I caught this ad in the national press today:

3UK has been doing great business with it’s 10 pounds/month USB modem offer ever since it came out late last year — previously, Vodafone’s offering was a minimum of 30 pounds/month.

To qualify for the 15/month offer, you need a new 18-month contract and the deal includes a reasonable 3GB of data/month.

Now Vodafone has dropped prices to the level of other operators, I think it’s safe to declare mobile broadband as a service for the masses.

From June 2008, Vodafone’s top whack mobile roaming bundle will go from €75 to €60. And they’ll increase the international roaming allowance from 100mb/month to 150mb/month. Which, if you do a little bit of spin, gets you a 45% reduction in the price per megabyte.

Sounds good. It is good. All moving in the right direction. That European Commissioner is really sorting things out isn’t she?

Here, for the Big Red fans amongst us, is the full release:

Vodafone today announces a price reduction of up to 45% to its monthly data roaming tariff for European business travellers. This price cut strengthens Vodafone’s leading position in the industry following its introduction last summer of a daily pricing plan, costing €12.

From June 2008, the maximum charge for Vodafone’s monthly data roaming bundle will be lowered to €60 per month – a €15 price cut – in a move designed to make it even more affordable for customers to use their laptop computers wirelessly when abroad. At the same time, the company will increase the amount of data a customer can use to at least 150MB in most European markets from 100MB, meaning that the price per megabyte will reduce by around 45%.

Arun Sarin, Chief Executive,, commented: “Vodafone led the market with the launch in 2005 of its innovative Passport voice roaming tariff, which is now used by more than 16 million customers, and we were also the first mobile operator to introduce a monthly data roaming tariff in Europe.

“Today’s announcement builds on those two initiatives by giving corporate customers real choice between straightforward daily or monthly low-cost, data pricing plans to fit their travelling habits. Our focus now is to offer consumers, who are increasingly using their mobile phones to access the Internet whilst in their hotel room, in a café or on the beach, with predictable data roaming tariffs.”

In addition to reducing the cost of its monthly tariff, Vodafone is introducing a variant of its European flat-rate daily tariff to key non-EU destinations. For a flat-rate fee of €30 per 24-hour session for 50 megabyte (MB) of data use, customers can pay per day for using their laptops in key business centres such as the USA, Asia Pacific region and in South Africa.

These changes will be implemented by Vodafone’s operating companies from the end June, this year, and will be tailored to meet the individual needs of customers in specific markets.

Customers will also benefit from Vodafone’s extensive international mobile broadband network, which covers more countries than any other operator. Using the latest 3G broadband (HSDPA) network technology, customers with a Vodafone Mobile Connect USB modem or a Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G broadband data card on either a per day or per month tariff will be able to connect just as they do in their home country and get download speeds of up to 3.6Mbps in selected areas.

It’s a little bit naughty to say ‘consumers, who are increasingly using their mobile phones to access the Internet whilst in their hotel room’ when this tariff is, to my understanding, ONLY available for broadband data cards/modems and NOT handsets.

BuzzMyGoat.com is a cool new service brought to you by Outcast TV and allows users to pull from a large library of professional video clips to create quality custom videos to share with friends and family. The service sends the recipient an SMS containing the weblink to view their message.

BuzzMyGoat lets you send your first video for free, and the rest cost anywhere from free to 2GBP, depending on the content and level of personalization. ‘Buzzes’ can be video or audio content and are produced by a team of former BBC filmmakers.

This is a killer idea and a great way to make use of the hours of random footage that’s sure to exist from comedy shows.

Vodafone Spain has claimed the title of the first European operator to offer Spinvox’s speech-to-text services. Dubbed DictaSMS Automatic and DictaSMS 115, the services allow Vodafone users to easily receive their voicemail as convenient text messages.

With DictaSMS Automatic, when a Vodafone user attempts to call another Vodafone user who either does not have voicemail or is out of coverage, the message will automatically be converted to text and delivered as an SMS.

