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…

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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.

Earlier, I posted a note pondering whether Vodafone UK have actually implemented a blog relations strategy because a good friend of mine, Dan Sumption, posted an open letter to Vodafone — only to receive a response directly on his blog within 24 hours, pupporting to be from a Vodafone staffer.

I thought I’d record Dan’s letter for posterity below…

Link: Open letter to Vodafone at Life Less Literary

Dan writes…

I am writing to you as somebody who was a Vodafone customer for 9 years, but who has recently switched to O2 to due increasing dissatisfaction with Vodafone. I hope that you will be able to learn from my unhappy experiences, and improve your service to remaining customers.

The final straw which led me to abandon Vodafone was being asked to pay for a new handset which Vodafone offers free to new subscribers, even though it was more than 2 years since my last phone upgrade and 9 months since my fixed monthly contract expired.

I might have been tempted to avoid the hassle of changing operators, had I not just endured the hell of Vodafone’s “customer service” line. I assume that you have never used this “service”, so allow me to talk you through it.

On calling the “customer service” number, the customer is asked to key in their mobile phone number. I can only assume that the person who implemented this procedure has never used a mobile telephone: a mobile telephone is generally a small self-contained unit, with a keypad that is somewhere between the mouthpiece and earpiece. It is usually used by holding the device to the ear. This tends to preclude use of the numeric keypad, except for those lucky few who have fingers growing out of their ears.

Having keyed in one’s telephone number and waited for an indeterminate length of time, one is then put through to an operator. Without fail, this person will then ask the caller to give their mobile telephone number (the same number as was just keyed in using one’s ear-fingers). It is almost inevitable that this person will not be able to assist directly, but will transfer the call to another person, who again requires the caller’s mobile telephone number. Sometimes, before being allowed to speak to this second person, an automated system demands that one first key in one’s mobile telephone number. Often the second person will not be able to deal with the query, and so (after keying in one’s mobile telephone number) the caller will have to tell a third operator what their mobile telephone number is and, hopefully, finally get an answer to their query.

If you ever visit Sheffield, I would like to introduce you to my local minicab office. They have some sort of space-age system in there, I believe it’s called Caller Line Identification or somesuch, which means that as soon as they answer the phone to me they can tell me my telephone number. Talk about rocket science!

Joking aside, a company which claims to be involved in telecoms really ought to have an understanding of CLI. A company that repeatedly asks its customers to first key in and then recite their telephone number is not a telecoms company, it is a fly-by-night cowboy outfit. I would not trust such a company to drive my minicabs, let alone rely on it for my telephony services.

The final reason why I left Vodafone is its clumsy and antidiluvian approach to the Internet. In the days of Vizzavi, Vodafone’s Internet service was a very poorly structured “walled garden”. I assumed that things would get better with Vizzavi’s demise, but they got worse and have continued to go downhill from there. I now find it impossible to use “Vodafone Live”, as it takes me an eternity to navigate past screens full of adverts for ringtones and downloadable pornography. The whole site screams out that this is a company who lost its shirt gambling on 3G licences, and is trying to recoup its investment by fleecing its customers in any way possible. Even the recent deregulation of Internet services on Vodafone was overshadowed by the ridiculously high data tariffs.

As you can gather, I am no longer a fan of Vodafone. I am sorry to leave a company that I have had a relationship with for 9 years, but I am no longer willing to stick around in the hope that things will one day improve. However, I hope that you will take seriously the comments made in this letter, and that perhaps they will help you to improve the lot of Vodafone’s remaining inmates.

Yours Sincerely,
Dan Sumption

- - - - - - -

So that’s Dan’s letter, right? Well, now the response. This was posted on to his blog within 24 hours of his post going live.

Good morning Dan

I’ve read through the letter that you’ve written and sent to the CEO of Vodafone and I’d like to respond to your comments.

Firstly, I’d like to begin by saying that it’s disappointing to hear that after all the years of being a Vodafone customer; you’ve decided to move to 02. It’s evident that you’ve been truly loyal, and as such, we really should learn from the feedback you’ve been good enough to give us.

