Press Releases
Vodafone sums up communications for the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union
Lisbon, 7 January 2008 – Vodafone has given a highly positive report on the six months during which it managed all the fixed and mobile communications services (voice and data) for the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Vodafones services were available at all the 140 meetings held under the auspices of the Presidency at 10 different locations in Portugal (Pavilhão Atlântico, Belém Cultural Centre and FIL in Lisbon, Estoril, Mafra, Albufeira, Évora, Porto, Guimarães and Viana do Castelo), involving around 55,000 participants.
Vodafone installed over 1300 fixed telephones and provided around 500 mobile phones. It processed around 650,000 minutes and over 1.6 terabytes of data traffic on its network at the meeting venues between 1 July and 31 December 2007. In the same period, the call setup success rate was 99.99%, attesting to the high level of reliability and availability of the services provided.
Internet services were provided at all the meetings, using mobile and fixed network technologies such as dedicated lines for video streaming, Wi-Fi and 3G/UMTS. Vodafone also provided fixed and mobile voice and fax services and supplied various data solutions such as ISDN lines, fixed data with dedicated Internet, 3G/3.5G mobile data using Vodafone Mobile Connect Cards and the Vodafone BlackBerry mobile e-mail service.
The communications requirements were extremely broad-based and demanding, involving both fixed and mobile voice and data services. Vodafone opted to supply convergent fixed-mobile solutions that made it possible to respond in record time to the wide range of requirements associated with events of this kind.