03 April 2002

Time for change as Vodafone hits 100m subscribers Voda's future growth engine is improve ARPU (average revenue per user) rather than finding new subscribers because many of its markets are now saturated. Therefore it's betting on data services. So... Vizzavi (its joint venture with mediaco Vivendi), is being restructured towards premium services for sms, wap etc (but why no news since June 2001 on Vizzavi's voice platform??), and in the States its wireless unit Verizon (jv with Verizon) is following other mobile operators with SMS interoperability, but will there be enough money in sms?. Voda also needs to address branding, and possibly regulatory, challenges ahead... but it's the Microsoft/AOL of mobile, so don't bet on it disappearing. 2:14:03 PM     comments