1  Coｍpany Profile  Vodafone

Narrator: Mobile phones are now (         )(     ) everyday life. People use them all the time and everywhere ... on the street, in cars, on trains.

In the UK over (         ) per cent of the population has a mobile phone. The biggest service (            ) in the UK is a company called Vodafone.

Mike Caldwell: Vodafone is the biggest mobile phone company in the world. It’s the biggest company in Europe and is one of the (       )(      ) companies in the world. In the UK we have something like thirty per cent of the (         ), which means that one (    ) five of the entire population of the UK actually have Vodafone.

On a typical day Vodafone will handle more than (      )(          ) calls, just in the UK alone.

Narrator: Vodafone is (           ) in the south England in Newbury, a small market town about one hundred kilometres (          ) of London. At present the company has sixty-two (            ) office buildings, in different parts of the town.

Mike Caldwell: We’re now building a new global (              ), which is over half a million (            ) feet of office space, just on the outskirts of town. The new Head Office will have something like (           )(       )(    )(          ) thousand people when it’s fully operational.

Narrator: Vodafome is a global Organization. It operates in twenty-five countries, (           ) five continents. The company doesn’t make mobile phones or any other hardware. Vodafone buys (                      ) equipment from manufacturers and uses it to provide a mobile phone service.

Mike Caldwell: The magic thing or the clever thing about Vodafone is the way its technology people actually put together other people’s equipment to deliver the service, in the way that we want it.

Vodafone has over 12,000 employees in the UK, out of a world-wide total of approaching 60,000.

Vodafone has a mixture of employees (             )(        ) engineers and IT specialists through to people who market the products and services that we offer to our customers.

Narrator: The company has approximately three hundred retail stores in the United Kingdom. These employ in the region of 5,000 staff.

Ellie Thornbury: I’m a sales adviser here. I sell the latest Vodafone mobile phones, (                    ) and sell the network to try and promote our services. We’re open nine to five-thirty, six days a week, and on Sundays eleven till five.

At the moment we have (           )(           ) who work in the store. It’s hard to say how many customers come in here every day. On average, I would say, probably about, I don’t know, between thirty to sixty. It really depends on the type of day it is. Saturdays are obviously busier.

We sell on average anything between twenty and fifty phones a day. We get every type of person. We get children (              )(        ) wanting the latest fashion phone, students who want to keep in contact with their families.

Narrator: The name Vodafone isn’t only a common feature on British high streets. The company is a (                ) sponsor of British sport and sporting events, including the England cricket team, touring car racing, and the Derby classic horse race.

Mike Caldwell: Vodafone has over 10 million customers in the UK, and worldwide has over 60 million, a (              ) which is growing very very rapidly.

The customer profile of Vodafone is extremely varied. It ranges from quite young people (       )(    ) to pensioners. The mobile phone is a product that is used by a whole range of people, for a whole range of different uses ‘ from emergency use through to the business man, who uses their mobiles everyday to conduct their business affairs.