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Technology Stocks : Vodafone-Airtouch (NYSE: VOD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrGreenJeans who wrote (3093)	3/7/2001 7:59:03 AM
From: MrGreenJeans	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3175

Vodafone says faster mobiles due by Q2 (UPDATE: Adds analyst comment after meeting, para 11, fund manager, 16) By Richard Meares LONDON, March 7 (Reuters) - Vodafone Group Plc said on Wednesday it was on course to launch a full commercial service using GPRS fast mobile telephony by the second quarter although it did not have enough handsets yet. Vodafone said its GPRS -- general packet radio service technology -- was already in operation in Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, Portugal and Austria, bringing data speeds as fast as desktop computers and an ``always on'' Internet connection. ``By the second quarter this year, a commercial service will be in operation in all Vodafone's other controlled subsidiaries,'' Vodafone said. ``The network is ready, we just need the handsets to be available,'' a spokeswoman said. Vodafone shares were 2.76 percent down at 202 1/2 pence at 1200 GMT, having bounced off a low of 198p. The world's biggest mobile phone company also said it expected its European consumer mobile Internet unit Vizzavi to achieve monthly EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, deprecation and amortisation) breakeven by the end of 2003, with planned investment of 1.6 billion euros ($1.5 billion). Vizzavi is a joint venture with France's Vivendi and aims to have more than two million registered customers by the end of the second quarter 2001. The company made the comments in a statement outlining an update on its non-voice business it was making to analysts. It said its strategy for growth remained unchanged. This includes exploiting its worldwide networks to cut costs. As part of this globalisation, a single Vodafone brand will be introduced during 2002. ``There was little context of the overall growth of the market and the share that Vodafone expects to get of that,'' said Claudia Jachtmann, a consultant at AMI-Partners after Vodafone's presentation to analysts. VOICE STILL RULES Vodafone, which is struggling to retain its place as Britain's most valuable company as its shares fluctuate, said that despite the increase in data usage, voice calls would still account for at least three quarters of its revenue in 2004. By December, data services, including the hugely popular short text messages, accounted for nine percent of revenues in Europe and 12.5 percent in Japan. Vodafone estimates that messaging applications will contribute between eight percent and 13 percent of total revenues in 2004, reflecting lower tariffs but higher adoption rates than today. A fund manager said Vodafone had told the meeting that the average revenue per data customer was twice the level of an average voice only customer. Vodafone said that with its increased global purchasing power, it was confident of achieving its target cashflow synergies, after tax, of 500 million pounds by 2003 and 600 million pounds by 2004. GPRS is also known as 2.5G -- G for generation -- and is the forerunner of the super-fast 3G services for which telecoms operators paid vast sums for licences last year. Vodafone's Airtel in Spain is due to launch its 3G network in the third quarter of this year with other markets expected to follow in 2002, the company said. ``Vodafone's experience in Japan is that the next generation of services will only become successful if the new generation of mobile devices are attractive to the user,'' it said. ``Vodafone has early volumes of GPRS handsets available now, but not in sufficient variety to launch commercial service yet.'' New handsets are due to be rolled out by major manufacturers over this year. Vodafone's 37 million messaging and data customers around the world were spending seven euros a month on non-voice services -- double the amount of a year ago. It said its worldwide proportionate customer base had risen to almost 80 million at the end of 2000 -- with one in four of the world's mobile phone users connected to a network in which the company has a holding.