With DictaSMS 115, users can prefix their outgoing call with 115 to be asked if they want to record a message, which will be delivered via SMS. This service works for calls to any network.

The coolest part is that the service is free, billed only for the minutes used to record the message.

Vodafone has taken a knife to its 3G pricing, cutting the cost of a monthly data subscription by half, to £15, for a distinctly reasonable allowance of 3GB, in a move that looks like it’s designed to open up 3G data cards from businessmen on the go to the average Joe.

Of course, you’ll need to sign up for an 18 or 24 month contract but Voda will sweeten the deal by throwing in a USB modem for gratis. For commitment phobes, there’s a 30-day package for £20 with no contract to sign and for roamers, there’s a £9.99 option for 24 hours’ access if you’re on one of Vodafone’s networks outside the UK.

While Vodafone UK has been a little slow to introduce this sort of much-needed commodity pricing - its Aussie arm unveiled a 5GB for $39 (about £18) in December - halving prices will hopefully see the number of data users shoot up. Obviously cheaper 3G is good news for consumers but it could well be a smart move for Vodafone too, with the operator revealing data revenue is up by 50 percent while data card users up by 100 percent. The only downside on the deal? No word on whether existing users will get to take up the new tariff or if it’s only for newbies.

Vodafone’s Aussie arm is setting about convincing consumers there is such a thing as a free lunch - with the launch of its advertiser-sponsored channel free4me. Presumably that’s a free lunch with a serving of adverts on the side?

Among the big names signed up to the channel, which will house mobile TV shows, competitions and car, entertainment and club guides, are Pepsi, Coke, and 20th Century Fox.

And it’s not just some TV that Voda is promising we’ll be getting free: the operator reckons that in three to five years’ time, “mobile content and possibly even mobile calls will be heavily subsidised by advertisers”. Interestingly, it doesn’t say where Vodafone stands on the whole gratis calling issue - it’s all done in the third person, so to speak.

While the likes of Blyk are proving there’s life in the ad-sponsored model, there’s still a bit of pushing and shoving to be done before operators work out just how much advertising consumers are willing to swallow.

Got this from the Netimperative newsletter. There’s a little ad on the right hand of the newsletter containing this text:

At Vodafone we’re about to launch a brand new Online Business Unit that will turn this area of our business into a market-leading star. The plans and backing are all in place.

Now, we’re on the search for a team of experts to propel the project forwards.

But don’t take our word for it – hear more from the internet itself at www.vodafone.co.uk/webspeak

Could be good, especially if you’re on the hunt for a new project yourself.

Here’s what they’re looking for:

Strategy Development and Finance Governance
Here, you’ll use your financial expertise to support the management team in monitoring our performance and making sure the whole team meet and beat financial targets. You’ll work with plans and budgets and influence business cases.

Commercial Development
Giving deal support to OBU, you’ll forge commercial relationships and open up new revenue streams. You’ll also oversee our existing third-party partnerships and future deals to ensure we keep to the letter of the law and further our business vision.

Portal
Driving the strategic direction of co.uk to ensure Vodafone delivers a continuous, industry leading Portal experience to customers. You’ll be as switched on as I am - providing customers with choice and a really fantastic journey so that all their needs are met speedily and efficiently.

Pricing Analysis and Propositions
You’ll be our champion of pricing best practice and support the OBU research team models by designing new pricing plans for initiatives including tariffs, new product pricing and online services.

Online Marketing
Taking ownership, you’ll manage the delivery of KPIs that ensure our commercial and strategic objectives are achieved.

Online Marketing (Planning)
Setting and tracking marketing targets, you’ll make sure OBU delivers value across the company. That will involve designing the best possible marketing strategy and ensuring delivery against the plan.

Product Management
It will be up to you to make sure we don’t just meet customer needs; we surprise them with products and services that nobody else in the market place can offer. You’ll make sure that together, we implement Vodafone’s plans smoothly and build a stable platform for future developments.

