Monday 23 April 2012

Vodafone

 Vodafone Group Plc, is a British multinational telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers (behind China Mobile), with over 439 million subscribers as of December 2011.
Vodafone owns and operates networks in over 30 countries and has partner networks in over 40 additional countries. It owns 45% of Verizon Wireless, the largest mobile telecommunications company in the United States measured by subscribers. The name Vodafone comes from voice data fone, chosen by the company to "reflect the provision of voice and data services over mobile phones".
Vodafone has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of approximately £89.4 billion as of 23 December 2011, the second-largest of any company listed on the London Stock Exchange. It has a secondary listing on NASDAQ.


Products and services


Products promoted by the Group include Vodafone live!, Vodafone Mobile Connect USB Modem, Vodafone Connect to Friends, Vodafone Passport, Vodafone Freedom Packs, Vodafone at Home, Vodafone 710 and Amobee Media Systems.
In October 2009, it launched Vodafone 360, a new internet service for the mobile, PC and Mac. On 15 February 2010 Vodafone launched world's cheapest mobile phone known as Vodafone 150, will sell for below $15 (£10) and is aimed at the developing world. It will initially be launched in India, Turkey and eight African countries including Lesotho, Kenya and Ghana.


Mobile Money Transfer Service
In March 2007, Safaricom, which is part owned by Vodafone and the leading mobile communication provider in Kenya, launched a mobile payment solution developed by Vodafone. M-PESA is aimed at mobile customers who do not have a bank account, typically because they do not have access to a bank or their income is insufficient to justify a bank account. The M-PESA system allows customers to deposit and withdraw cash via local agents, and transfer money to other mobile phone users via SMS.
By February 2008, the M-PESA money transfer system in Kenya had gained 1.6 million customers and Vodafone announced that it was to extend the service to Afghanistan. The service here was launched on the Roshan network under the brand M-Paisa with a different focus to the Kenyan service. M-Paisa was targeted as a vehicle for microfinance institutions' (MFI) loan disbursements and repayments, alongside business to business applications such as salary disbursement. The service has now been transitioned to be operationally run by IBM Global Services on behalf of Vodafone, the initial 3 markets (Kenya, Tanzania & Afghanistan) are hosted by Rackspace.


The Afghanistan launch was followed in April 2008 by the announcement of further a further launch of M-PESA in Tanzania. As an operator of money transmission services, Vodafone became subject to anti-money laundering regulation and in July 2008, it was revealed that it had deployed a sanctions and PEP (Politically Exposed Persons) screening solution from Datanomic for weekly screening of 2.5 million customers in Tanzania. The screening service was to be rolled out to Afghanistan, Kenya, India and Datanomic disclosed that the solution might be used to screen all of Vodafone's 300 million customers globally.

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