Vodafone and Microsoft ink 10-year strategic partnership

UK-telecom giant Vodafone announced a new year 10-year strategic partnership with Microsoft to deliver digital platform services for its 300 million customers across Europe and Africa. Through the partnership, Vodafone plans to deploy generative AI, offered managed IoT connectivity, and boost datacenter capabilities for small and medium enterprises.

The firm plans to invest $1.5 billion into AI, with its IoT connectivity capabilities becoming a standalone business in April 2024. Using Azure OpenAI, Vodafone stated its intention to create hyper-personalized experiences for customers across 13 countries, with its TOBi digital assistant. The company anticipates having up to 175 million IoT devices connected to its networks and working on digital acceleration in Africa, such as the popular M-PESA platform. Additionally, the company will swap many of its physical datacenters for virtual ones in Europe.

“Today, Vodafone has made a bold commitment to the digital future of Europe and Africa. This unique strategic partnership with Microsoft will accelerate the digital transformation of our business customers, particularly small and medium-sized companies, and step up the quality of customer experience for consumers,” stated Margherita Della Valle, Vodafone Group chief executive.

“This new generation of AI will unlock massive new opportunities for every organization and every industry around the world. We are delighted that together with Vodafone we will apply the latest cloud and AI technology to enhance the customer experience of hundreds of millions of people and businesses across Africa and Europe, build new products and services, and accelerate the company’s transition to the cloud,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft, in a statement.