Very exciting.

Check out this page here for the introduction and more details. You’ll also notice an EXCEEDINGLY lame piece of introduction text — “Hello, it’s me, the internet”

It’s written as though it’s the internet talking to you. For a moment I was elated — I thought perhaps the Managing Director of the Online Business Unit might have stuck his/her head above the parapet and posted the introduction. A demonstration of independent thought, perhaps.

But no.

Some marketing chappy has knocked it up as though the ‘internet’ is writing to you.

They say my head’s in the clouds. That I’m a dreamer. That the things I talk about just can’t be done. Well, what do they know? Pleased to meet you, I’m the internet, and I know that with unbridled enthusiasm we can achieve anything we set our minds to.

Well that’s a load of shit, isn’t it.

After all, I’m working with the world’s leading telecommunications company. Vodafone does the extraordinary every day. And now it’s my time to shine.

Do they write this stuff just to WIND ME UP?

The internet IS NOT WORKING with the world’s leading telecoms company.

The world’s leading telecoms company is steadfastly avoiding the internet — that is — DATA. Vodafone’s fine if you want to visit eBay Mobile. Or check the news on BBC News mobile.

But piss off. Piss RIGHT off if you’d like to upload a photo via ShoZu. That’ll be four pounds per 1mb photo, please. Yes, you thought you’d bought the 120mb data pack. No. That’s the 120mb ‘web’ pack. There’s a difference. Stay in the Vodafone zoo and you can use up your 120mb normally. Head out to the internet and it’s an entirely different and hugely expensive cost. Hardly right, then, to have the internet writing to you, is it?

Total rubbish. Next, have a read of this delightful prose:

I’ve always worked hard. I’ve always felt valued. But now that people are spending more and more time online, it’s crucial to our commercial vision that I step up and become the site of choice in mobile telecommunications.

Oh please.

PLEASE stop.

“Become the site of choice in mobile communications?”

Tell me now that Vodafone isn’t trying to create yet another on-deck-but-online homepage? I hope not…………..

So I’m looking for experts in Strategy and Business Planning, Marketing, Portal and Product Management to take the lead in a totally new Online Business Unit in Newbury. A broader team who can give me more than a facelift. Who will create a hub where people try and buy the latest products and services, pay bills, network and, well, do anything we put our minds to.

Give me “more than a facelift?”

Geez, yes. It’s a hub. Oh dear.

You never know, perhaps it will all change. Maybe they’ll extend unlimited web to mean unlimited data too.

We want you to think big. We want you to think bravely. And create your own piece of history by leaving your mark on me and making sure I become the market leader.

I’m

ok

Speechless.

Here’s hoping this Online Business Unit is actually going to do some interesting and exciting things. Stay positive, MacLeod!

Link: http://olive.dominionpost.com/

Joseph, 13, received about 100 text messages from Vodafone over the course of two days, prompting him to turn off his mobile phone.

When he turned his phone on again, the texts — promoting a Vodafone mobile game called The Golden Compass — were still coming through.

After a phone call to Vodafone, he received a text message informing him $5 would be credited to his phone.

Luckily for him, the credit kept on coming.

What a nice bug to experience, eh?

Link: Brown calls on Google to help world’s poor | Society | The Guardian

Gordon Brown plans to harness at least 20 of the world’s biggest multinational companies, including Google and Vodafone, to tackle a “development emergency” in the world’s poorest countries and put the international community back on course to achieve seven UN development goals by 2015.

But will Big Red heed the call?

Terence, SMS Text News reader and Vodafone tech geek has posted an overview of MusicStation including screenshots on his blog here. Definitely worth a read and great to see the cool screenshots.

[ A wardrobe malfunction, that is, I was on a plane for hours on end, prevented me from publishing this at the appointed hour - Ewan. Now, over to Whatley...]

I woke up on Monday morning with the intention of writing this week’s ‘Whatley on Wednesday’ piece about firmware and firmware upgrades.
Recently a fellow Mobile Geek of London was exclaiming to me that “Nokia Rule for doing this [latest release of their firmware – V20]!”

