You can't compete by cutting costs. They have no idea of how to grow revenue. They don't invest in marketing or sales training. They are slow to deploy new services. The local operating companies ignore corporate and do whatever they like. There is no central strategy. Vodafone is the worst of the big global telcos.
@Vjhz+1kIx7ObD tells it like it is.
Strange how such an established (39-years old) company like Vodafone has the spare time and cash to acquire Three (making the business more complex), yet after 39 years it still hasn't mastered business basics of customer-first, simplicity and growth. The management layer should hang their heads in shame and be the first ones out of the door.
We spend too much money, time and effort trying to develop new lines of (niche) business such as healthcare and IoT, instead of mastering the basics such as customer service, consumer/business mobile and broadband. A simple, back-to-basics, growth approach is long overdue as 'managers', 'lead' and 'head of' folks have either been career coasting (hiding in the hierarchy of weeds) or trying to develop their own mini empires that quite obviously don't support simplicity or growth. A pity how it always takes a revenue decline for CEO's to realise just how poorly their 'managers' and 'leaders' have been running the business in the past, yet the layoffs hit the wider non-management staff, who are in no way responsible for the state of the business.
Bloated, clueless and stagnant 'management' layer. Many 'managers' promoted based on time-served, not the actual value or experience they bring to the role, instead standing on the shoulders of subordinates. If these 'managers' can't use their subordinates, they engage external consultancies to provide the strategy and decisions they are too weak and inexperienced to make themselves. Many dinosaur 'managers' are so institutionalised, they've no recent or relevant experience of how to do things better anywhere else (having transferred from Cable & Wireless, who were acquired by Vodafone in 2012).