Vodafone targets one mln 3G customers in Germany by end-2005

HANOVER, Germany - British mobile phone giant Vodafone is hoping to have more than one million customers using its third-generation networks, dubbed UMTS, in Germany by the end of this year, the head of Vodafone's German unit D2, Juergen von Kuczkowski, said Thursday.
UMTS, or Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, which allows e-mail, high-speed Internet surfing and live sound and image broadcasts via mobile phone handsets, is still in its early stages in Germany, with only around 250,000 users in the eurozone's biggest economy at the end of last year.
The IT and telecom industry federation BitKOM predicts their number could increase tenfold by the end of this year.
Of that total number, D2 could have "clearly more than one million" UMTS customers, von Kuczkowski told a news conference at the high-tech CeBIT fair here.
"UMTS will be the driver of growth in the coming years," he said.
In an attempt to capture customers' imagination, Vodafone D2 is unveiling five new UMTS handsets at this year's CeBIT, of which four would be on the market by the spring.

03/10/2005 10:49 GMT