I disagreed. The idea is great, but the application and execution leaves a lot to be desired.

We argued… and then decided it didn’t matter and discussed something else, (like whose round it was next). I left the pub with every intention to write this argument up (or at least my side of it) and post it right here for your reading (dis)pleasure. Delete where applicable.

That was until, just as I was leaving the house, I heard the latest single from UK indie group Scouting for Girls, ‘Elvis ain’t dead’. And, as with every song that you hear just before you leave the house in the morning, it became stuck in my head.

By the time I made it to the train station I had hummed the bloody thing to death and had decided that I needed this track NOW.

So I thought I’d make the most of NOW and jump onto Vodafone’s new Music Station service.

Awesome, not only will I get the track I want but I’ll also make notes throughout and then I can write it up as a review the service for SMS Text News. Score!

This – rather oddly – all happened before Monday’s Unlimited Drinks and also before yesterdays Omnifone stories that Ewan ran… Hmm… Telepathy’s working then.
But alas, Vodafone were not going to make it easy for me.

I arrived at the Vodafone Live! music page and I’m asked to download and install the Music Station Application (I had no idea it was an app?!).

Not a problem, I thought, I’ve done this before. I wonder how good their user education/hand holding is. To their merit, it’s not too bad at all. I think any average normob could find their way through this process. Well. Right up until they hit this point:

Rubbish. I tried again: Same problem.

This is becoming annoying. I turn the phone off, turn it back on again, try again and…. STILL the same problem!

I hit 191 on my phone and call customer service. After a little explaining I eventually get passed through to the technical dept…

“Hello Mr Whatley, what error do you have?”

“It says here: ‘Certificate error, contact the application vendor’.”

“Is there an error code?”

“No, it’s a certificate error… No number. I have a screenshot that I can email over if that helps?”

“Er…(small amount of confusion at this point on my keenness to help maybe?) No sorry. We’re not actually allowed to give out our email addresses.”

“Okaaaaaaaay…”

“Can I call you back on a different line?”

So I say yes, and they do. And lo and behold I’m requested to repeat the process (obviously my word isn’t good enough) and guess what? Same error.

THEN I was asked to do something, and I must state that VF UK have NEVER EVER asked me to check this in the history of being a VF customer, they asked me to check my firmware!

To the layman – this is the software version that your phone is running. Same thing on every Nokia, got an N95? Try it now. *#0000# - anything below V20 means you really should think about upgrading.
(Benefits here.)

Anyway – ‘Sam’ (I think that was her name) informs me that my current firmware, (V20, obviously) is the problem as “the Music Station is only compatible with Vodafone branded firmware versions 10b and 10c”.

Let’s just pause and take that it in for a moment.

That’s right. Vodafone’s flagship ‘Hero’ service, The MUSIC STATION, the big one they’re pushing this Christmas does not work with the latest Nokia N95 firmware.

“Sorry Mr Whatley, you’re going to have to go back to version 10.”

“That is not going to happen.”

Thinking on this now, a few hours after the event, when I originally got the handset from Vodafone it was running V11. I didn’t even know VF had V10. On top of that – I didn’t know you could go backwards with firmware either! That’s a new one on me.

VFUK suck for not making sure their leading application is compatible with the latest Nokia firmware.

So I’m sorry folks – no MusicStation review from me today. I do have a MusicStation handset but alas the generic Nokia firmware that I’m running is not compatible with the service.

Doh.

EDIT: I met Terence Eden of Vodafone at the Unlimited Drinks on Monday. He explained to me that the Vodafone MusicStation is only compatible with Vodafone’s own firmware. He also assured me that the MusicStation does work above V10 as he has seen it working on (Voda’s own variants of) V11 and V12.

Terence’s defence was that I should not have changed my firmware from VF’s to Nokia’s Generic.

