The Board of Vodafone Essar is scheduled to meet on Friday to kick-start the branding strategy for the rechristened Vodafone brand.
NEW DELHI: The Board of Vodafone Essar is scheduled to meet on Friday to kick-start the branding strategy for the rechristened Vodafone brand and considering expansion plans for the country's third-biggest mobile operator.
Vodafone CEO and vice chairman of the company Arun Sarin is expected to arive tonight to attend the quarterly board meeting. The Board is likely to discuss the migration of the Hutch brand to Vodafone and operational issues like expansion of network to accommodate more subscribers and the possibility of introducing low-cost handsets, sources said.
Ahead of the meeting, the company today had a audit committee meeting to take stock of the income and expenditures and the investments in the months ahead. Vodafone has already announced an investment of two billion dollars in India. It has previously said its focus would be on rural markets. Vodafone has tied up with Chinese handset maker ZTE for global low-cost handset distributions.
The re-branding marks the completion of UK-based Vodafone's acquisition of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunication Ltd's Indian assets in May 2007. The company was in July 2007 renamed Vodafone Essar.
India will now become the 26th country where Vodafone has operations, covering across five continents and 40 partner networks with over 200 million customers worldwide.
Vodafone Essar is a subsidiary of Vodafone Group Plc. Hutch had commenced operations in 1994 when its predecessor Hutchison Telecom acquired the cellular licence for Mumbai.
The company now has operations in 16 circles covering 86 per cent of India's mobile customer base, with over 34.1 million customers.
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