Currently In Vodafone New Zealand

Vodafone New Zealand is New Zealand's largest mobile phone operator, based in Auckland.

Formed - 1998, after Vodafone purchased BellSouth's New Zealand operations.

Employees - 1,300 people in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch

Customers - As of November 8, 2006, 2.1 million customers and a market share of 55%

Retail Channels - own stores plus extensive dealer network across the country.

Current Market Status

After Vodafone took over Bellsouth, they expanded the coverage of the network to compete better with Telecom. It has since been able to compete strongly against Telecom.

Vodafone has constantly increased its Market Share and now surpasses Telecom. More recently however, Vodafone has been losing some of its market share back to Telecom due to successful marketing campaigns by Telecom and better pricing for their text messaging service.

Vodafone provides the only 3G network in New Zealand capable of video-calling, potentially attracting customers back to Vodafone.

By 2006 it held a 52.5% market share of the mobile market.

The number of active customers is signficantly lower than its registered base due to abandoned pre-paid accounts left by tourists.

New Zealand Market

The road ahead is challenging for Vodafone. The New Zealand mobile market is reaching saturation and Telecom competition is becoming more aggressive.

Mobile networks are not proving ideal for carrying data, with fixed line players move into mobile operator's territory.

With Vodafone's Asia Pacific presence still hinging on New Zealand, it remains to be seen as to whether the growing trend of fixed-to-mobile substitution and 3G will open up sufficient new niche revenue streams to overcome the pressure on 3G prices, which are currently forcing down ARPUs.

Rumors of a new entrant into the already overcrowded market will like cause a few more headaches yet. The local market is too small for a third player.

Network

Vodafone operates:

GSM mobile network for phone services
GPRS for picture messaging and internet access, anywhere in GSM coverage.
3G WCDMA - multimedia supporting network
3G HSDPA - marketed as Vodafone 3G broadband.
Wireless broadband - through strategic partnership with Woosh Wireless

Nokia provided the complete 3G core and radio networks, supplying, deploying and testing the equipment in the field. Nokia is also providing 3G network management, monitoring and maintenance services in an arrangement known as Managed Services.

Managed Services means Nokia is running the network to Vodafone's specifications allowing them to move away from day-to-day operations of their networks and focus on serving their customers.

Vodafone is continuing to build network coverage throughout the country. The 3G HSDPA network will compete directly with existing fixed-line cable and ADSL broadband services.

Data

In 2004, Vodafone recognized that its pace of growth had outstripped the ability of its server-based datawarehousing system to manage the level of activity. Likewise, the increased complexity of information, generated by a network that was quickly evolving from a second-generation GSM-based voice network to a 3G data and voice network, was magnifying this
challenge.

Vodafone’s legacy SGI based data-warehousing and data-processing system was at risk of underperforming, while the operational expense
of supporting it was increasing significantly.

managers were beginning to experience delays in
receiving reports on customer behavior. Instead of having
reports delivered at the start of each day, some team
members were experiencing delays that impacted their
ability to make informed decisions in a timely manner. provid[ing] our team with the critical daily
information they needed to keep our business healthy in a
complex and changing environment was becoming
increasingly challenging.”

Vodafone and
HP assessed the options and selected two HP Integrity
servers, which were installed in June 2004. HP’s Integrity server family is based on industry-standard
Intel® Itanium® 2 processors. With their modular buildingblock
architecture, the servers are an innovation in
server technology that offers simplicity, agility, and value
for money. Vodafone installed two Itanium 2–based HP Integrity
servers—the Integrity rx7620-16 and rx8620-32 servers—
in its data-warehousing environment, along with the
HP-UX 11i operating system. Both of these industryleading
midrange servers

Vodafone seamlessly transitioned its legacy Red Brick
Warehouse from the company’s existing RISC servers
to the Integrity rx8620-32 server. The Integrity rx-7620-16
server was integrated into Vodafone’s preproduction test
environment. the availability of the international support
team was invaluable. Not only did it mean that Vodafone
had the very best expertise available on demand for
what was very new and emerging technology, it also
offered Gin access to people who were very close to
HP’s technology roadmap.

The key
challenge for HP was recognizing which HP people were
the best fit with Vodafone’s team and providing staff with
expertise that complemented and would enhance
Vodafone’s skill base and culture. This was crucial, as Gin
wanted his team to have exposure to people who were
knowledgeable about an emerging technology that
Vodafone needed to learn more about. “Up-skilling” his
team through exposure to experienced people was a key
goal.

The system produces meaningful, timely reports covering
trend analysis data, billing information, and sales
and financial data. As Gin says, “There have been
improvements of up to 60 percent to the reporting system
enabled by the Integrity servers.

“Additionally, the timely delivery of these reports is now a
part of an internal service-level agreement between
departments.” it will
easily be able to upgrade multiple versions of operating
systems throughout the boxes’ lifecycle to beyond 2011.
Jonathan Drake, HP’s New Zealand marketing manager
for Integrity servers.

“Because the servers are industry-standard rather than
being based on proprietary architecture, overall costs are
significantly impacted. Basically, the costs of actual
components are lower and therefore the upfront costs are
lower. Likewise, the cost of maintenance is less than what
you would find with proprietary alternatives.”

HP constantly focused on aligning its people
and practices with Vodafone’s and on working together
as a team.

Services

Products and services on Vodafone's 3G WCDMA network include:

Video Calling
3G Games
Mobile TV
Business applications.

Coverage

Main centres and most of rural [currently does not provide the level of coverage asTelecom]. Telecom claims its network reaches "more than 97% of the places where Kiwis live and work".

Prefix

021 and 029[ ex Telstra NZ Customers]**

Postpaid customers have 9 digit phone numbers
Prepaid customers have 10 and 11 digit phone numbers

** Vodafone provided the network for Telstra NZ mobile coverage until 2007.

Development

2006 - upgraded to much faster 3G network using HSDPA technology - marketed as Vodafone 3G broadband.

2005 - commenced roll out of 3G network

Ongoing - investments in the 2G network to improve capacity in congested urban areas.

3G Network

The 3G network uses UMTS [Universal Mobile Telecommuncations System] technology becoming widespread in Europe. This offers Vodafone customers: video telephony, music downloads, TV downloads including mobisodes (made for mobile phone tv episodes) and other content from the Vodafone live! portal.

UMTS uses the 2.1GHz frequency band, higher than the 2.1GHz used in the 2G network, meaning less coverage per cell tower, requiring more sites to be built to provide the same level of coverage.

A UMTS 900 rollout can filling the gap between UMTS and GSM coverage, however Vodafone has not made public any plans to introduce UMTS at 900MHz.

2G Network

The existing 2G network uses 900MHz, allowing greater coverage than the 2.1GHz band allows.

Also building a UMTS network at 2.1GHz is much more expensive than the upgrade path originally chosen by Telecom, with CDMA2000 and EVDO. Telecom however commissioned Alcatel-Lucent in early 2007 to begin rollout of a UMTS network also, with a view to ultimately migrating all CDMA subscribers onto this network. A third carrier, NZ Communications, is also rolling out a UMTS network. With all three carriers using the same network technology, and number portability, the barriers to subscriber churn will be very low. This should result in greatly increased competition in the NZ market.

Aquisitions & Mergers

2006 - Vodafone purchased ihug, New Zealands third largest Internet service provider.

Significant Events

Commerce Commission sets zero interconnect fee
Vodafone testing location based technology
Mobile content agreement with Mobile 365
New wholesale deals
Cogent partnership strengthens Vodafone's mobile/fixed convergence play

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