Vodafone Group plc on Thursday said its capital expenditure (Capex) rose 20.7 percent to $2.9 billion (£1.8 billion) in the third quarter of fiscal 2014.
Vodafone said it will announce the preferred vendors for Project Spring in February with contracts being awarded thereafter.
The increase in Capex — £0.3 billion higher than the prior year quarter – was due to the accelerated phasing of investment. Incremental investment for Project Spring of £0.5 billion is expected within the current financial year.
Vittorio Colao, CEO of Vodafone, said: “Project Spring, £7 billion organic investment program, will accelerate our plans to establish stronger network and service differentiation for our customers.”
Highlights of Vodafone Capex
In India, Vodafone added over 2,000 more 3G sites and now have 33,000 sites connected with high capacity backhaul.
In Germany, Vodafone upgraded over 1,000 sites with high capacity backhaul links. This combined with its on-going network improvement plan has resulted in a significant improvement in data performance.
In Turkey, Vodafone signed a national fibre agreement, providing access to an additional 7,300 kilometres of fibre, to support high capacity backhaul links to our mobile network and enhance our fixed line capability.
During the quarter, Vodafone initiated Project Spring to further strengthen our network and service differentiation. It has set up a centralized governance structure for Project Spring to oversee procurement and progress on deployment, and negotiations with network vendors are on-going.