Thinking on this now – that’s not a bad argument - anyone who knows me knows how much I like to hack… ahem… augment my phones so I can the optimum functionality out of them.
Well. It’s not a bad argument when you consider someone who might not buy their handset directly from Vodafone. Whose firmware is already generic upon purchase, what about them?

Next week: That rant on firmware and firmware upgrades, (the one I wanted to write this week).

Has anyone tried out Omnifone’s MusicStation, recently launched on Vodafone UK? I’ve been seeing the advertisements here in the UK for the service and I’ve been meaning to pluck up the courage to walk into a Vodafone store and open an account again, just to try out MusicStation.

I reckon Omnifone is the last bastion of hope for many of the mobile manufacturers who couldn’t get music to work on their mobile phones properly on pain of death.

With woefully few exceptions, the implementation of music on any handset that ISN’T an iPhone is woefully inadequate. In fact, there’s no need to mince words: It’s nothing short of pure shit, actually.

It’s both carriers and handset manufacturers that haven’t been getting it, at all, for the last five years.

Anyway, help appears to be at hand. MusicPhone looks pretty hot. It could solve a heck of a lot of problems for manufacturers and operators because it looks to be a strong rival to iTunes. Finally a point-click-and-download service that works on a standard mobile handset.

I’ve clicked around the Omnifone site and played with the demos. I’ve read the Vodafone publicity materials. I am, to an extent, pre-sold on the concept. I’m not entirely happy with the £2/week charges but that presumably covers data downloads so, well, a tenner a month is ok since there are no per-track costs. I’m locked into Vodafone, yes, but theoretically speaking, I’ll be able to transfer my Omnifone account to T-Mobile or Orange in the future.

Finally mobile music might work nicely on a Nokia. Or a Samsung. (That is, I don’t want to be faffing around with memory sticks and manually copying music.)

I’ll see if I can get one to test or maybe I’ll go and buy one from Vodafone. The Nokia N95 8GB is calling my name.

Have a look at the handset range Vodafone is promoting for MusicStation:

Sony’s W910i, the N95 8GB and the Samsung F700. Nice. All start at £45/month. You can even get the service on a Blackberry. Interesting news, no doubt, for the army of Vodafone Blackberry users out there.

Just in case you were hunting for some fast facts on Vodafone/MusicStation:

- “Girls Aloud” launch the revolutionary MusicStation service, making the first ever unlimited mobile music download in the UK

- The MusicStation service, available exclusively on Vodafone, goes live today, with handsets available in-store at Phones 4U’s 428 retail outlets and Vodafone’s 345 retail outlets nationwide

- UK consumers get the freedom to download, share and play unlimited amounts of music, wherever they are, direct to a very wide range of Vodafone handsets, for a fixed weekly fee of £1.99 per week

- Revolutionary Monthly Price Plans revealed which offer Vodafone consumers unlimited music downloads along with free text and talk deals*

- Access to over 1.2 million tracks from Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI Music, Warner Music Group and independent labels

- MusicStation immediately available on 13 Vodafone UK handsets with many more to follow, including BlackBerry® smartphones

- MusicStation Touch Screen Edition offers unlimited music downloads on touch-screen phones for the first time globally

- Vodafone consumers with wide range of compatible handsets can download MusicStation to their existing phones free of charge

- Vodafone UK consumers offered a completely free week’s trial on MusicStation

- Omnifone welcomes today’s historic OCC Plays Charts announcement

- Simultaneous announcement that Vodacom (23.6 million subscribers) will launch MusicStation in South Africa

Despite the Global CEO of Vodafone rubbishing the iPhone as a ‘pretty poor experience‘, Vodafone Germany reckons it’s good enough to warrant court action…

Link: undefined

Vodafone has obtained a court order requiring T-Mobile to sell Apple’s iPhone without a contract plan in Germany, according to Dow Jones. T-Mobile, which is Apple’s exclusive carrier for the iPhone in Germany, has two weeks to respond to the Hamburg court’s injunction, which can be overturned by an appeals process. Vodafone was one of the frontrunners to sell the iPhone in Europe, but lost out to O2, Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, France and Germany respectively. However the carrier says its move is not motivated out of spite or by a desire to stop iPhone sales.

