Verizon Communications is preparing a $100 billion cash and stock bid to take full control of Verizon Wireless from Vodafone Group, reports Reuters. Verizon’s board is expected to discuss the potential buyout next week ahead of its annual shareholder meeting. → Read More
BlackBerry users on the Vodafone network in Europe, the Middle East and Africa have not been receiving emails today as RIM’s network suffers another outage. Early this morning Reuters reported that email delivery issues were affecting Vodafone BlackBerry users, and the carrier confirmed the problem. Vodafone says services are currently “being restored”. → Read More
A mobile payment joint venture from the UK’s biggest carriers, first announced over a year ago, today finally received “unconditional” clearance from European regulators. The move means that now Vodafone, Telefonica’s O2 and Everything Everywhere (the JV from T-Mobile and Orange) can proceed developing a cross-carrier mobile payments platform — not unlike the Isis initiative in the U.S. They… → Read More
Big news from the UK this morning: Vodafone, one of Europe’s biggest mobile operators, has made a formal offer to buy up the assets of Cable & Wireless Worldwide for £1 billion ($1.7 billion), a deal that catapults Vodafone into running its own fixed line network in the UK and specifically will give it a much bigger view to winning enterprise business — a big challenge to BT and a mark of… → Read More
Vodaphone and Canonical today announced the Vodacom “Webbook”, the fruit of a joint effort to develop a low-cost mobile computing solution for South Africa. Most of the specs are about what you’d expect for such a device, with one extremely interesting twist: it’s powered by a Freescale IMX 51 processor (Cortex A8) CPU in order to lower cost and power consumption. This represents the first… → Read More
Vodafone. It’s a brand that most folks here in the states would, at first pass, almost certainly chalk up as “that one European company that puts their name on a bunch of football soccer jerseys” — that is, if they recognized it at all.
And yet, Vodafone is essentially the biggest wireless carrier in the world. They’re the top carrier by revenues, and second to only China Mobile by… → Read More
The European Commission yesterday granted French entertainment and telecommunication services conglomerate Vivendi approval for its acquisition of Vodafone’s 44% stake in SFR, the company announced this morning. The transaction, which is valued at 7.95 billion euros (roughly $11.5 billion), should be completed in the next few days.
Vivendi will then own 100 percent of SFR, a French mobile phone… → Read More
Emerging markets need the Internet. Whether they’re looking up commodity prices or contacting loved ones overseas, users in developing countries like South Africa and Ghana need a way to get online and this unique device from Vodafone looks like a logical and quite elegant way to do just that. The device is a keyboard with a standard set of RCA cables sprouting out of the back. You plug it… → Read More
I was in Amsterdam late last week to sit on the jury for Vodafone’s Mobile Clicks startup competition, and I saw four genuinely great fledgling companies strut their stuff.
In the end, plastic card-killing startup Cardmobili came out victorious – they won both the €100,000 1st place prize and the public voting award – more on them below.
Runner-up and winner of €50,000 was the UK’s … → Read More
I was in Amsterdam late last week to sit on the jury for Vodafone’s Mobile Clicks startup competition, and I saw four genuinely great fledgling companies strut their stuff.
In the end, plastic card-killing startup Cardmobili came out victorious – they won both the €100,000 1st place prize and the public voting award – more on them below.
Runner-up and winner of €50,000 was the UK’s … → Read More
Vodafone has announced the four finalists of its Mobile Clicks competition to find the best mobile Internet start-ups based in either Spain, The Netherlands, Portugal or the UK. The shortlist includes startups working on field-worker remote reporting; mobile loyalty cards; mobile application “lifecycle management” and so-called ‘2nd screen’ gaming, where you interact with your mobile in… → Read More
Vodafone has launched Mobile Clicks 2010, a competition to identify and reward innovative mobile Internet startups. Now in its third year, the competition will be open to any fledgling mobile Web startup – provided your market is The Netherlands, Portugal or the UK.
Vodafone has set aside a prize fund of €150,000 (2/3 of which will go to the overall winner, the remaining €50,000 to the… → Read More
You can’t blame Vodafone for wanting developers to jump on its mobile platform, and a good old-fashioned developer competition with cold hard cash up for grabs is as good a way as any.
Yet I’m not sure a slideshow widget for Flickr is quite the winner they had in mind when they decided to launch the Vodafone App Star competition and put €1m of prize money behind it.
But that’s exactly how… → Read More
We’re not always convinced by the developer initiatives of mobile operators but we can’t argue with a good old fashioned mobile app competition when there’s cold hard cash up for grabs.
Enter Vodafone’s AppStar, which today announced the regional winners in its Europe-wide competition, each of whom have already bagged €25,000. They’ll now go head-to-head against the seven other country winners… → Read More
[UK] Brits can now get their hands on Google’s so-called ‘superphone’ for an upfront cost of “free”. Kinda.
Available from today for pre-order on Vodafone UK, the Android-powered Google Nexus One can be had for £35 per-month on a 2 year contract, including a bundle of minutes and texts, and the much needed 1GB monthly data allowance — this is a Google Phone after all (see TechCrunch review). → Read More
[UK] The location-based social networking space is about as competitive as they get right now – though it’s still relatively early days – but Foursquare appears to be executing particularly well.
