Vodafone opts for BT to offer customers broadband service

As widely expected, The Sunday Telegraph reports that…

Vodafone will this week announce a strategic deal with BT to offer its mobile phone customers high-speed internet connections in the home.

And.. Well.. I’m afraid I’m rather underwhelmed. There’s been a lot of talk around the blogosphere about this being a 100% ‘me too’ strategy for Vodafone.

It’ll certainly be useful for a lot of people. The same usefulness you get when you walk into an Orange store and, provided you spend over 35 pounds a month, as for free broadband.

It’s getting a bit cheap now. We’re getting well into ‘big deal?’ status now when Sky Television chucks in free broadband for its subscribers.

Cheap as chips. Yes there are data limits but it’s a reasonable offering from most suppliers.

I struggle to understand the mindset of the executive team at Vodafone. Surely this wasn’t a kneejerk reaction to what the industry is doing? Surely they didn’t get wind of the ‘Orange are gonna do broadband’ and think ‘Shit quick get that chap from BT on the phone’?

If it wasn’t kneejerk, then they’ll have been considering this move for a good few years. Everyone and their donkey can see that offering your customers broadband is a logical step if you’re thinking of trying to grab a subset of the broadband market. Your customers buy broadband from someone, probably BT, so why not try and get that revenue running through your coffers?

But why? There’s logic there, yes. But if that’s the main driver, then a) why wasn’t Vodafone Broadband launched 2 years ago (you know, lead the market, yeah?) and b) why haven’t they launched Vodafone Funerals – using the same logic that everyone who buys Vodafone mobile also, at some point, needs a funeral? 😉

I’m afraid this is another Woe Is Vodafone post. I’m so tired of them playing second fiddle. Of them being the fat kid at the back munching on a mars bar, staring at the wall, only getting off their arse when they really need to. Like most Brits, I still harbour a secret desire to see them do great things.

Where are the market moving ballsy moves that we used to see? The takeovers, the strategic moves, the innoavtions?

Or am I just looking back through rose tinted glasses? Perhaps they never were that good in the first place?

What is interesting is where they – and the other operators offering fixed line telecoms – are headed. Or think they are headed.

I see the strategy. I understand the mechanisms. I just despair. Stop sodding about being third or forth to the table. It doesn’t matter how many corporate bigwigs in smart ties tell me about their market development paths, I was still victimised with neolithic data prices when I was abroad last month.

Do we really have to sit and wait for Steve Jobs to sort it all out?

Is this announcement really the best that the world’s supposed biggest mobile company can knock up? A me-too press release?

I’m a terrific fan of Mr Jobs and his work at Apple and Disney. I just wish we had a few of his type working in the mobile industry.

Mind you – we might do, come September 12th, when Steve does his ‘one more thing’ presentation to the assembled media. And that, my dear reader, could be rather exciting.

I would also pay 260 meg’s worth of international data to be a fly on the wall in the board rooms of our leading mobile operators when news comes of Jobs’ Third Coming – Mobile.

One can but dream…