Wednesday was not exactly the best of days to speak to the new chief executive officer of Vodafone Malta Ltd. The Vodafone Group had just announced interim results that had caused the share price to plummet by nearly 11 per cent, which it had gained slowly during the past six months, wiping out £9 billion of the company's market capitalisation on the London Stock Exchange.

Mind you, the results were not all that bad. It was only the warning of a slowdown in top-line growth and weakening margins in 2006 that caused the shudder. Yet, despite the sharpest one-day fall in years, Hatem Dowidar is sanguine and upbeat, shrugging off the news. The new Vodafone CEO immediately launches into a eulogy of Vodafone Malta.

Sitting in an armchair in his bright, airy office on the fifth floor of the new wing of Vodafone's offices in Valley Road, Birkirkara, he reminds me that Vodafone Malta was the Vodafone Group's first international operation. Apart from this sentimental value, because of Malta's size, it has also been a test bed for new products and services within the group worldwide.

"This has slowed down in the last couple of years due to competition with Go Mobile," he affirms. "We are in the process of resuming that role. One of the reasons why I am here is to start looking at using Malta as a hub to develop new services."

Thanks to the group's central resources, the Maltese community would be benefiting from having the latest technology.

Another reason he is here is to see how the mobile can be less of an 'emergency' device and more the centre for enjoying life. "We want our customers not just to make calls but also to use their mobiles to synchronise their calendar, communicate generally, listen to music, and exchange e-mails and picture messages," Mr Dowidar said. "We want them to have a much richer experience to enable them to enjoy life."

The major target he has set for the almost 300 staff at Vodafone Malta is that 3G (third-generation) mobile telephony is to be rolled out in Malta by autumn 2006. This gives his outfit less than a year to respond and it also comes less than a year after Vodafone Malta was granted its 3G licence from the Malta Communications Authority.

"This is quite a fast roll-out since most European countries took two to three years to respond after they got their licence," Mr Dowidar said. Among the benefits of 3G, he said, is the facility to view e-mail and browse the Internet on the road with the same speed of a broadband connection.

"You can wish your kids good night before they go to sleep using video telephony, download the latest song in less than a minute and pay for it from your mobile bill. There are 100,000 songs on the Vodafone catalogue. That is one of the benefits of being a member of a global group of the scale and size of Vodafone."

Turning to the latest Vodafone Malta campaign, Mr Dowidar said the response to the offer to talk for an hour and pay for a minute had been unprecedented since it had been making any sort of offer. "We have received three times the response to any offer: 15,000 customers subscribed in three days. This is clearly something that customers wanted."

Mr Dowidar is the first to admit that he has brought a different approach to doing business. Since he arrived in Malta last August (see box for biography), he has met the entire staff together on three occasions.

Every other week he holds a breakfast meeting with staff chosen at random during which he makes a presentation on the company's position and goals, and answers questions.

He wants all the staff to know how customers feel about the company and their targets are similarly made known throughout the company, not just to the management team. He also writes a monthly newsletter that he distributes among the staff.

He says he has found the staff to be "very passionate about the company and the customer, which is very important in our people". In only four months, three members of staff have been send on assignments within the Vodafone Group, which he sees as a plus, leading to a cross-fertilisation of ideas with the group.

He is pleased that the "capabilities of the people here match those at head office" but sees the benefit of the local staff getting the opportunity to think of the business from a global perspective.

In terms of input, rather than going for expatriates, Mr Dowidar prefers to get expertise here in the form of workshops for one-week training, ensuring the transfer of know-how in short, intense bursts.

Vodafone Malta has also embarked on areas of business that have not been undertaken by the Vodafone Group, notably the laying of the submarine voice and data cable linking Malta to the Internet backbone.

"This means that we are wholesaling Internet bandwidth to local Internet service providers (ISPs), which is a first within the Vodafone Group," Mr Dowidar said.

The company has also applied for a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) licence. BWA is a spectrum of radio frequency for new technology Wi-MAX networks (a type of longer range Wi-Fi) that is complementary to 3G telephony. "This will enable us to supply ISPs and big corporate customers with last-mile connectivity," he said.

Vodafone is proud of its presence in Malta and its contribution to the local economy. "During our 15 years in Malta, Vodafone has introduced different mobile solutions," Mr Dowidar said. "GSM was introduced at the same time as in Europe.

"Our contribution to a better telephone infrastructure has been proved by the World Trade Organisation and trade research to contribute to a higher rate of growth. We have also helped the tourism industry through our presence."

Mr Dowidar looks forward to taking the local business into the 21st century in a big way. Leading by example, he is highly passionate about what he does and he is also excited about the experience he is gaining from such a dynamic operation.