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Vodafone Maps Out Road To 3G
October 26, 2002 - source: BWCS
In a presentation to city analysts Vodafone yesterday mapped out
the next phase of its mobile services strategy. The mobile group’s
consumer services will centre on its Vodafone Live! multimedia content
platform. This is being simultaneously rolled out on its networks
in Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden
and the UK, with Australia, Greece and New Zealand to follow in
2003.
Drawing heavily on its experiences with J-Phone in Japan, Vodafone
highlighted the importance of the user-friendliness and standardisation
of the Vodafone Live! interface, which consists of a simple colour
screen menu. Pricing has also been simplified, with subscribers
paying no monthly subscription but a per-kilobyte charge for data
transferred and event-based charges for content downloaded.
Vodafone Live! will initially be available via three camera phones
supplied by Sharp, Panasonic and Nokia. Vodafone expects to have
more than a million handsets from these three vendors by March 2003.
The mobile operator has so far signed up 250 partners to supply
content for ten different service categories. Again drawing on the
Japanese model, Vodafone is placing a major emphasis on delivering
end-to-end content services, claiming that it is offering an ‘attractive’
revenue partnership for content providers.
While reiterating that 3G trials and launches were on schedule,
Vodafone played down 3G’s role in its data strategy, emphasising
that GPRS was core but UMTS would bring additional capacity and
lower long-term costs. Interestingly, the presentation also placed
increasing voice usage as its top priority in growing average customer
revenues in the short term. It will also focus on developing a quality
customer base of high usage subscribers and reducing subscriber
inactivity. This would indicate a further drive to migrate prepaid
customers to contracts.
In terms of the company structure, Vodafone indicated that it would
not be expanding its international coverage for the next three years,
but would instead seek to increase ownership of its existing overseas
ventures. In parallel with this, the operator will continue to develop
its standardisation of branding, services and best practice across
all of its networks.
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3G Motorola A920
