Vodafone's Chief Pushes to Untangle Wireless Giant
At a meeting with Dutch employees here last week, Vodafone Group PLC Chief Executive Vittorio Colao said the wireless giant is too much like a lumbering jumbo jet stuck on the runway: “A little bit too heavy, not fast enough.”
Two years after taking the helm at Vodafone (VOD), Mr. Colao is trying to get his company to fly faster and higher—aiming to maneuver past its fading business of telephone calls and deeper into the world of mobile data.
“Vodafone has gone through a phase where our industry was developing geographically, mobile only,” Mr. Colao said in a recent interview. “Now, we are in a phase where we need to think more consolidation and total communication.”