Vodafone today said its Capex (telecom investment) for fiscal 2016 will be around £8.5 billion to £9 billion or nearly $14.1 billion.

Fiscal 2016 will be the second year of Project Spring investment. The $14 billion Capex program indicates that Vodafone will lower its investment this fiscal as compared with £9.2 billion in fiscal 2015 and £6.3 billion in fiscal 2014.

Vittorio Colao, group chief executive of Vodafone, said: “Our Project Spring investment program is on plan, delivering a significantly improved experience to customers. In Europe, 4G coverage now extends to over 70 percent of footprint, and voice quality and reliability have improved noticeably. We now reach 28 million homes with our own, next generation cable and fiber networks.”

“We have opportunities ahead of us, with only 13 percent of our European mobile customers using 4G, and our market share in fixed services only a fraction of our share in mobile,” Colao added.

Vodafone has completed 63 percent of the mobile network element of Project Spring, with 72 percent 4G coverage in Europe and 90 percent 3G coverage in target areas of India.

Vodafone has 20.2 million 4G customers across the Group, who are on average using twice the data of 3G customers.

The telecom operator will invest in key growth areas in Enterprise, with machine-to-machine (M2M) revenue growing 24.7 percent.

Vodafone announced Project Spring in November 2013 to invest £19 billion to ensure growth in mobile data and focus on the convergence of fixed and mobile services.

The telecom service provider aims that 4G will reach 90 percent of the population in its European markets and 3G reaches to up to 95 percent of targeted areas of India.

Investment in modernization of mobile network, high speed backhaul, upgrade of retail presence, fixed line infrastructure in Spain, Italy and Portugal, and enhancing Enterprise products and services are some of the focus areas.

Baburajan K
[email protected]