Vodafone Italy

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Vodafone Italia
Type	Private
Founded	1995 as Omnitel Pronto-Italia 2003 rebranded Vodafone Italia
Headquarters	Amsterdam Netherlands
Key people	Ian MacLaurin, Lord MacLaurin of Knebworth, Chairman (till July 2006) Paul Hazen, Deputy Chairman Arun Sarin, Chief Executive Pietro Guindani, CEO Italy
Industry	Mobile telecommunications
Products	Vodafone live!, Vodafone Mobile Connect, Vodafone WLAN, Vodafone live! with 3G, Vodafone Simply, Vodafone Passport etc
Slogan	Life is NOW
Website	www.190.it

Vodafone Italia (former Omnitel Pronto- Italia) is an Italian mobile telephony operator. The company has 26,188,000 customers, as of 30 September 2006, placing it just behind TIM. Vodafone Italia is an owned subsidiary of Vodafone Group plc (76.86%) & Verizon (23.14%), and like other European operators, uses GSM technology; it is presently rolling out an UMTS network.

[edit] History

In December 1995 Omnitel Pronto-Italia launched its services in Italy. Omnitel was a mobile operator and Infostrada (today owned by Wind) was a fixed-line operator. They belonged to Olivetti and represented the first telephone alternative to monopolists TIM and Telecom Italia.

Original majority owner Olivetti sold its interest in Omnitel and Infostrada to the German consortium Mannesmann (which had been a minority shareholder since 1997) after Olivetti took control of Telecom Italia, and thus TIM, in 1999. Mannesmann took control of Omnitel with a 53.7% equity stake.

The following year Vodafone purchased Mannesmann, thus taking control of Omnitel. The Vodafone brand was introduced as Omnitel-Vodafone in 2001, made the primary brand as Vodafone-Omnitel in 2002; finally the current name Vodafone Italia was introduced in 2003, dropping "Omnitel" altogether. Vodafone Italy still uses the old Vodafone Speechmark logo.

The company slogan varies from that of the international Vodafone campaign (Make the most of now) and is Life is NOW. The company website is known as 190.it; 190 is the customer care number for Vodafone Italy. The company's spokesmodel from 1999 to 2006, for both Omnitel and Vodafone, was Australian model Megan Gale.

Since taking over the company, Vodafone has introduced its suite of services in Italy:

• In October 2002 Vodafone live! was launched.
• In February 2004 UMTS services were launched.
• In June 2005 Vodafone Passport was introduced.
• In November 2005 Vodafone Simply mobile phones of were introduced.
• In May 2006 option Vodafone Casa was launched.
• In June 2006 HSPDA services were introduced.
• In December 2006 Primofonino (Firstphone) was introduced. It's a phone created by Vodafone Italy in collaboration with Disney for children.