and business models that customers will view as the most appealing and acceptable." So that's free calls for business cheapskates prepared to tolerate adverts rather than for impoverished students as Virgin Mobile USA envisages.

As previously reported Vodafone's IT Application Development and Maintenance activities will be outsourced "with likely savings of approximately 25-30 per cent within 3 to 5 years against current annual costs of £560 million." It still hasn't said who it's outsourcing to.

It has also declared its intention to "deliver strong growth in emerging markets." The question is … how? µ

See Also
Vodafone to gamble on fixed/mobile convergence
Vodafone to outsource IT services to aliens
Vodafone makes largest loss in UK history