It certainly has the mind share of the press, which should trickle down to end-users, and today the New York-based startup has announced a tie-in with Vodafone UK, currently the number two mobile network… → Read More
[UK] In case you weren’t already convinced by the level of pent up demand for an alternative to O2′s iPhone monopoly in the UK, more evidence comes from Vodafone today. The mobile operator has begun selling the iPhone 3G and 3GS, including shipping 50,000 units to customers who have pre-ordered.
That’s a pretty healthy number for Day One but it doesn’t look quite so impressive when compared to… → Read More
[UK] Vodafone will bring the iPhone 3G and 3GS to its UK network from January 14. You can pre-order the iPhone from today, with the 8GB iPhone 3G free on a £35 post paid plan. There will be unlimited texts on consumer price plans or unlimited calls to landlines for businesses.
Vodafone says it’s been preparing its network for “over a year” for the likely assault on its data networks.
However… → Read More
This year’s Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition was a battle between Dutch and UK startups with 3 finalists from either side of the Channel. The prize money was ramped up to €150,000 this year so it was all to play for in the fight between the cloggies and the rosbifs. The prize was awarded based on a combination of votes from the public, Mobile Monday members and an expert jury. The jury… → Read More
Vodafone today launched Vodafone 360 (its replacement for Vodafone Live) which brings together mobile phone contacts, social networking accounts, email, IM, etc. so they can be accessed seamlessly on phone or PC. It currently covers Facebook, Live Messenger and Google Talk. Twitter will be added soon. Vodafone has also added a range of new apps, games, music and mapping services as part of the… → Read More
Vodafone, the world’s largest cellular operator, is thinking about buying T-Mobile UK, making the giant even bigger. The plan is under scrutiny right now as it would essentially create a massive Euro-monopoly on the cellular front. Vodafone declined to comment. But people familiar with the situation said the company was examining the case for making an offer for T-Mobile UK, or setting up a… → Read More
That’s right, folks. Earlier today, Vodafone Spain officially launched the highly anticipated HTC Magic (con Google, for you Español speaking readers). While it may not be got for free (read: 139€ for the phone on the cheapest plan w/ mandatory 18 month contract) like its UK sibling (expected to launch in early May), the real point is that it is here, now (in Spain at least). I’d… → Read More
If we are to believe this Vodafone ad (and who are we to doubt the Internet), the European carrier will be the exclusive provider of HTC‘s next Android phone, the Magic. The phone does somewhat resemble early spy shots so we could be looking at the real deal, folks. → Read More
Pocket Life, a geo-aware social network backed by mobile network giant Vodafone, has launched to the public. The service allows users to update their friends on their current locations automatically, and also allows them to syndicate status updates and their recent activities to popular social networks like Facebook and MySpace. You can also use GPS to create a route (say, for mountain biking… → Read More
Android just got stronger. The industry consortium behind the Google-developed mobile operating system, the Open Handset Alliance, just added 14 new members, including ARM, Garmin International, Sony Ericsson and Vodafone. The other new members are AKM Semiconductor, ASUSTek Computer, Atheros Communications, Borqs, Ericsson, Huawei Technologies, Omron Software, Softbank Mobile, Teleca AB, and… → Read More
And we’re off: the BlackBerry Storm 9500 touchscreen phone just went live on Vodafone an hour before the official embargo date. You’re looking at the Vodafone… wha!!! So I don’t know how they did this but as far as I can tell they didn’t spoof the domain and that someone in London was dumb enough to leave this page up. It seems to talk about the actual phone, which is… → Read More
At long last, Verizon and Vodafone have officially acknowledged that they plan to offer the Storm in the coming weeks. Prepped to fit the needs of the enterprise user who may be tempted to sway from RIM, this much-coveted handset is the first touchscreen BlackBerry. With the 480×360 screen, 3.2 mp autofocus camera, Bluetooth 2.0, “ClickThrough” user selection for a button-like… → Read More
We’ve got a bit of good news for anybody lookin’ to get their mitts on the BlackBerry Storm over in the UK. According to Pocket-lint, Vodafone will be bringing the touchscreen handset to the sovereign isle sometime in the next two months. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >> → Read More
The Register has a report on possibly the largest ever single-person phone bill, and the winner is…James Abdale, a Vodafone customer from Norwich, who got a bill for £588,198, and fifteen pence ($1,175,455 and two cents). Abdale, who posted his saga on Vodafone’s forum, spent over two hours on the phone with customer service before being told that all managers had gone home and he’d have to… → Read More
Bear with us, readers. We know you’re sick of iPhone news, but it’s almost over. This may or may not put your panties in a bunch, but the Italians supposedly have the pleasure of activating their iP3G from home because Vodafone and Telecom Italia are incapable of the task. However, Voda and TI customers will have to agree to a 2-year contract. Hutchison G3 Italy has also come out to tout… → Read More
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