Vodafone Germany's new CEO Jens Schulte-Bockum said he expects data traffic volume to grow by 2,000 per cent over the next three years.
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Schulte-Bockum |
Schulte-Bockum said in an interview with German newspaper Rheinische Post that around 80 per cent of German mobile customers will be using smartphones in three years time, comapred to 30 per cent today. To handle this huge upsurge in data traffic, Schulte-Bockum, who took over running Vodafone Germany at the start of October, says that investment in LTE will be vital.
"We have invested more than any of our rivals in LTE. This year we have boosted net investments in our network to over €1 billion, and will continue a similar level of Capex spend into next year," Schulte-Bockum said. "As a result, I want to offer nationwide LTE by 2015 in Germany."
Schulte-Bockum said he believes that the performance of LTE will also encourage fixed line customers in Germany to move their voice and broadband subscriptions across to LTE. "Already, many consumers use their mobile devices as their preferred choice for voice and Internet access," he said.
However, this shift to LTE will also impact the company's existing voice and messaging revenues, he saod, adding that this aspect of its business accounts for around two-thirds of its revenue today, but will fall to contributing only a third of the company's overall revenues in a few years.
Separately, the company will launch a Vodafone-branded Android tablet in time for the Christmas sales period. The €189 "Vodafone Smart Tab 2" device will come with a 7-inch screen and is being manufactured for the company by Lenovo.
For more:
- see this Rheinische Post article (translated via Google Translate)
- see this Handelsblatt article (translated via Google Translate)
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