Vodafone AirTouch yesterday named partners including IBM and the online broking firm, Charles Schwab, for the launch of its global internet service in a bid to shift the battleground in its continuing £80bn contest to acquire Germany's Mannesmann.
The first stage of the service, offering share trading, news, games, film listings, weather forecasts, travel and banking, will be launched in July. More sophisticated versions will be launched online later.
Vodafone chief executive Chris Gent said the increasing use of mobile telephones to access the web would cause average revenues per user to rise by 20-25% from existing levels of between £330-£350 a year.
Vodafone will give the portal a separate brand which Mr Gent said he hoped would act like the Visa marque and could be overlaid on local content. Core services however, such as the Schwab broking service, will be accessed from any of Vodafone's global markets.
The cost of setting up the service will initially be around $150m (£93m).
The launch was carefully timed to focus Mannesmann shareholders' attention on the high growth parts of the Vodafone business. Mannesmann is due to publish its defence document by the end of this week.
Mr Gent said: "There is nothing in the mobile data and internet that Mannesmann cannot do better with us than alone. We have the scale and global presence which will allow us to confirm our position in this long term race."
Other partners in the service include hardware group IBM - which will build the architecture and host the web portal - Psion, Sun Microsystems, and infospace.com, which will collect content.
None of the agreements are on an exclusive basis. Mr Gent's hope of taking the high ground in the increasingly grubby war of words with Mannesmann was momentarily dashed when he was forced to defend himself over imprudent comments made to a reporter during a cricket match in South Africa.
He allegedly poked fun at Mr Esser's affection for poetry, adopting a German accent and inciting already sensitive national feelings in Düsseldorf.
Mr Gent said yesterday: "I was surprised by the remarks attributed to me in Cape Town.
"They were out of context and inaccurate. I regret that they were reported at all, because they were made on a social occasion."
Mannesmann, predictably, said it was unimpressed with Vodafone's internet plans.
The German company lambasted Vodafone's lack of control in many of its markets - it can only guarantee adoption in the 10 national markets where it has the majority shareholding - and the company's failure to secure exclusive arrangements.
"Even more importantly, Vodafone's projections of increased revenue per user serve to confirm the insufficient value of a hostile offer that fails to compensate shareholders for Mannesmann's superior internet, data and tele-commerce future," Mr Esser insisted.
Vodafone will also be working with makers of palm-held computers to make its internet service easily accessible from other wireless devices.
The second phase, which will be launched at the end of the year, will include a more comprehensive version of the worldwide web, voice activation and the introduction of virtual private networks.
Mr Gent said he expected further marriages of content and internet access providers.
