An Interview With Vodafone

We were recently fortunate to talk to the CEO of Vodafone, Grahame Maher, about why Vodafone came to Qatar, how they are doing here - and how they see themselves as measuring up to Qtel.

Grahame goes fairly easy on Qtel, although he does argue that the company was too slow to respond to impending competiton and that the company's promotions only benefit a portion of their customers.

He also implies that Qtel's billing system is unclear, and that customers feel tricked after receiving large bills.

Of course, Grahame is unashamedly baised against Qtel, but we'll be happy to offer Qtel a similar interview if they are interested. (If there are any Qtel people reading this you can get us on admin@qatarvisitor.com :) )

Click here to read a summary of the interview or here to read the full interview.

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Vodafone Scores a Point

I think a lot of us have been surprised by how well Qtel has responded to competition.

From a fairly lackadaisical organisation, (one friend in Qtel remembers going to seminars to teach employees the meaning of competition, and described the employees as bewildered at the concept), Qtel have become much more aggressive at marketing.

One huge advantage they have got is a captive market.

After years of dominating the market, most customers have Qtel accounts - meaning that Qtel can and does bombard them with text marketing, whereas Vodafone has to go all out to reach the same people.

Nevertheless, Vodafone has scored a point today.

On twitter and elsewhere users are pointing out that while Qtel has texted users telling them to use up their free minutes by Sunday, Vodafone have just extended their mobile phone promotion till December, giving Red and Freedom users 300MB of free internet usage.

Vodafone is Here

Vodafone is here, and its website is worth visiting just to see the flash intro - butterflies swirling round the screen and an image of the world before the words: It's a Big World flash up.


The company is announcing its entry with a bang. In a brilliant marketing ploy, the company is concealing 500 pieces of a jigsaw around Villagio Shopping Mall tomorrow (Saturday).

Those finding the 500 pieces can take them to the Vodafone store where they get a goody bag and the opportunity to win one of 50 prize packs - including a Vodafone phone.

Then the winners of those will get to help construct a giant puzzle, and get the opportunity to win an all-expenses trip to absolutely anywhere in the world.

Given the publicity that the event is generating and will generate, that trip will be a lot cheaper than it would be buying sufficient advertising to get the same publicity!

Also see:

Qatar Telephones
Qatar Mobile Phones

Qatar Visitor Friends


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