The Journey to a Global Network Starting Positions: How It All Began

It was established in late 1998 that, in order to realize the global cost synergies anticipated by Vodafone as arising from a potential merger (at that time) with AirTouch Communications, Inc., of California, the interorganizational relationships with supply partners needed to be globalized—without actually qualifying what was intended by the term “globalization” or indeed, in the circumstances, how this relationship transformation was to be achieved. What was clear, however, was that “globalization” should not be considered synonymous with “centralization”; in fact, the contrary. As became evident later, it was paramount that this globalization endeavor engage the parties affected by implementation of the chosen strategy, an inclusive process that was to remain the ethos through this and the subsequent phases to a point of inflection introduced in Chapter 5. It was recognized that the mobile network infrastructure cost synergies for Vodafone could only be realized by the in-country operations. The value and effectiveness were demonstrably evident throughout the subsequent achievement of the financial aggregation cost synergies.