After a troublesome few years with customer service woes and the slipping from the top spot in terms of network leadership, Vodafone marked a confident return to the stage on Thursday with an impressive 5G demonstration at their ‘Future Ready’ analyst and media event. There was little doubt in the room that Vodafone have a renewed sense of purpose after their well publicised shortcomings.
Summary
In a similar vein to the BT Consumer launch, there were a number of announcements made, the detail of which will be provided over the weeks and months to come. Highlights included the evolution of customer contact, newly launched enterprise products, efforts around social responsibility, the introduction of a fully converged core network, and finally a glimpse at their plans for 5G.
Understandably most of the attention, and later Q&A during breakouts, was around the 5G network plans. As things stand there are trials planned across 7 cities with Manchester the first to go live around the middle of 2019 to coincide with device availability. There will also be a digital innovation hub here. Crucially however 2019 will also see rural deployments in both Cornwall and the Lake District. By 2020 the deployment will be at scale with more than 1000 sites deployed.
