Vodafone UK Pumps Extra GBP100m into 150 New Shops and 1400 Staff

Mobile operator Vodafone has boosted their presence in the United Kingdom by another £100 million in order to open 150 new shops and create 1,400 new jobs, which will form part of their annual investment in networks and services that’s currently set to hit £1 billion in 2014. But are they gearing up for something even bigger.

The move will help to support the operator’s on-going roll-out of superfast 4G (LTE) based Mobile Broadband technology, which recently reached 36% population coverage of the UK and should rise to 98% by 2015.

Jeroen Hoencamp, Vodafone UK’s CEO, said:

“This year we’ll invest more than ever before to provide our customers with the strongest network and best services in the UK. We’re also committed to putting our brand and our people where our customers want us: right at the heart of their high street and shopping centre. Our £100 million retail investment this year will increase our ability to serve our customers better with highly skilled personal advice and support in 150 brand-new locations.”

At present Vodafone has more than 19 million UK customers but they’re also under growing pressure from rival operators, especially those that like to bundle multiple content and communication services, and have been keeping a particularly close eye on BT’s recently renewed ambitions in the mobile operator sector.

It’s also generally important to keep an eye on Vodafone right now because, despite languishing at the back of the class for a while (EE and Three UK seem to have taken a lot of their limelight), they’ve recently come into some money (i.e. $84bn from the sale of their American business) and just like any good school boy they’ve gone out to spend it on sweeties.

In particular Vodafone appears to be interested in expanding its influence in Europe, the UK and is already widely rumoured to have held talks with BSkyB (here), which could involve a possible merger or collaboration on broadband, mobile and or TV content. Sky would certainly benefit from mobile and Vodafone might like some more TV content but the broadband side is more of a gamble, not least because they’ve tried and failed to do it before (here).

Elsewhere the rumour mill gets a bit ridiculous and we’ve seen stories that point to interest in everybody from TalkTalk to Virgin Media and even BT. At this rate Vodafone will probably acquire your house, just because they can and admittedly they now have the money to do just about anything but that doesn’t mean to say they’ve lost the plot. We hope.