On the same story I posted about recently…

Link: undefined

Vodafone chief Arun Sarin is dismissing the competitive threat of the iPhone, criticising it for supplying a “pretty poor experience” due to its use of second generation mobile networking technology

Woops wrong way. Wrong way to go when your customers are foaming at the mouth for that ‘pretty poor experience’.

Link:
Vodafone CEO sticks head in sand, goes ‘La la la’ | The Register

Arun Sarin has told the FT that he has nothing to fear from Apple’s iPhone/iTunes combination, or Google’s Android, or even Nokia’s Ovi, as no one can ever take their customers’ billing relationship away from them.

Network operators have long felt no one could compete in providing services to their customers - they have the billing relationship, so they control how much their customers are charged, and for what.

“We’ve got the billing relationship” is a perfectly acceptable viewpoint.

Until, that is, (for example) half a million of your UK customers swap to o2 in order to get an iPhone. .

I’m not saying that’s going to happen. Certainly not half a million, I’m sure. But if a sizable portion of users churn from Voda to o2, it’ll be interesting to see just how much that ‘billing relationship’ is worth when they’re paying o2 and NOT Vodafone.

If nobody churns, if we’re talking say, 10,000 net loss customers by say March 2008, so be it. Sit back and laud it, Arooon. But if it’s a large churn, it’s going to get interesting very fast.

Meanwhile, steady as she goes whilst the biggies, the Googles, the Apples and the Nokias are all establishing their own direct relationships with Vodafone’s customers…

A 9% increase for everybody’s favourite Big Red! In the last 6 months, Vodafone has made 17 billion pounds of revenue, or if you’d like to talk turkey, that’s 5.2 billion pounds of profit.

5.2 BILLLLLLLION?

Europe: 2.0% revenue growth. Messaging revenue up 8.6%, data revenue up FORTY PERCENT.

EMAPA: 39.9% revenue growth (reflecting acquisitions in India & Turkey)

Group data revenues up 48.8% to 1.0 billion pounds with organic growth of 45.1%.

6.42 pence per share (adjusted), by the way, if you’re a shareholder.

241 million customers at 30th of September.

Who’s the daddy?

Got this in from an SMS Text News reader. He’s an influential chap doing great things in the mobile industry and actually just swapped from T-Mobile to Vodafone recently.

Have a read of his experience this evening. I can feel a chat to Vodafone’s blog relations team coming on.

Oh. my. God.

I’m absolutely fuming! I just tried to make a call to South Africa using my new Vodafone CONTRACT account (£45 / month tariff with ‘unlimited’ data). It duly said that i couldn’t make the call and that I should call customer services… aarrghh - hadn’t realised these days that you still needed to call to turn on the ability to make international calls (I’d assumed that in this ‘global village’ it was normal to be able to call abroad).

Anyway, my call was picked up by a customer service guy called Leighton who works for Garlands the outsourced customer service centre. It took 3 rings before he picked up - not bad and i started to feel slightly cheerier about the experience. I mentioned I’d tried to call South Africa and had been asked to call customer services…

‘ah, yes, you’ve been with us for less than 3 months so you can’t call internationally’ said Leighton

‘er, what’ (hands beginning to shake a little)

‘it’s for your own protection and so we can see money having gone out of your account to establish a credit rating’ Leighton could tell this wasn’t going to be his night.

‘you. are. joking.’ I said, ‘I’ve worked for Vodafone in the past, I know that at 45 + 7.50 for unlimited data i fall into your high value customer bracket, you carried a credit check out on me when i joined up. Plus I’m on CONTRACT where you, can, bill me for it, not PAYT’.

