Vodafone's corporate logo is the outline of a SIM card
Vodafone is a multinationalmobile phone operator with headquarters in Newbury, Berkshire, United Kingdom and Düsseldorf, Germany. It is the largest mobile telecommunications network company in the world, with equity interests in 26 countries and Partner Networks (networks in which it has no equity stake) in a further 14 countries.
1985-01-01: First phone call on Vodafone United Kingdom's Analogue network. This event was staged, due to a network failure; the first calls actually being made the next day
October 1991: Racal Telecom is demerged from Racal Electronics and becomes Vodafone Group.
June 1992: Vodafone Germany's (still as "Mannesmann Mobilfunk GmbH") network went live.
July 1993: BellSouth New Zealand's network went live.
October 1993: Vodafone Australia's network went live.
July 1994: Vodafone Fiji's network went live.
November 1998: Vodafone purchased BellSouth New Zealand, and it became known as Vodafone New Zealand.
December 2002: J-Phone's 3G network went live.
October 1st 2003: Vodafone's Japanese unit J-Phone dropped its brandname in favor of the globally recognized 'Vodafone'.
Vodafone in the United States
In the United States, Vodafone owns 44% of Verizon Wireless, which was the country's largest mobile carrier. However, the phone company Verizon owns a majority of Verizon Wireless and Vodafone's branding is not used, nor is the network compatible with GSM phones.
Vodafone, which has a market value of about $134 billion, announced in February a writedown in goodwill of between £23 billion ($43 billion) and £28 billion ($52.3 billion), largely for its operations in Germany, where it bought Mannesmann in 2000.
Group revenue from continuing operations was £29.4 billion ($55.1 billion), with organic growth of 7.5 percent.
Vodafone was expected to set out plans to cut costs through asset sales and job cuts, and move beyond mobile coverage into business areas that include a fixed-line broadband operation.
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