Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao has hinted at closer ties between his company, China Mobile and Verizon Wireless, two operators in which the UK-based group has minority stakes. In an interview with the Financial Times, Colao said the three operators could create an “unbeatable” alliance that would allow them to drive adoption of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard on a global basis, focus on Internet services and give them added bargaining power in the procurement of handsets and other mobile equipment. “If you think of three players, China Mobile is very strong in China… Vodafone is very strong in Europe, Africa, India. Verizon is very strong in the US,” said Colao. “If these three companies could work more closely… in the management of customers, procurement and service creation, we could be unbeatable, quite frankly.”

Vodafone owns a 3.2 percent stake in China Mobile, China’s largest mobile operator, and a 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless, now the largest mobile operator in the US. All three companies have previously pledged their support for LTE. China Mobile announced at last year’s GSMA Mobile World Congress that it is to join Vodafone and Verizon in trialing LTE, using a version of LTE known as TD-LTE, an evolution of China’s homegrown 3G standard, TD-SCDMA. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless is reportedly planning to launch LTE services before the end of this year, potentially making it the world’s first mobile operator to go live with the new standard. However, a four-month delay in the switchover to digital TV in the US – which was confirmed yesterday by the US Senate – could now jeopardise this timeframe as Verizon was expected to launch LTE using 700MHz spectrum freed up via the move from analogue.