‘there’s nothing i can do sir’ said Leighton

‘you’re blocking me from making calls, what kind of service is that? Ok, ok, let’s see, what about if i take out the Vodafone Passport, will that trigger international calling?’ I said

‘no sir, you’re barred from making international calls for 3 months and there’s nothing else i can do about it,’ forced out Leighton, trying to stay polite.

*Huge grinding of teeth, blood boiling, veins popping*

‘ok, well, I’ll be blogging this to let everyone else know about Vodafone barring calls and my freedom to call whom i choose, thank you for your service this evening…’ >click<

God I'm so angry, I hate it when bureaucracy and front line customer care students with no authority or power get in the way of my otherwise decision filled, proactive day.

You’d think that, perhaps, Vodafone would ask for a deposit — maybe even £500 or the like, up front, to reduce their risk? Flatly refusing revenues from this SMS Text News reader wasn’t a good business decision. It’s a fine policy, I think, if you’re on their system as a home maker with no declared income and absolutely ZERO need to EVER call abroad. Waiting a few months isn’t an issue. But when you join Vodafone and expect to be able to spend hundreds of pounds with them right away, I can see just how annoying that could be.

Perhaps the reader — who asked to be anonymous — should get a MaxRoam sim card? Or revert back to his T-Mobile account temporarily. Deary me!

I wonder what the policies are on other UK networks? Are they the same?

I had a note in from Vodafone UK today to tell me about their new partnership with Lebara Mobile.

Lebara is a mobile MVNO aimed at permanently based UK immigrants and migrant workers in the UK who want to use their mobile to (primarily) call overseas. Right now, if you grab a Vodafone pay as you go sim from the local store, you’ll be knocked for a ton of cash to call abroad — but not if you get yourself a Lebara sim.

Unlike other MVNO announcements recently (I’m looking at you, Extreme Mobile), I think Lebara’s concept is smart — there is, I reckon, substantial demand from certain segments of the population for this kind of service.

Here are the details of the announcement:

Vodafone UK today announces a new MVNO partnership with Lebara Mobile as part of its wholesale strategy. Lebara Mobile is an MVNO that will provide a competitive way for permanently based immigrants in the UK, and migrant visitors and workers to the UK, to use their mobiles to call overseas.

This SIM-only pre-pay offer will be provided to customers under the Lebara brand, available through a mixture of outlets central to the migrant community. Customers will be supported by own language customer service before and after the purchase.

Tim Stone, director of new business development and wholesale at Vodafone UK, said: “We are delighted that Lebara Mobile is launching today. In March we set out the Vodafone UK strategy to drive revenue growth and, as part of this, our ambitions to grow our wholesale market share. We are very pleased to be working with Lebara Mobile which has proven experience of delivering successful services to the migrant market – a very sizeable market in the UK worth in the region of £500million. We are pleased to be the partner of choice for Lebara Mobile and look forward to reaching this exciting new market in the UK.”

“We are delighted to be working with Vodafone as our key strategic partner for the UK launch of Lebara Mobile. The Vodafone network allows us to offer our customers over 99% call coverage in the UK and allows our customers to make high quality international and national mobile phones calls.” Robert Gaskin, Lebara Mobile UK country manager.

The announcement builds on the agreements made this summer with Asda to deliver a new MVNO ‘Asda mobile’, with TomTom to deliver real-time traffic information to drivers, and more recently with The Carphone Warehouse as MVNO partner for ‘TalkMobile’. All of these partnerships, reflect Vodafone UK’s position as the wholesale strategic partner of choice.

Link: BBC NEWS | Business | Carphone enters Vodafone tie-up

Just when you thought it was safe to venture out onto the High Street.. Carphone Warehouse (who neither sell carphones nor demand customers visit their warehouse) have just launched yet another MVNO.

According to the BBC, this one is going to be called Talkmobile, and will run alongside their existing Fresh and TalkTalk Mobile services. This time they’ve partnered with Vodafone - the previous two efforts have been with T-Mobile.

