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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1995 as Omnitel Pronto-Italia 2003 rebranded Vodafone Italia |
| Headquarters | Milan, Italy |
| Key people | Ian MacLaurin, Lord MacLaurin of Knebworth, Chairman (till July 2006) Paul Hazen, Deputy Chairman Arun Sarin, Chief Executive Paolo Bertoluzzo, CEO Italy |
| Industry | Mobile telecommunications |
| Products | Vodafone live!, Vodafone Mobile Connect, Vodafone WLAN, Vodafone live! with 3G, Vodafone Simply, Vodafone Passport etc |
| Website | www.vodafone.it |
Vodafone Italia (former Omnitel Pronto- Italia) is an Italian mobile telephony operator. The company has 29,420,000 customers, as of 30 June 2009 and a market share of 33.4%, placing it just behind TIM. Vodafone Italia is an owned subsidiary of Vodafone Group plc (76.86%) & Verizon (23.14%).
Network and coverage
Like other European operators, Vodafone Italia uses GSM technology, while presently rolling out a UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA network. Vodafone Italia is the only italian GSM operator not implementing 2.75G EDGE, focusing only on 3G standards. As of December 30th, 2008, Vodafone Italia's coverage is
- GSM/GPRS: 99.4% of population, 97% of territory
- UMTS/HSDPA: 78% of population, 80% of territory
History
In December 1995 Omnitel Pronto-Italia launched its services in Italy. Omnitel was a mobile operator and Infostrada (today owned by Wind) was a fixed-line operator. They belonged to Olivetti and represented the first telephone alternative to monopolists TIM and Telecom Italia.
Original majority owner Olivetti sold its interest in Omnitel and Infostrada to the German consortium Mannesmann (which had been a minority shareholder since 1997) after Olivetti took control of Telecom Italia, and thus TIM, in 1999. Mannesmann took control of Omnitel with a 53.7% equity stake.
The following year Vodafone purchased Mannesmann, thus taking control of Omnitel. The Vodafone brand was introduced as Omnitel-Vodafone in 2001, made the primary brand as Vodafone-Omnitel in 2002; finally the current name Vodafone Italia was introduced in 2003, dropping "Omnitel" altogether. Vodafone Italy introduced the new Speechmark Logo only on 10 June 2007.
The company slogan varies from that of the international Vodafone campaign (Make the most of now) and is Life is NOW. The company website was known as 190.it since 190 is the customer care number for Vodafone Italy. Starting from July 2008, the company URL has been changed from "190.it" to "vodafone.it". The company's spokesmodel from 1999 to 2006, for both Omnitel and Vodafone, was Australian model Megan Gale.
The Display name of Vodafone Italy is "vodafone IT" but in the oldest phones "I OMNITEL" (in Nokia phones simply "OMNITEL").
Since taking over the company, Vodafone has introduced its suite of services in Italy:
- In October 2002 Vodafone live! was launched.
- In February 2004 UMTS services were launched.
- In June 2005 Vodafone Passport was introduced.
- In November 2005 Vodafone Simply mobile phones of were introduced.
- In May 2006 option Vodafone Casa was launched.
- In June 2006 HSDPA services were introduced.
- In December 2006 Primofonino (Firstphone) was introduced. It's a phone created by Vodafone Italy in collaboration with Disney for children.
- In June 2007 the Company became the host operator for the MVNO UNOMobile (Carrefour)
- In October 2007 Vodafone provides their own customers have a number of the fixed phone network to be associated with the mobile number.
- In November 2007 the Company became the host operator for the PosteMobile (Poste Italiane)
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