Vodafone Reaches 10 Million on 3G
It’s good to talk. Out of its 179 million customers Vodafone says it has reached the target it set of 10 million of its subscribers connected with 3G.
When Vodafone launched 3G services in November 2004, the Company announced that it expected over 10 million customers to be using Vodafone live! with 3G by 31 March 2006 which it says has been achieved.
In addition to these numbers, Vodafone had sold 560,000 3G data cards by the end of December 2005.
Chief Executive Arun Sarin said that “It is clear that our customers value the additional services and benefits of Vodafone live! with 3G”. This is rather more difficult to conclude from the figures. With all the talk and advertising focused around mobile content services and talk of operators reinventing themselves as media companies, one could forget that 3G services account for just 7% of Vodafone’s revenues.
Of course the real reason for rolling out 3G is not for mobile data services, though it helps, is better use of the bandwidth for voice calls. As the BT ads a few years ago used to say, ‘it’s good to talk’ but mobile operators seem to forget that primarily they are telephone companies.
Share This Post!
