It's not just about roaming to the US although this would allow VOD to capture the multi-national corporate segment and there are clear revenue adders to having this. I believe Nokia will have a dual-band GSM/CDMA handset arriving in the market sometime this year.
More importantly, however, its about capturing the synergies from the combined networks which will result in the necessary cost savings to justify the valuation. Examples include application development (i.e., for GPRS), handset purchasing, common platforms/HLR's for GSM switching, ability to offer common tariffing, m-commerce (via smart card in GSM), etc. And its about offering the user the same consistent experience, anywhere, anytime in the world. This is what brand is all about. Currently, VOD is getting none of this from its Verizon partnership.
Regarding EDGE, I don't see VOD deploying this on a wide scale anywhere. They have too much invested in 3G licenses to justify the incremental investment in a stepping-stone technology. And although I'm not an engineer- I do believe that 3G is more spectral efficient than EDGE which would make the capital expenditure on EDGE less efficient for VOD. Thus, just wait for 3G. |
