MCI INTERVIEW
MCI INTERVIEW
into 2008. Vodafone’s capex guidance
for the financial year 07/08 projects
a year on year increase to between
£4.7bn and £5.1bn. The growth is in
part down to greater variety in Vodafone’s
operations.
“I see something of a mix-change
going forward,” he says. “We’ve acquired
new properties with Tele2 and
we’re doing self-build in a number of
other properties; unbundled local loop,
primarily. That takes us into buying
new types of technologies—wireline,
DSLAM, DSL, VDSL and beyond. IPTV
as well. So we’re into a new era of
expenditure, which will accelerate
in 2008.”
Historically Vodafone, like all pure
mobile players, has marched beneath
the banner of fixed mobile substitution—the
more minutes that shift from
fixed to mobile the better. Now the
carrier has fixed plays as well, does
such a strategy remain logical?
“FMS is something we still press
very hard on,” says Pusey. “As you
look toward total communications,
DSL is an integral part of it and also
underpins our thrust into the business
segment. We can service SMEs
with connectivity services and then
build on that with a mix of mobility
and convergent services. We see it as
very complementary but that doesn’t
mean for one minute that we won’t
keep pushing to get an unfair share
of the fixed minutes as well.”
Investment in the core capability
of wireless service provision will
not suffer, he says. And in Vodafone’s
mature markets 2008 will see the
firm focus on HSPA. “You will see us
upgrade our HSPA footprint to grow
speeds and capabilities. We always
carry on with our commitments
to national footprint. But there is
definitely going to be more hotspot
and penetrative investment to deal
with capacity growth with the drive
towards data, because data isn’t a
‘one-size-fits-all’ spread across a given
country,” he says.
career history
» Steve Pusey, joined Vodafone Group Plc on 1st
September 2006 as Global Chief Technology Officer.
Steve is responsible for all aspects of Vodafone’s
networks, IT capability, Research and Development
and supply chain management.
» Prior to joining Vodafone, Steve was one of the most
senior executives at Nortel and held the position of
Executive Vice President, and President, Nortel EMEA.
» He joined Nortel 1982 and gained a wealth of international
experience across both the wireline and wireless industries
and in enterprise applications and solutions. During his time
as President of Europe from 2001 to 2005, he managed
far-reaching change programmes that led the region back
to significant growth.
» Steve Pusey gained telecoms and microelectronics
qualifications prior to spending several years with
British Telecom and is a graduate of the Advanced
Management Program at Harvard University.
Pusey reports that he is satisfied
with the performance of his 3G networks.
Data access usage is growing
healthily with data cards and USB
modems proving popular in 2007 and
forecast to do better in 2008. HSDPA
performance of 7.2Mbps is already in
place in some Vodafone networks, Pusey
reveals, and will be implemented
across the portfolio this year as the
firm aims to provide a consistent
service across its footprint. Uplink
performance will also be addressed,
he says.
“It’s not just about the downlink. So
far I haven’t seen too many services
that require symmetry but, as soon as
you start doing peer to peer traffic, you
have to think of the uplink as well as
the downlink.”
Greenfield build-outs are rare
for cellular carriers these days,
given how few licences are becoming
available. But Vodafone
snagged one such opportunity in
34 Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business
December 2007 as part of a consortium
that won the second licence
in the Middle Eastern nation
of Qatar. Services are expected to
launch this year. So, does Steve Pusey
prefer the blank canvass of the
Greenfield deployment for the opportunities
it provides to learn from
previous challenges?
“Greenfield is exciting,” he says,
“you get a clean sheet of paper. But,
if you go into any of the big countries
in Europe, you’d see a state of
the art infrastructure and if you had
that clean sheet of paper there, you’d
probably build what you’ve already
got in place.”
Far more familiar are post-acquisition
evolutionary build-outs. This,
says Pusey, is one of Vodafone’s core
skills. “We’ve become pretty good
at assimilating legacy and moving
forward. That’s a forte of this
company, from a technical point of
view,” he says. Nowhere is this more
effectively illustrated than in India,
where Vodafone is engaged in a build
out “the like of which Europe has
never seen,” according to Pusey.
“In India you’re looking at 2,000
base stations a month. Lots of European
countries have 12,000 base
stations, so we’re building a large
European country in 12 months at
that rate. That’s a tremendous build
programme.” Such is the scale of
the deployment, says Pusey, that it
ought not to be described as ‘emerging’.
Nonetheless, he says, “emerging
markets are a big part of our
capex spend.”
India has also become a proving
ground for advanced outsourcing
strategies from Vodafone. In December
the firm established an
independent tower company with
its Indian rivals Bharti Infratel and
Ideal Cellular. The firm, Indus Towers,
will provide passive infrastructure
services to all Indian operators.
Vodafone has also outsourced its
entire Indian IT estate to IBM. »
To view a Ceros magazine you need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser and have the flash player 8 or higher installed. To install the latest flash player, click the icon above, install the flash plugin and then click here to refresh this page.