The service will apparently be a post-pay (contract) service, based around a nine month tie-in.

Details are sketchy at the moment, but Carphone have made it clear they’ll continue not to offer Vodafone deals in their stores.

It’s getting rather unnerving.

Vodafone are watching and listening.

Oh yes.

FINALLY. Gosh it’s almost exciting.

It appears that Vodafone’s blog relations programme (a term I’m using to describe reaching out to customers on blogs and forums) is in full swing.

Here’s another recent example featuring our very own Whatleydude posting an example of a ‘customer service issue’ he had with Vodafone. Only, it doesn’t fall on deaf ears… or blind eyes. It’s picked up right-away by a chap and sorted out immediately.

Fantastic.

I’m not aware of any other UK mobile operator (with the possible exception of 3UK) that’s pursuing such a comprehensive direct approach to responding to issues documented across the blogosphere.

Here’s another recent example of Amy Rose from the Vodafone blog relations team kicking the Vodafone brand up a few notches and helping some customers out…

Link: NDCS Discussion

I’ve read your comments about your recent experience when trying to sort out Wilfred’s phone account and I’m truly sorry to hear of the difficulties you encountered.

Got a press release in on Saturday morning from Vodafone announcing their acquisition of Tele2 Italy and Tele2 Spain, for cool 755 million EURO. Both Tele2s are specialist fixed-line telecommunications and broadband service providers and in total, Vodafone’s acquired about 3.1 million new customers (of that, about 640,000 are direct broadband customers).

This obviously puts Vodafone into a good position in rapidly growing markets. But more, for me, it brings back an echo of a Vodafone-gone-by: ‘The almighty red’. Whatever your views on paying 35p a minute to call another mobile network, you could, in days gone by, sit back and marvel at the growth of the company.

For some time now I’ve felt Vodafone’s been rather lacklustre. Just a feeling. I’m pleased to see a resurgence. 232 million customers at the end of June 2007 can’t be bad either.

Hot on the heels of their recent deal with Orange for the provision of it’s targeting and advertising solution to power the operator’s My Personal Offers System, Irish company Xiam Technologies have just announced a deal with Vodafone Ireland.

Vodafone Ireland is using MPOS technology to serve interactive third party advertisements on their newly revamped Mobile Internet portal. “We see mobile advertising as a significant opportunity to augment revenues whilst improving the portal offering” says Chris Handley, Head of Mobile Internet and Content at Vodafone Ireland. “Xiam’s proven commercial and technical know-how will bring the best to the channel for both
advertisers and subscribers.”

The two deals come as a ringing endorsement of Xiam’s leadership position in the market. As Colm Healy CEO at Xiam explains, “The mobile phone is a uniquely personal device and mobile marketing must be personalized. As a high reach, low noise channel the mobile experience must deliver individual relevance if it’s to succeed. Xiam’s solutions focus on treating each customer as an individual, dramatically improving both the users experience and the uptake of operator services”.

Link: SpinVox Inks Contract With Vodafone Network In Spain - Quick Facts

News just in.. Hot on the heels of their deal last week to bring voice-to-screen messaging to Canada, SpinVox has just announced it’s signed a deal with Vodafone Spain.

More details soon!

I’m now firm friends with Vodafone. I got a response from Victoria in their Media Team this afternoon.

If you recall, I emailed Vodafone to check to see if Amy Rose (whose posts I’ve been following - so has Ken) was actually a Vodafone staffer — I wanted to check that I wasn’t writing absolute nonsense.

Here’s my response!

Dear Ewan

I can confirm that Amy is a Vodafone employee, and she works for our
Customer Management Team. Her comments are made on behalf of Vodafone.

Please do contact us should you have any further queries.

With kind regards

Victoria

Nice one Victoria, thanks for taking the time.

Right then, I reckon Amy should be nominated for some SMS Text News flowers. All those in favour say ‘aye’.

It’s good to see that the almighty Vodafone has started to dip some toes into the blogosphere.