Practice what you preach, Vodafone tells new entrants

Vodafone Malta plans to remain the leader in local mobile services and has called on new entrants to the market to offer tangible value to subscribers instead of criticising the competition before kickstarting their own operation.

Inaki Berroeta was reacting to an interview Stephen Wright, chief operations officer of TV, internet and telephony group Melita, gave to The Sunday Times saying Malta's third mobile operator would offer a "cheaper, simpler and better" service from February.

"We expect new entrants such as Melita not to wait any longer and to start to practice what they preach by offering real value for money in broadband and TV packages," Mr Berroeta told The Times Business. "When compared to European standards, Malta fairs poorly in terms of costs and quality on TV and broadband packages, so they have a lot to catch up on even before they launch mobile. They charge customers for upgrades they carry out on their technology, whereas we are constantly investing in technology optimisation and these do not reflect in our customers' bill...

"Without undermining the challenges ahead, Vodafone believes that competition is healthy because it draws the focus on the customer, our most important asset. In this context, we plan to remain the leader in mobile services while making other communication services such as internet, available for everyone."

With over 208,000 subscribers, Mr Berroeta says Vodafone's mobile community is not only the largest in the country but also the "most connected one locally". And statistics show that mobile services are increasing in popularity when compared to fixed telephony.

Referring to pricing, Mr Berroeta points out that Vodafone in Malta has one of the lowest SMS rates in Europe besides a range of business and personal tariffs, devised following customer feedback. He says Vodafone has been "proactive" in the broadband market where customers "until Vodafone's entry, were limited in price and in speed of their broadband services".

Vodafone Malta, a member of the global group present in 26 countries, has halved the price of its internet key and is giving it away for free with some tariff plans.

Mr Berroeta says Vodafone sought to offer a better solution: "Vodafone believes the two main players have very high prices on broadband. Not only have we subsidised the Vodafone internet key, but we have added new tariffs, addressing the needs of our diverse customer base.

"High users may benefit from the Liberty Platinum plan and get the highest data downloads coupled with a totally subsidised internet key. Students, on the other hand, may for the first time get their internet key refunded through the Smart Card grant. All this is in line with making internet services available for all at home and beyond."

In the meantime, Vodafone plans to consolidate its enterprise services to offer solutions to facilitate business activity tangibly. Its submarine cable carries internet, voice and data traffic to and from Malta and provides advanced protection against "distributed denial of service attacks".

"This service is used primarily by service providers using sensitive applications to protect them against fraudulent attacks," Mr Berroeta explains. "Some of this traffic would be generated and terminated on the Vodafone mobile network, or by virtue of the interconnections Vodafone has with other local operators. This traffic would be brought from abroad and terminated on other local competitors' networks, either mobile or the normal house phone.

"Vodafone carries internet traffic for ISPs, betting and gaming companies, and data traffic for corporate entities such as banks and software houses. These entities would require secure leased circuits to connect Malta to, for example, London, Frankfurt or the US. All internet capacity sold to our customers is a guaranteed capacity from their premises until it is handed over to the international carriers and uses 1:1 contention ratio: if an ISP purchase 100 Mbps from Vodafone, Vodafone will deliver 100 Mbps from the ISP premises right up to our Milan carrier interconnection point."

Vodafone provides leased circuits from Malta to cities like London, Frankfurt, Netherlands and Milan; through its Tier 1 international carriers Vodafone can provide connectivity across the world.

Asked what kind of Christmas Vodafone Malta was anticipating, Mr Berroeta replies: "A happy Christmas!" as it works to enable customers to connect.

"Our €30 Christmas Card is again a first locally," Mr Berroeta says. "We are offering real unlimited talk-time, free SMS and MMS to all our customers. Simpler than this - is hard to get. Vodafone will be providing a wide range of handsets with which customers will be getting free talk-time, SMS and MMS. Apart from empowering customers, Vodafone is also offering new customers the possibility to be rewarded instantly for the talk-time they consume every month."

The CEO points out knowledge-sharing among the group's 60,000 employees allows tiny Malta to benefit from high-tech devices and services, such as the iPhone, Blackberry and the internet key, and to offer a mobile network of equal or superior quality to the rest of Europe.

He says this year Vodafone was the first to launch post-paid tariffs for consumers with a price reduction of over 25 per cent, the only operator to bring the iPhone and Blackberry to Malta, the only operator to offer home internet without the need of a fixed or cable wire connection (Vodafone boasts 2,400 customers and counting), the best EU roaming rates and the only operator to take up the Malta Communication Authority proposal and opened its network to mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) to bring more choice in the market.

Mr Berroeta says 2008 was a challenging and exciting year: "Challenging because Vodafone is competing in a new scenario. The dynamics of the local market have changed and will continue to change rapidly as we go along. Exciting because we are part of that change and have probably brought about the highest degree of change throughout this year".