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Vodafone chief urges co-operation
By Robert Budden in London
Published: May 10 2004 17:32 / Last Updated: May 10 2004 17:32


Arun Sarin, chief executive of Vodafone, the world's largest mobile operator, has called on the mobile phone industry to work together to develop a new industry standard that will supersede second and third-generation technologies.


Speaking at the FT World Mobile Communications Conference in London, Mr Sarin said telecoms operators and manufacturers must co-operate to avoid the introduction of competing wireless technologies that could increase network roll-out costs and cause inter- operability problems bet- ween different operators.

"We need to consider a broader industry standard beyond GSM [the dominant European mobile technology]," he told delegates at the conference. "We need to map the direction for the next five to 10 years to avoid industry fragmentation."

His comments come as UK-based Vodafone experiences problems with its 3G roll-out in Japan. Vodafone has opted for W-CDMA, the European 3G standard, for its Japanese operations.

But that decision has meant it is failing to match the growth in 3G subscribers of its rivals in Japan. KDDI, the Japanese mobile operator, which has adopted the rival CDMA 2000 3G technology, has been far more successful in winning new 3G customers. Mr Sarin yesterday attributed that to KDDI's choice of 3G technology, but he said Vodafone would soon catch up with KDDI as its handsets operating on W-CDMA improved.

Mr Sarin also warned Vodafone may not achieve 100 per cent population coverage for 3G across its global footprint because of the introduction of new emerging technologies.

"For us 3G is not a big bang, it is an evolution," he said. "We are careful in deploying 3G in areas where we think we can get a return. As we go from 25 to 50 to 75 per cent [population coverage] at some point we are going to say that is enough. The last 25 per cent may not need 3G as there may be another technology that comes along."

He said there was still room for growth in voice usage on mobiles, citing the continued dominance of fixed-line networks. "There is still plenty of untapped [mobile] voice demand. Only 20 per cent of global voice usage is on mobile."


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