Seven years on from when Vodafone paid six billion quid for its 3G licence, the company is only getting 10 per cent of its revenues from 3G, according to Vodafone’s CEO Arun Sarin.
Now that Vodafone has decided to merge its 3G operations with Orange, and share their 3G networks, you can add another four billion quid, the cost of Orange’s 3G licence, to the companies’ 3G investment pot.
Add in the cost of the Vodafone and Orange networks and you have a mighty investment going nowhere.
“3G hasn’t happened as fast as was expected to happen five years ago”, says Sarin, “but don’t write it off and say it’s not going to happen at all”.
He points to recent deals for content which Vodafone has inked with MySpace and YouTube, and says: “We expect things to happen in the next five years”.
Let’s hope he has better luck with his $11bn investment in India’s fourth largest network Hutchison Essar though, if the fate of the Japanese network, J-Phone, bought by Vodafone is anything to go by, the signs are not promising.
Still India is putting on 6.5m new subscribers every month, and only 13 per cent of the population has a mobile phone, so Vodafone may be able to something in India. Sarin expects to get a 14 per cent annual return on his investment.
To make money from from 3G, Vodafone's customers have to be able use the network. If your experiences are anything to go by (like your previous post Super-techie baffled by phone) perhaps ease of use is an issue. Having just got a new Vodafone 3G mobile - my experience is a little different. 3G worked out of the box. In the office, where I don't need it, I get a wonderful high speed mobile internet connection. But then every time I have needed to use it outside the office - no 3G signal. Perhaps the high performance in the office is due to the fact it's in Newbury, surrounded by Vodafone offices.
Interesting. Since getting mine working, I've always been able to get a 3G signal. For some osme reason though it's always 115kbits/sec and that's the same in UK as in Germany where I am now. Not exactly the Mbit/sec stuff we were lead to beleive 3G would deliver.