Vodafone 2014 Annual Report Download - page 35

Sharing network sites to reduce costs
Nearly three quarters of the new radio sites deployed across the Group
during the year were shared with other mobile operators, which reduces
the cost of renting or building new sites by about 20% compared to non-
shared units. During the year we entered into new sharing arrangements
in threemarkets – Greece, Romania and Italy.
Virtualising our network
We are increasingly looking at ways to virtualise our network through
cloud computing. This requires us to move our existing network
capabilities from dedicated hardware onto virtualised applications
running over the cloud. As a result we are able to simplify our network
architecture and reduce costs. Virtualised networks are more scalable
and resilient, and enable the faster deployment of new services.
With this capability, we have started rolling out new features such
as a messaging platform for our M2M products, and many more
areplanned.
Helping our customers cut costs
We estimated that our products and services in smart metering and
logistics, eet management, call conferencing, and cloud and hosting
services, could save our customers 2.29 million tonnes of carbon
dioxide equivalent (‘CO2e’) – almost equal to our total emissions
last year.
£0.3 billion reduction in organic European and common functions operating expenses
2012 2013 2014
24
34
45
0
20
40
60
Deploying Single Radio Access Network sites
helps reduce costs
% of total
2012 2013 2014
9,500 10,700
13,300
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
Moving employees to shared services
to reduce costs
33Overview Strategy review Performance Governance Financials Additional information