Vodafone to enter fixed-line broadband market
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Mobile phone operator Vodafone Group Plc  confirmed on Monday its plan to enter the cut-throat fixed-line  broadband Internet market via a deal with the wholesale arm of  telecoms firm BT Group Plc.
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(InfoWorld) - In the third content deal in as many days, Vodafone Group announced a service that will allow its mobile customers to view and upload videos to YouTube. The announcement follows others this week from Vodafone withÂ MySpace.comÂ and eBay. The deals point to a growing interest from online content providers to offer their services to mobile customers as well as continued efforts by operators to drive usage of their wireless data networks. The mobile YouTube service will launch initially in the U.K. where customers will be able to view select videos, forward links of videos and upload and search for videos. Vodafone plans to launch the service in other European markets as well. YouTube has a similar offering in the U.S. where customers of Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, and Verizon Wireless can all upload videos from their phones. On Thursday, Vodafone said it will be the first to launch a new mobile service from eBay in Europe outside of the U.K. Vodafone Italy customers will be the first to be able to download a free application in order to search for and buy items on eBay. The application will come loaded on phones in the future and Vodafone expects to launch the service across its European markets later this year. EBay has experimented with different mobile offerings. In Germany, it launched a customized version of the Opera Mini browser that lets users buy, sell and track bids. EBay also allows any U.K. mobile user to bid for and buy items on their phones. Also this week, Vodafone announced that its customers, starting in the U.K., will be able to download an application to their phones that will allow them to edit their MySpace profiles, upload photos and blog entries and send and receive MySpace messages. It's the first mobile offering for MySpace in Europe, Vodafone said. All three services will be available within Vodafone Live, the operator's mobile portal.
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British telecoms giant Vodafone has said it had signed the first European deal with MySpace to allow its mobile phone subscribers to access the social networking website.
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Vodafone Group PLC launched high-speed Internet services for mobile phones across much of Europe on Wednesday, ending a wait of several years since the world's biggest cell phone company spent billions for new wireless licenses at the height of the technology bubble.
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Facebook has officially launched its platform for cellular operators, and the U.K.'s Vodafone is the first to adopt it.
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The widely expected merger between Sprint Corp and Nextel Communications has been agreed in a $36 billion deal likely to end Vodafone&#39;s chance of gaining an independent foothold in the American market.
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Optus and Vodafone have moved to counter Telstra's head start in third generation mobile services, agreeing on Thursday to build a rival second 3G network in Australia.
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Company strikes deal with BT Wholesale to sell broadband Net service in Britain, bundle it with mobile offerings.
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German anti-monopoly authorities on Friday approved plans by mobile phone operators T-Mobile, O2 and Vodafone to create a joint technical platform to bring television to mobile phones.
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Vodafone is putting its substantial weight behind a 3G push by offering ten handsets in the run up to Christmas. From November the firm will sell handsets from manufacturers including Samsung, Sharp, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, NEC and Nokia.
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(InfoWorld) - Vodafone has begun offering new fees and features to stir demand for mobile Internet services as competition hits the company's profits from voice services. Two of the group's largest subsidiaries, Germany's Vodafone D2 GmbH and Vodafone Ltd. in the U.K., announced new mobile data offerings on Wednesday with subsidiaries in several other markets planning customized packages of their own, according to Vodafone Group spokesman Mark Street. "Pricing for these new mobile Internet services will be on a market by market basis, and it will be up to each market to decide on features," Street said. "But what I can say is that as a group, we're looking at prices that are predictable and transparent and services that offer value for their money." The move comes as Vodafone, which has been facing tough competition from low-cost mobile phone operators, seeks new revenue streams to offset falling prices from its traditional cash-cow voice service. It has also been prompted by mobile Internet services, such as T-Mobile International AG's Web n' Walk, designed for quick, easy, and competitively priced mobile phone surfing. As of July 15, Vodafone customers in Germany can subscribe to the new mobile Internet service, called "Handy 2.0," available for a flat monthly fee of â¬9.95 ($13.44) . The service uses the open-source Opera mobile phone browser, which formats content for easy viewing on small displays, according to Vodafone D2 spokeswoman Bettina Donges. "Handy 2.0 will be like a PC experience," Donges said. "You'll be able to surf all around the Net with your mobile phone, the pages will be compiled fast, and they'll be easy to read." The new flat-rate Internet offering, however, doesn't apply to VoIPÂ applications, according to Donges. Vodafone will not support mobile VoIP service until it can guarantee quality service, Street said. In addition, Vodafone has struck Internet partnerships with eBay, Google, YouTube, and MySpace.com to provide services specially tailored for mobile phones. Customers access the Internet service through the Vodafone Live mobile portal. The portal service is included in the various bundled minute packages available from the German operator. Initially, several handsets, including the Nokia N73 and N95, the Motorola V3 and V980, and the Samsung Zv60 and D900i, will support the Handy 2.0 service, but other phones will be added over time. In the U.K., Vodafone is launching a similar service that takes Web pages designed for PCs and makes them easy to read on handsets. The Vodafone Mobile Internet offerings also includes partnerships with eBay, Google, YouTube, and MySpace as well as Yahoo. Analysts see a couple of advantages to the partnerships. By collaborating with these brands, Vodafone not only gives customers a better experience of using their Internet services on their phones but will also benefit from advertising revenue opportunities, according to John Delaney, principal analyst at Ovum Ltd. One slight difference between the German and U.K. offering is the price: U.K. customers who sign up for a data pack pay Â£7.50 ($14.90 ) per month for 120MB of data, which is equivalent to four hours of viewing YouTube or up to 160 mobile Internet pages every day for a month. Other customers are charged per kilobyte, up to a Â£1 per day for 500KB, with no additional charge unless the day's usage exceeds 15MB.
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Vodafone has confirmed that it will launch its 3G service in the UK in November. The announcement came hot on the heals of the operators announcement of the handsets it will be making available for the launch.
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By Michael Harrison Business Editor  Vodafone will make its long-awaited entry into the broadband internet market this week through a strategic tie-up with BT.
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Vodafone is to kick-start a global push into 3G with an array of mobile phones that is likely to outstrip the range of handsets being sold by many of its rivals.
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Under the agreement Ericsson has delivered equipment and services to upgrade Vodafone's 3G network with full HSDPA functionality so that the operator can offer its 3G broadband (HSDPA) service to customers.
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VODAFONE is to offer its 16.2 million mobile phone customers its own-brand broadband after striking a deal to use BT lines. The service, to be launched by the end of this year, will allow Vodafone to sell packages of mobile airtime, text messages and home broadband services.
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Vodafone Group Plc plans to lure more than 10 million customers to the company&#39;s high-speed mobile- phone services by March 2006, the first indication of how it plans to generate sales from licenses that cost $20 billion.