The Birth of The World’s First Super Mobile Carrier?

• Posted: Tuesday, February 03, 2009
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Market Survey, Mobile 3G

It’s been talked about and some have even tried, but at present, there are no truly global carriers in the mobile space, something that Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao wants to change.

While there are mobile operators with networks across multiple markets, such as Hutchison’s Three, and obviously Vodafone itself, and companies with assets in multiple countries such as SingTel Group, none can claime coverage worldwide.

In an interview with the UK’s Financial Times, Colao suggests that acombination of Vodafone, Verizon Wireless and China Mobile could create such a super carrier that would be “unbeatable.”
“If you think of three players, China Mobile is very strong in China; it’s a big country. Vodafone is very strong in Europe, Africa, India. Verizon is very strong in the US. If these three companies could work more closely... in the management of customers, procurement and service creation, we could be unbeatable, quite frankly,” he said.

While the notion might seem farfetched, there is some potential behind Colao’s words. Vodafone already owns 45% of Verizon Wireless and 3.2% of China Mobile. The three companies also announced last year that they would cooperate on the development of LTE.

Colao only has to convince the two partners to work a little closer together. Perhaps the only glitch in such a plan is China Mobile’s 3G license in China, which is based strictly on the home-grown TD-SCDMA platform. [Tony Chan-CommsDay]

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