Vodafone back on track with Tele2 acquisition

Got a press release in on Saturday morning from Vodafone announcing their acquisition of Tele2 Italy and Tele2 Spain, for cool 755 million EURO. Both Tele2s are specialist fixed-line telecommunications and broadband service providers and in total, Vodafone’s acquired about 3.1 million new customers (of that, about 640,000 are direct broadband customers).

This obviously puts Vodafone into a good position in rapidly growing markets. But more, for me, it brings back an echo of a Vodafone-gone-by: ‘The almighty red’. Whatever your views on paying 35p a minute to call another mobile network, you could, in days gone by, sit back and marvel at the growth of the company.

For some time now I’ve felt Vodafone’s been rather lacklustre. Just a feeling. I’m pleased to see a resurgence. 232 million customers at the end of June 2007 can’t be bad either.