With regards to the 1st issue raised about the cost of upgrading your phone, I understand your frustration from how you’ve described your experience.

Firstly, it’s worth pointing out that there are often more lucrative deals offered with new contracts, as this is an incentive to try & gain more customers to the network. As a business this is a reasonable rule to follow.

When an upgrade is worked out for an existing customer, it’s based on numerous things such as the cost of the phone, the length of the new agreement and the new tariff that you’d be going on to. With this in mind, it doesn’t always mean that it will be the same as an offer that could be given on a new connection.

It doesn’t however mean that we don’t value our existing customers and it’s a shame to learn that on this occasion we’ve lost you to another network.

Secondly, moving on the subject of our IVR system, I’d like to agree that your experience of having to repeat your telephone number numerous times and having to be transferred numerous times must be rather annoying.

The system is designed so that when you enter your telephone number into your keypad at the beginning of the call, it works out what customer base you’re on (i.e. pre-pay, business, post-pay), after this, the options on the IVR should route your call through to the correct people to deal with your query. If your call was answered by the wrong agent and had to be transferred, this suggests that the wrong option was selected on the IVR. What we as a company can take from this is the fact that the options may not be clear enough for customers to understand, and to make the correct choice from the stated options.

Finally, with regard to your comment about Vodafone’s Internet Service (Vodafone Live!), your thoughts on this matter have been heard and provide basis for feedback to the project team who deal with all Vodafone Live! issues.

I can reassure you that when your letter to the CEO is received, it will be dealt with by our Customer Relations Team who will address the issues that you’ve raised, but most importantly will use your comments to feedback into the business to improve things for our customer. We have an official feedback mechanism where we identify the route of the problem, and how this affects our customers. We’ve got steps in place to make improvements to the business based on this type of feedback.

Again, I’d like to say that it’s a real shame to lose you as a customer and I wish you all the best for the future.

Amy Rose
Vodafone UK

This sort of personal engagement does wonders for Vodafone’s brand image. Reading Amy’s text, I certainly felt a pull toward Vodafone.

I would drop a note to the Vodafone press office to ask about Amy and to check her validity… but the chances on getting an answer are near… oh ok. Benefit, doubt and so on. Right. I’ll email them and ask if she’s real.

I’m wondering if Vodafone — ‘The Big Red’ — has actually stepped into the 21st Century and sanctioned a blog relations team. Or person.

Just who is Amy Rose?

Well, she’s the person who responded to ex-Vodafone customer, Dan Sumption, ON HIS BLOG, when he posted an ‘open letter to the CEO of Vodafone‘. He posted his letter on the 17th of September, Amy was in there (identifying herself as ‘Amy Rose of Vodafone UK’ with a well thought out and polite response to Dan not 24 hours later. Set your Google-radars to stun!

Amy’s been active — admittedly a few months back — on the 3g.co.uk forums here. In that thread she explains that:

Our Forum Team is working as an additional means of support for customers and we’re hoping that by having an active presence on the forums, we can add some value to our customer’s experience.

Butter me in honey and call me Christoper! I didn’t know Vodafone had — or has — a Forum Team…

Vodafone have released their UK Corporate Responsibility Report, which outlines the challenges faced by the telecoms industry and explains the measures taken by the company to address them.

“Our Goal is to be the UK Communications leader,” said Nick Read, CEO of Vodafone UK,.” I am hugely excited about the potential of communications technology to create social and environmental benefits for the UK”.

Some of the subjects covered in the report include content locking for under 18’s, phone theft, and recycling. On the last subject, Vodafone have said that last year they reused 21.3 tonnes of handsets and recycled 3.1 tonnes.

Also interestingly, and tucked away within all the wonderful statements about making the world a better place, is the news that Vodafone are the first mobile operator in the UK to commit to a so called “SMS999″ scheme, which will allow customers with a speech or hearing inpairment to contact the emergency services.

Remember Omniphone’s MusicStation? Created a buzz a while ago? Well it’s coming — on Vodafone. That’s a bit of a coup.

