Vodafone Group signed a deal worth more than $1 billion with Google centred around expanding access to the latter’s devices, AI applications, cloud and cybersecurity services across the operator’s footprint in Europe and Africa.

The wide-ranging agreement expands on existing collaborations between the pair, covers the next ten years and means the tech giant’s latest products and AI platforms will be used to develop new services for Vodafone customers in 15 countries and 45 partner markets.

Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle (pictured, left) positioned the deal as putting “new AI-powered content and devices into the hands of millions” of consumers.

Among the elements of the deal, the operator plans to offer subscriptions to various Google services including YouTube and storage platform Google One, along with access to advanced AI services.

Vodafone intends to start selling Google One AI Premium subscriptions comprising 2TB of storage and access to the search giant’s Gemini generative AI (genAI) features in selected countries in 2025.

The pair also plan to upgrade the Android-based Vodafone TV service, which is currently available in seven countries. This includes adding genAI-based content discovery, improved YouTube integration and a “better ads experience” by using Google Ad Manager.    

On the devices side, Vodafone pledged to offer Google’s latest Pixel smartphones and promote the Android ecosystem.

In an expansion to existing cloud business services collaborations, Vodafone will use Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to “build, deploy, and scale machine learning models and AI applications powered by Google’s Gemini models”. The aim is to simplify and up the pace with which the operator’s units can launch new products.

Vodafone also plans to launch a cloud-native cybersecurity product using Google Cloud’s Security Operations platform.

Aside from product development and sales, the pact included a pledge to “jointly promote the use of universal industry standards in areas such as online safety, responsible AI development, network performance, and interoperability to drive economies of scale in industrial efficiency, boost innovation, and improve public services at scale”.