Vodafone is one of the world’s biggest mobile telecommunications operators. It provides mobile services in more than 26 countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia and has joint ventures with local partners in 49 other countries in the Americas and Eastern Europe. Vodafone also provides fixed-line services in 17 countries. Vodafone has almost 20 million clients in the UK and almost 444 million around the world.

The name of the company, Vodafone, is derived from the phrase “voice data fone”, reflecting the company’s goal of providing telephone calls and mobile data services. Outside of mobile and fixed-line communications, Vodafone also provides money transfer services through its M-PESA platform, cloud and data hosting solutions, as well as Internet of Things network intelligence and data analysis tools.

The origin of the company lies in early 1980’s when it was founded as a private-sector cellular subsidiary of Racal Electronics, a multinational conglomerate specialising in public-sector defence electronics. In the late 1980’s Racal Telecom changed its name to Vodafone and became a public company. Vodafone opened its first high street store in 1993. Today, Vodafone shares are one of the biggest names on the global stock markets.

By 2000, Vodafone became the world’s largest mobile telecoms company though rapid global expansion and multiple large acquisitions, including Germany’s Mannesmann. By the 2010’s the company started to rationalise its global footprint and took the decision to exit the US market. It sold its 45% stake in the largest US mobile provider Verizon in an enormous $130 billion cash-and-shares transaction, the largest corporate M&A deal at the time. Vodafone shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Though the years, Vodafone has been a technology pioneer, launching UK’s first digital mobile phone (GSM) network in 1991 and first 3G network in 2001. Vodafone launched its 4G LTE coverage in 2013 and has recently won bandwidth spectrum to enable it to start transitioning to a new 5G standard for making phone calls and streaming high-speed mobile data.