Vodafone is committed to building a world-class network in Qatar and provide value to customers, Group CEO Vittorio Colao said. “Qatar is significantly important to us. We can build from Qatar after delivering the best service to customers in the country,” he said in an exclusive interview with Gulf Times. Colao said he was ‘extremely proud’ of Vodafone’s achievements in Qatar so far. “We feel fortunate in having a good local partner - Qatar Foundation - who is giving us full support as we bring in superior telecom experience to Qatar. It is almost a textbook case of how you can co-operate in our sector. Ours is one of the best, if not the best, partnerships globally,” Colao said. He said Vodafone would never rest on the laurels of past glory. “We need to move on. We need to have new and better broadband data and enterprise service in Qatar; we need to get into fixed and convergent services. We are working on international payments, which is incredibly important for Qatar as a whole. Qatar could become our hub for the payment system,” Colao said. Emerging markets are other growth areas for Vodafone, he said. “As we roll out 3G services in India, Africa and other countries, mobile broadband data transfer will become very important. Enterprise services are also potential growth drivers. Thanks to technology, even small companies have become international now,” Colao said. He said Vodafone has not reduced its ‘investments by one pound’ on account of the global economic downturn. “We have not delayed any project on a global scale or cut back on our budget for advertisements or other commercial programmes. I am very fortunate in being the CEO of a company with a long-term orientation. We have very strong local roots everywhere,” said Colao, who took over as Vodafone Group CEO in July last year. While Vodafone has not reduced its “technical or commercial investments,” the company is “reducing costs by sharing and outsourcing more.” He said “networking sharing is important because it will be a waste of resources if it is not done.”. Asked whether Vodafone was looking at growth opportunities in the region, Colao said: “For sure, we will look for opportunities with our Qatari partners. The world is pretty developed with many players. The penetration rates are also very high. But in principle, we can always look for opportunities elsewhere.” Colao, who was visiting Qatar for the first time said: “I see development with a vision in Qatar. In many places, there is more vision than development. We see a great future for Qatar, which is focused on sustainable development.” http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=324329&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16

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