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To: All Mtn Ski who wrote (809)	11/14/2000 2:07:46 PM
From: Marc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1698

LONDON (Reuters) - Vodafone Group Plc said on Tuesday data services would enable the mobile phone company to maintain high growth rates for the rest of the decade despite a long wait for profits from new technologies. Chief Executive Chris Gent said it would take four to seven years to start making a return on the cost of licenses the company has bought for third generation (3G) mobile telephony. But he told a news briefing that text messages and mobile Internet services ``will enable the group to maintain high levels of compound growth for the remainder of the decade.'' Vodafone, the world's largest mobile phone operator, expects to spend 10 billion pounds ($14.32 billion) building its 3G networks and rolling out services over the next four years, he said. That is on top of license fees analysts forecast will exceed 17 billion pounds. Shares and bonds in telecoms companies have buckled under the debt the industry has taken on to pay for 3G licenses, but Gent was confident his company would recoup its investment in ''acceptable time scales.'' ``The best countries are going to see returns coming back to us in four years' time,'' he said. More expensive licenses could take seven years to pay for themselves, although factoring in the use of 3G spectrum for existing second-generation services would cut the payback time by one or two years. Vodafone plans to use some of the 3G spectrum it has bought to extend its capacity to operate the present 2G voice services. New operators will face longer waits for profits, and Gent said he could well believe forecasts of a 20-year payback period. He said Vodafone was well on track to make 20-25 percent of its revenues from data by 2004. Data accounted for 5.5 percent of customer bills in strong first-half results announced earlier Tuesday, with the figure as high as 11.5 percent in Germany in October. Gent predicted the launch of 3G would see the emergence of new handset makers to challenge the traditional suppliers. France's Sagem is among new suppliers Vodafone is talking to about 3G handsets, and Siemens looked strong, he said. He also mentioned Ericsson among potential 3G suppliers but not market leader Nokia. ``The faces that have been familiar in the past may not be so capable in future,'' he said. The first 3G handsets should hit the market in the middle of next year in Japan, but phones that work in dual-mode -- the present 2G system as well as 3G -- would not be available until the end of the first quarter of 2002.