For just £1.99 a week you’ll have unlimited music downloads — with a choice of over a million tracks from the leading major and independent labels. It’ll work on most of Vodafone’s existing handsets, however it’s being pushed big time for the Vodafone Christmas handset range, which, by the way, includes the Nokia N95 8GB.

This has the potential to seriously compete with other operator offerings — most notably, 3UK’s music download service. It’ll also be interesting to see how customers react to MusicStation vs Apple iTunes.

If you’re finally able to use your handset’s music capabiliities properly (that is, without the idiot handset manufacturer or mobile operator dreaming up rubbish ways for music to work) — it looks like MusicStation have actually given some serious thought to how the service works — I wonder if you might be persuaded to leave your iPod at home?

You can share playlists and tracks with other people with MusicStation — you’ve also got Last.fm style features like recommending tracks and seeing what other people (who like what you like) are listening to.

You can theoretically have a 50 gig library of music via MusicStation, even if your phone only has 50mb on board memory. Why? MusicStation uses your data connection to dynamically order what’s stored on your phone. About-to-be-played music is downloaded and stored on your handset, whilst that Michael Jackson track that you really like but not enough to play regularly is available on-demand. When you click ‘Billie Jean’ I imagine there will be a few seconds delay then it’ll start playing.

So I haven’t had a chance to actually check out MusicStation. It does look like a compelling offering. Allied with Vodafone’s might here in the UK, … it could be good.

Oh, and the Vodafone Christmas Handset range? (Includes..)

- Nokia N95 8GB
- Nokia N81
- Samsung F700
- Samsung F210
- Sony Ericsson W910i
- Sony Ericsson V640i
- Sony Ericsson W960i
- Vodafone 810
- Vodafone 716

Link: Vodafone cranks up 3G data rates for autumn | The Register

 First reported by us here about a month ago, Vodafone have now confirmed they’ll be rolling out HSDPA and HSUPA speed increases on their 3G network this autumn.

Vodafone will be pushing its HSDPA network to a possible 7.2Mb/sec download speed and introducing HSUPA to increase uploading to a possible 1.44Mb/sec, during the autumn as it tries to boost corporate data usage.

Vodafone defines central London as being E1, E1W, E14, EC1, EC2, EC3, EC4, NW1, SW1, W1, W2, W8, W9, W10, W11, W14, WC1, WC2: so everyone else isn’t central.

As well as Vodafone’s definition of central London, service should be enhanced at most UK airports. Which is nice.

Link: Vodafone’s rebel investor suffers heavy defeat - Telegraph

Vodafone shareholders have overwhelmingly rejected proposals by rebel investor John Mayo at the company AGM.

Mayo, the head of Efficient Capital Structures (and former Marconi finance director) had been pushing for some changes to the group, including getting rid of their 45% share in US mobile operator Verizon.

In a rather strange twist, Mayo didn’t even turn up to the AGM to answer questions on his proposals. Whether this affected the vote will probably never be known, but with only 4.6% of shareholders voting for the Verizon proposal and 3.15% for a £34bn bond issue proposal, it’s pretty clear that his plans are now in tatters.

According to the Telegraph, the most successful proposal was that to restrict Vodafone’s ability to make acquisitions without shareholder approval, which gained 6.02%. Rather ironic, considering that ECS had effectively pulled the resolution weeks ago.

Courtesy of cellular-news.com, we’ve got a little bit more on the story that we bought you over the weekend about the flood-affected Vodafone HQ.

According to the article, it all started going wrong when the nearby Lambourn river burst its banks - which then flooded an ornamental lake in the centre of the complex. Rather ironically, authorities had recently announced plans to upgrade sewers in the area to improve drainage.

The picture on the right is apparently of a stream that runs between two of the buildings on the site - and obviously was taken on a slightly more normal day. Offices in the HQ are reportedly not expected to be useable until later this week.

Link: Vodafone withdraw N76 due to returns numbers

According to All About Symbian, Vodafone have decided to stop selling the Nokia N76 multimedia phone with immediate effect.

