Vodafone Qatar CEO Graeme Maher yesterday said that the next “first” in the company’s opening year – offering services to non-shareholders - will “definitely take place before the end of July.”
Speaking to Gulf Times, Maher said the new services would be launched depending on two factors.
“First, it will depend on our testing, which we are carrying out at the moment with our shareholders and first 1,000 customers,” he said, explaining that Vodafone Qatar had recently launched a number of face-to-face and cash services which are currently being tested.
“The second factor will be deciding the right commercial time for us,” he argued, adding “this could be within the next two or three days, or the next two or three weeks – that will depend.”
When his attention was brought to reports in a section of the media that Vodafone was delaying their launch as a result of the “unavailability of outdoor advertising space at the moment”, he said that this was not the case.
Referring to the supposed lack of advertising space, he said that far from being a problem, it was actually a healthy sign as it was an indication of true competition and claimed that in other parts of the world it would be expected.
“Qtel knows we are planning something so they have done the sensible thing and bought up a lot of advertising space – this happens in other countries all the time,” claimed Maher.
“It is good for the society here to see competition – competition is healthy,” he claimed, “and we intend to compete and compete hard!”
Maher was also keen to emphasise the fact that Vodafone was already “up and running,” and was offering services to a thousand customers in Qatar currently.
He said that things were going “reasonably well,” and referred to positive feedback from customers, but admitted “we are still in the early stages and still have lots to do.”
Vodafone currently has 98% population coverage, but is working to improve geographical coverage of the country.
http://gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=299047&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16
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