Vodafone and Three held a conference call today to offer answers to questions about the new joint venture. The biggest thing you should know is that for the most part, a lot of the finer details are still yet to be worked out.Here are some of the more note-worthy points from the call:
- The new merged company will have about 6 million customers, with annual revenue of about $4 Billion and about 26% marketshare in Australia
- Nothing will change for 3 customers. All contracts will remain. There will also be no change to the Crazy Johns brand.
- They refused to confirm whether the 3 brand would be completely phased out (considering the press release mentioned that they could maintain and use the brand until the transition and thereafter). That includes rebranding the 3 retail stores. In the end, they said that they need to work out the details of how the new joint venture will present itself to market. I wouldn’t be holding my breath for 3 to stick around though…
- The network arrangement between 3 and Telstra for 3 customers to roam on Next G later this year is still in place. I’m not sure how this will work – they were short on details – but apparently it will still go ahead.
- There will be redundancies, probably most from 3, but nothing has been decided yet.
- The whole thing isn’t set in stone. It still needs approval from shareholders (it’s been unanimously recommended by the boards of both companies), the ACCC and the Foreign Investment Review Board.
As you can tell, there’s still a lot to go down before this is all made official. There’s no need to jump ship from 3 just yet – I’m sure we’ll be discovering lots of new exciting tidbits of information in the coming weeks. Hopefully this whole arrangement will result in wins for the consumer, but only time will tell that.
Walter Adamson
Monday, February 9, 2009 at 4:11 PMFor sure the 3 brand will be “fazed out” as you say but we’re not sure if it will be phased out. As the fazing becomes more severe the phasing out will surely become more of an imperative as it is extremely expensive to retain the unique selling propositions of three brands in people’s minds at the time of a buying decision e.g. Voda, Crazy Johns and 3.
james johnes
Monday, February 9, 2009 at 4:49 PMvodafone have already told some of their network operations staff (nokia siemans) that they are being made redundant.
hutch outsourced a large chunk of their noc to india in 2007
vodafone has very little operations staff left. just level 2 and 3 , hutch has just 2 and 3 and the bare legal requirements for the noc
ed
Monday, February 9, 2009 at 6:58 PMI’m with vodafone for pre-paid mobile phone and I’m happy. I’m with 3 for pre-paid mobile internet and I’m happy. I really hope that I can keep the bits that I like as I don’t like vodafone for mobile internet because they use optus which is crap, and I don’t use 3 for phone because they are crap.
Nick Broughall
Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 6:49 AM@Walter Adamson – LOL. Fixed.