Vodafone to attack mobile consultancy

IN A desperate attempt to build its non-core revenues, Britain's premier mobile company, Vodafone, has decided to plunge into the IT services market.

So it'll be competing against the likes of Capgemini and IBM with its Enterprise Mobility Solutions.

Vodafone's proposition is built around the fact that it can now offer customers all sensible routes to connectivity. That includes deals with BT so it can supply Wifi and DSL (broadband).

The company says it is responding to customer demand and building on existing experience gained from installing BES servers for Blackberry customers.

Vodafone has also bought a CRM expert, Aspective, and is looking at ways to integrate that offering with mobile.

Although Vodafone's David Hughes claimed it "couldn't pull the wool over customers' eyes", it's hard to believe that Vodafone's new consultancy arm will provide corporate customers with massive savings on their mobile communications costs.

Take, for example, the fact that circa 60 per cent of mobile phone calls are made within a company's own environs. Will Vodafone's fledgling consultancy arm really point out to customers that VoIP over Wifi or even VoIP over cellular is the cheapest solution for voice calls?

Yet Vodafone categorically refused to give out any pricing for its new enterprise connectivity offering. So it's impossible to judge how competitively it will be priced.

If you ask for the price of a monthly tariff for 3G data, Wifi, dial-up and broadband all amalgamated into one, it will depend on the size of your organisation, Vodafone says.

So you if you need to ask the price, then obviously you can't afford it.

Worse still ,Vodafone appears to want to outshine mobile access company, Ipass, in the network Nasty stakes. Vodafone has just launched a new offering called Secure Remote Access.

The idea with this new product is to stop users leaking vital corporate data via their notebooks. What it does, in effect, is turn off any chance of communicating other than via approved channels such as a VPN.

Not only will Wifi become inaccessible unless positively approved for such users, but Vodafone's software will also prevent the use of memory sticks to transfer data.

Expect massive protests from end users. µ