Vodafone, one of world’s largest mobile operators is slowly expanding its fixed line footprint, as the companies tries to bundle its wireless services with broadband. The motivation for the company to do is – fixed-mobile convergence, and of course juicing its average revenue per user. It can also help the company counter the bigger industry trend of people switching to cheaper VoIP-based mobile voice options, as Wi-Fi enabled phones become more common place.
Vodafone has already been offering such services in U.K., Germany and Portugal. Now it is turning its eyes to Italy where it might buy broadband assets of Tele 2, a Swedish operator, even though it offers services through another European carrier, Fastweb.
“The strategy is designed to boost the loyalty of Vodafone’s mobile customers,” writes The Financial Times. “People familiar with Vodafone said higher broadband pricing in continental Europe, compared with the UK, could justify purchases of fixed-line infrastructure.”
has already started a while ago offering services to Greece as well but not 3 play as they are heading -as per local rumors- to a quad play offering
Genius: Buy full-service comms companies, sell the fixed-line assets to pay down the debt, then buy new fxed line assets!
In the UK, Vodafone really is face to the fire, with competition from everyone, and everyone giving away everything from BT to the Former NTL to Sky.
France Telecom was always consistent in it’s vision of a unified world, rather than the previously arrogant/dogmatic attitude within Vodafone/some mobile-telecoms that once thought everything could be done exclusively via the mobile, as either or.
If Vodafone got their finger out, which I hope and they are starting to do, Vodafone with it’s international network and brand, could easily face down Voip, mobile TV, wi-fi, et al.
In Germany they’ve got some really integrated remote-computing developments going on in terms of freedom and innovation in contrast to the way most other mobiles try to hold back technology if it effects profits.
[ http://abigidea.blogspot.com/2006/06/vodafone-mypc-mein-pc.html ]
Kind regards,
Shakir Razak
Don’t forget Vodafone New Zealand, who purchased fixed line provider ihug last year, and is offering fixed line voice and broadband services to home and business uers.
I’ve currentlt got Vodaphone’s ‘triple play’ in the UK it’s almost right but it doesn’t quite work right…
The landline and broadband is supplied by Vodaphone, but we’ve got separately billed mobiles. What I’d like to see added is the ability to have two (or more) mobiles on the same account and share the included minutes.
Apart from that I’m pretty happy with them
In Europe at least services to the hand and home do not sit particularly well together for a whole host of reasons including different purchasers and dominance of prepay
Vodafone’s pursuit of fixed operators is poor strategy and will be regarded as so in a few years time when it amounts to very little. The right strategy would be to continue to differentiate as a pureplay mobile operator and nick Orange’s wirefree future tagline. This would enable them to differentiate from the other incumbent operators like FT, DT, Telefonica
In the UK, combinations of hand and home have performed poorly – Virgin Mobile is going backwards under Virgin Media’s ownership and France Telecom is making a complete mess of Orange’s converged broadband and mobile propostion in the UK even resorting to handing out subsidised laptops, free flights to US, etc. Orange UK is slowly decaying and it sad to see such a strong brand backed by previously robust customer care deteriorate