Vodafone Admits It Dropped The Ball, Looks Towards 2013

If you thought Vodafone has had a couple of bad years, well, you’re right. In an interview aired today on the ABC’s Inside Business, company CEO Bill Morrow did not shy away from the troubles Vodafone has encountered in recent times — including its remarkable fall from grace with customers in Australia.

“It wasn’t that long ago that Vodafone was on top of the mark. We had one of the highest preference scores amongst consumers, and I think the reality is the market got ahead of Vodafone,” Morrow told IB host Alan Kohler. Morrow went on to say that Vodafone wasn’t prepared for the massive surge in the popularity of smartphones.

“That drove a different kind of demand on the network and it got ahead of the company. The investment wasn’t there at the time, but it is now and that’s what we’re correcting,” he said.

Vodafone is now working to improve its network, which it hopes to have sorted by the end of next year and while it has had customers say “they feel a difference”, it still has a lot of work to do. Morrow is confident it has everything it needs to embrace the 4G era, with the spectrum it gained from the 3 merger putting the company in a “very nice, healthy [and] deep position”.

“In fact, 1800MHz is the one that I’m the most excited about, we have 30MHz of spectrum and that is perfect for LTE as we go forward into the 4G bands,” he said.

Regarding NBN, Morrow was extremely positive. “I think NBN is a fabulous thing. I have a long history in both fixed and wireless mobile and when I see what Australia is doing with the NBN, I think it’s the perfect model going forward,” he said.

[Inside Business, via ZDNet]


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