Info

We operate relatively informally, though we have to dress 'office presentable' because we see people from the outside world and often don't know who we are going to meet each day. All of us within Vodafone have one thing in common which is a 'this can be done' mentality. That is why we've been able to move faster than anybody else in the UK and has helped us stay ahead of the game. Where has the Mannesmann takeover put the company strategically? We are now far and away the leading company in the world in mobile communications. Just on our market cap at the moment, we are five times larger than BT, which was much bigger than us when we started. We are something like the sixth or seventh largest company in the world (by market cap). Our aim is now to be the largest company in the world and to knock Microsoft off the top spot in the next five years. The speed of (growth in the telecoms) industry is just so fast. There's no signs of the growth stopping. The challenge we have over the next few years is managing the business as it grows further. We have a lot of local competitors in the UK, Orange particularly. Orange is going to be the number two operator in Europe. I guess over the next two or three years they'll emerge as a very strong competitor. Vodafone spent £6bn on a UK 3G mobile licence. How difficult will it be to recoup the money? We will do so over a period of time. The potential range of services 3G can offer will make the current generation of phones look as old fashioned in five years time as the mobile 'brick phones' from 1985 look now. People will pay for that. There are all sorts of uses we haven't even thought of yet that in 10 years time we'll be saying 'how ever did I manage without that?' We are only in the first stage of the 3G mobile industry.