I doubt most Nokia N76 buyers in the UK (it’s been an exclusive with Vodafone, remember) were reading my review, so I’d love to know the reasons given by users, but a reliable source is quoted as saying that “Vodafone has decided to withdraw the Nokia N76 with immediate effect. This is due to the high level of customer returns of the phone.” Can anyone at Vodafone fill in more detail?

Have you got an N76 on Vodafone? Add a comment and let us know!

Ewan here. Vanity publishing galore. I forgot that Alex has posted a note on Vodafone’s HQ flooding last week and I went and spent quite a bit of time creating some art for this post.

Alex then wisely put this article to ‘draft’ status last week.

However it’s time to publish, I reckon. It is, after all, Friday afternoon. It’ll get it out of the draft queue too. I couldn’t bring myself to delete it…

- - - - -

Hello to SMS Text News reader and Newbury resident ‘P’, who emailed to confirm he’d be well up for coming along to the SMS Text News Unlimited Drinks — and also to tell me that Vodafone’s HQ has ‘got it quite bad’ with the recent rains.

‘Most of the ground floor is flooded,’ he reports, ‘with water half way up your leg in the car park!’

Staff were apparently sent home at lunchtime.

Well flooding is a total arse, especially when half of the Atlantic descends upon you within a few minutes. I’ve no doubt Voda’s Newbury HQ will be back to 100% shortly.

I wonder just how disrupted the HQ team has been based on the fact that one imagines they’re all well equipped to work remotely at least for a few days (3G cards all round?).

(Above right: Artists impression of flooded Vodafone HQ)

UK mobile operators T-Mobile, 3 and Vodafone have confirmed plans to begin rolling out the High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) standard in the UK by the end of the year.

The technology - which uses packet scheduling - takes the performance enhancements found in the High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) standard and brings them to the upload side of a data connection. The net effect is a balancing of the theoretical maximum upload and download speeds.

Vodafone have already launched the technology in Germany, and will begin rolling out their UK service later this year. Rivals T-Mobile and 3 will also be aiming to start upgrading their network by the end of the year, with Orange planning to introduce the HSUPA service in 2008.

The only UK operator not figuring in these plans is O2 - who have at present not announced plans for HSPA enhancements to their network.

(Thanks to SMS Text News reader Mike for providing additional information to correct this article)

Link: Vodafone sinks to new low | The Register

If you’re a UK TV viewer, you might have seen Vodafone’s recent ad campaign for their new ‘improved’ mobile internet service. The ad features raining watches, with the song “Little April Showers” from Disney’s Bambi playing in the background.

If you haven’t seen it, or want a reminder, here’s the ad (courtesy of YouTube):

In a rather ironic twist of fate, Vodafone’s UK HQ in Newbury, Berkshire is currently knee deep in water, folloing torrential rain and flash flooding that lashed parts of the UK on Friday. The nearby River Lanbourn burst it’s banks, and forced some 3000 staff have been moved to alternative locations (preferably on slightly higher ground). With more heavy rain forecast for the coming weekend it’s unsure whether they’ll be back in business by Monday morning.

Needless to say the network shouldn’t be affected by this small soggy setback -although it is possible whoever chose the music and the concept for the ad might be thinking twice about coming into work on Monday morning

Link: Brussels drops mobile roaming case - Times Online

After seven years, millions of pounds and many thousands of man hours later, the EU have decided to drop an investigation into overcharging on overseas calls by mobile operators.

The anti-trust investigation against Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile, which could have led to multi-million euro fines against the operators, was quietly dropped, as the Commission decided it was redundant following recent roaming caps introduced.

In a statement the Commission said: “This (new) regulation addresses the same issues as those raised in these antitrust cases, and clearly resolves them for the future … The Commission has decided to close the case.”

Meanwhile, UK mobile operators have until the end of August to bring into effect the recently agreed roaming charge caps, which limit the cost of making a call whilst abroad to 49 eurocents per minute and receiving a call at 24 eurocents per minute.